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“The first bomb will set off a chain reaction that will take out the city’s infrastructure. You have a choice to make, Red. Stop me, or stop the bomb. Even you aren’t fast enough to do both. What’s it going to be? Save some heavily insured money or save Central?” Len lifted the duffel bag full of cash and gave it a shake then gestured out the bank doors to the pedestrians wandering past. On the other side of the street, the line to get into the Flash Museum could be seen already snaking down the block with excited tourists. “You have less… than… Red?” He lowered his hand back to his side and took a step forward.
Barry looked like he was about to collapse. He was swaying on his feet and his eyes were overbright. The parts of his face that could be seen under the cowl were so pale that his freckles were standing out, distressingly making Len think of blood spattered across his cheeks.
Ignoring Axel’s protests, Len dropped the cash and crossed the lobby at a sprint. He made it to Barry’s side just as he started to crumple and caught him before his head bounced off the marble floor. The Speedster was almost buzzing as he trembled. Len worked his fingers under the neck of his cowl to find his pulse, but it was racing so fast that it was little more than a hum. The hacking he had done into Team Flash’s system had given him far more intimate details about Barry’s body than he could ever need, and Len knew that even for him, it was almost double what his resting rate should be. His skin was clammy and cool to the touch except high on his cheeks where it was starting to run hot.
“I thought you couldn’t get sick?”
“‘M not sick,” Barry said in a feeble protest. He tried to bat away Len’s hands but couldn’t put much force into it and sagged into his chest.
“Bullshit you’re not. You just faint for the hell of it, then?” He braced himself and stood, picking Barry up off the floor. Len carried him back across the lobby to where the rest of the Rogues were waiting impatiently and a few of the bank tellers were discreetly taking videos with their phones.
“Didn’t faint.” It was whiny and petulant, and Barry snuggled his cheek into the soft fur of Len’s hood to use it as a pillow.
“Sure you didn’t. You just tactically collapsed to distract me.”
Barry’s voice could barely be heard, muffled by the fur and hardly more than a mumble, but it still sounded smug when he said “Worked, didn’t it?” He curled his fingers into Len’s sweater under his parka.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a genius at diversions.” Len kicked the duffel ahead of him as he approached the tellers desk. The woman on the other side of the glass didn’t lower her phone until he reached her, and he just rolled his eyes. “Listen, here’s the cash back. It’s all there, no one’s hurt. Everything’s fine, yeah? But Flash is not up to tangling with us today, so we’re calling this a training exercise. You all did great. Five stars. Your bosses should be proud of how you handled things.”
“What about the bombs?” the teller asked, craning her neck to look past Captain Cold to where the rest of his crew were divvying up one of the stacks of five thousand dollars before tossing their own duffels back. She noticed that a couple of them seemed to be trying to aim for their boss’ back.
“There’s never any bombs,” Barry mumbled without opening his eyes. “He wouldn’t risk anyone getting hurt.”
“There could have been a bomb,” Len protested. “I’ve used bombs before.”
“They were fireworks you got on sale after Memorial Day. And they were in an abandoned warehouse. And they weren’t near anything flammable. And-”
“I can still drop you, you know.”
Len didn’t notice the other tellers lifting their phones to take recordings of the indulgent, affectionate expression on his face as he tried to glare down at Barry.
“Sam,” he called. “A doorway back to the house,” he told him, hoping that he would understand which one he meant.
Most of the Rogues were used to Len putting a stop to a job if something went wrong. It was never worth the score to put anyone at real risk of harm. They knew that if Flash was the one in danger, they would all be standing down until he was well enough to face them again at his best. There was no fun in winning against him if he wasn’t at the top of his game.
Most of the Rogues.
“We’re just fucking bailing?” Axel demanded with a stomp of his foot. His hands were curled into fists at his side and he looked ready to take a swing until Len shot him a hard look that pinned him in place where he stood. “This is fu-”
Mick grabbed him by the shoulder, his large hand squeezing in warning. “Drop it kid. Now.”
He didn’t let him go until Sam had used his gun to give them a quick exit to the house in Danville that Len and Lisa shared. The neighbors willfully pretended that they didn’t recognise the pair when they were out getting the mail or having barbecues in the backyard with the Rogues. If the police ever came around to ask about them, they would insist that no, that was just Leon Winters and his cousin Liza Golding. She was a skating instructor who taught all the kids in the area, while he worked as an electrical engineer who was always happy to come around to fix someone’s AC in the hot summer months, and they had never heard of anyone called Captain Cold or what was it? Golden Glimmer?
Len fought back a wave of nausea from jumping through the mirror dimension back to his basement workshop and shielded Barry’s eyes so he didn’t see the twisting, undulating reflections of countless universes around them.
“What’s wrong with him?” Lisa asked, following close on Len’s heels up the stairs and into the living room where her brother seemed to hesitate about what to do next. The others came after them and milled about until Len carried the Flash the rest of the way upstairs to his bedroom where he gently set him down on the unmade bed.
“I have no clue,” Len said after Lisa closed the door behind her. He shrugged out of his parka and tossed it aside and sat carefully on the edge of the bed. He began to slip his fingers under the cowl to push it off, but stopped and turned to give Lisa a pointed look.
She huffed out a sigh and turned around to face the wall. “Is he sick?” she asked.
“That’s what it looks like, but with his metabolism… He shouldn’t be able to catch viruses.” Len cradled the back of Barry’s head to support it and took his cowl off. His hair was sweat dampened and clinging to his forehead, and heat was radiating off his face. When his head lolled from side to side on Len’s palm and he eventually peeled his eyes open to look up at him, his pupils were blown wide.
“I’m not sick,” Barry whined again then clutched at Len’s arm to haul himself upright so he could lean over and dry heave over the side of the bed. Nothing came out besides a miserable gurgle and saliva, and he looked relieved as he pressed himself against Len’s chest. “Y’re warm,” he mumbled and burrowed his face into the silk mohair sweater.
Len went rigid and cast a quick, panicked look in Lisa’s direction to make sure she was still facing the wall. “Lis’ can you…”
“Get the hell outta here and give you two some privacy? Absolutely.” Len didn’t need to see her face to know that she was smirking, or that he wasn’t going to hear the end of this for ages.
Left alone, Len carefully pried Barry off of himself and eased him back against the pillows. He frowned down at the suit, trying to figure out how he got in and out of the damn thing before he found the concealed zipper. “You’re probably steaming yourself in this,” he said, mostly to himself as he tugged it open. He knew that Barry was thin, but he didn’t think he should be this underweight, his ribs could be counted easily and his hipbones jutting out when he wiggled the suit the rest of the way down. “How long have you ‘not’ been sick, kid?” He tucked the blankets up around Barry’s chin and went to his closet to get out the feather down duvet he kept for winter from the top shelf.
“Three days.” Barry curled himself into a ball under the covers, just his nose and mouth poking out. “I dunno what happened. Was feeling fine, then bang. Felt like I was hit by a bus. And I’ve been hit by like. Five buses. I know what it feels like. Not fun. Had a CCTC logo bruised into my butt for a whole day the first time. Think it probably ended up on the news. Where am I?”
While Barry babbled, Len dug into his dresser for a pair of flannel pajamas that he thought might fit him if he didn’t mind a couple inches of ankle being on display. “You’re at one of my houses,” he explained and reached under the blankets to help dress the Speedster without exposing him to the cool air.
“You kidnapped me? You…” One of his hands snaked out and he waved his finger weakly and ended up poking Len in the face. “Supervillain. Kidnapping the hero. That’s… Did you just undress me?”
“And redressed you,” Len said patiently and lifted the blankets back up when he tugged the pajama bottoms up over Barry’s ass so he could get a better look at his unexpected patient. He looked so goddamn frail, absolutely swimming in the oversized shirt. Len guessed he’d probably lost at least twenty pounds, and they were twenty pounds he didn’t have to spare in the first place. “You’re burning up, Twinkle Toes. If you can’t get sick-”
“I can’t. They ran all sortsa tests on me at S.T.A.R. Can’t catch anything. But I can… Catch… You!” He reached out to grab Len by the wrist, missed by almost six inches, and started to cry silently.
“You can catch me later. Promise. Right now we want to stay nice and still, don’t we?”
Barry considered that suggestion and nodded, rubbing at his wet eyes. “That way the room stops swinging around. When did you get a houseboat?”
“What, you don’t think I’d make a good pirate?” Len bundled the blankets back around Barry to keep him warm while he went downstairs to boil a kettle for big pot of ginger and fennel tea. Mick was already in the kitchen poking at a block of frozen soup in a stock pot with a wooden spoon.
“Figured we’d be needing this,” Mick explained and cranked the heat up on the stove. “It’s that mushroom and barley one from the chest freezer. Should be thawed out in about twenty minutes.”
“Hopefully he’ll be able to keep it down. He almost puked on my shoes already.” Len added a healthy dollop of honey to the pot before pouring in the simmering water.
“Sparky’s never been… Never seen him like that.”
Len winced and nodded then jerked his chin towards the livingroom. “Everyone stays on lockdown until we know what’s going on. I don’t just mean us. Get Mark to pull down hail on any teams trying to pull jobs right now. No one finds out Flash is out of commission, or we’ll have chaos on our hands.”
“What do we do if something’s really wrong?”
“If he’s not back on his feet by morning…” Len slammed the cupboard shut much harder than he intended and shook his shoulders to chase away the tension in them. “I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
Barry was shivering when Len closed the door to his bedroom again. He could see it even through the layers of blankets. His eyes were darting around, following phantoms on the ceiling.
“Here, this should warm you up from the inside. Small sips. If you haven’t been able to keep anything down, your stomach won’t be happy if you chug it.” Len had to hold the mug to Barry’s lips for the first few meager swallows until he managed to wrap his hands around it. “Are you in pain anywhere, kid?”
“Head,” he began, putting his face over the mug of tea after Len got him sitting up against the headboard with pillows packed around him for support. “Eyes. Stomach. Ankle. My throat. Not as much since I stopped puking.”
“Your ankles hurt?”
Barry shook his head then whimpered, pressing his hand to his temple to keep his brain from sloshing out. “Just the right one.”
Len withdrew Barry’s leg, setting it on his lap so he could push the cuff of the pants up.
Just above the knobby joint, there was a large livid mark around an open sore. It was purple fading almost to black at the center where the sore was oozing. He put his leg back and grabbed the suit that was discarded on the floor. Working as carefully as if he was lifting a diamond off of a sensor, Len turned the right leg inside out.
Threaded into the seam, he found a sharp barb of metal. As he examined it, a droplet of fluid gathered at the point, welling then dripping off.
Len darted to the door, yanking it open and called for Sam. “I need to get him to the Watchtower. Now.”
“What are you… I’ve never been there!” Sam tried to protest but closed his mouth tight when Len looked like he was willing to snap his neck and steal the gun to use on his own. “Okay… But they’ve got security tighter than anywhere we’ve ever hit. The robotic weapons system alone will probably fry your ass before you get two steps out of something shiny,” he warned.
Stuffing Barry’s suit into a bag, Len ignored the warnings. He wrapped the barely conscious Speedster in one of the blankets and picked him back up. He allowed himself a deep breath to brace himself before he walked straight at his bedroom mirror.
On the other side, half a dozen men and women were around a table playing poker. When the security alarms starting to protest, Len sat Barry on the edge of the table and pushed the blanket from his face so his colleagues could see who he was. “He needs help,” was all he managed to get out before they reacted.
For the next several hours he was bound up in glowing rope while answering questions.
Questions he was willing to answer.
“He fainted and I brought him home. I thought he was just fighting off some kind of Speedster bug.”
Some that he wasn’t.
“I was feeling helpless. I didn’t know what else to do, and thought that you would be the safest option to bring him to.”
Some that he had been fighting tooth and nail to keep hidden from everyone around him.
“Of course I’m in love with him. If anything happened to him, I don’t know how I’d be able to cope. I need him. I- Can you take this damn thing off of me? What, are you going to ask me my measurements next?” Len struggled against the rope in a valiant attempt to save face while Wonder Woman looked like she wanted to coo at him. “Was that really necessary?” he demanded, tone sulky. He didn’t know what was worse, the Amazon’s gentle expression, or the way that asshole in green was having trouble staying upright as he laughed at him. Or that other asshole in green who was singing schoolyard taunts about Cold and Flash k-i-s-s-i-n-g.
How these people were responsible for the safety of the world, he had no clue.
“Deliberate poisoning, huh?” Len asked, flexing his fingers to make sure they were still in working order. “Is he gonna be… He’ll be fine, right?”
Superman -fucking Superman! - handed him a cup of cocoa and nodded in reassurance. “You got him to us in time.” He had already served Len a slice of the best pie he’d ever had in his life and now he was offering him whipped cream for the cocoa. “He’ll be out of commission for a week or two, but he’ll make a full recovery. You did the right thing, Snart.”
Len wiped a bit of cream off his lip and rolled his eyes. “I’ve been known to do that on occasion.” He leaned to the side to try to get a look down the hall into the medical facility the others had bundled Barry into when they twigged to what was going on. He couldn’t see anything, but he could hear the thrum of the heart monitor. He’d have to be satisfied with that for now.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” intoned the demon in black leather who had somehow managed to find the only shadows in the kitchenette to loom from. The effect was spoiled each time Superman opened the fridge and cast a light on him, and by the chipped, stained coffee mug he was holding that read ‘I’m a dad, what’s your super power?’
“No clue, but I’ll be doing some investigations when I get back home.”
“ You’ll be investigating?” Superman asked in surprise.
“Someone broke one of the big rules,” Len explained, rubbing the bridge of his nose to try to stave off the headache he’d been courting since stumbling through the mirror dimension. He just wanted to go home, eat a bowl of Mick’s soup, and pretend he hadn’t screamed when he looked out the window and seen the Earth floating on the other side of the glass. “We don’t hurt the Speedsters. We sure as hell don’t almost kill the Speedsters. And if Barry’s going to be on the bench for a while, someone’s going to have to help the kids keep everything running smoothly.”
“I think I understand why Barry’s so fond of you,” said Wonder Woman, who had helped herself to another slice of pie.
“Yeah. Well.” Len squirmed his shoulders awkwardly. “He’s known me longer than he’s known any of you, to be fair. We get along. We understand each other. We- Am I touching that damn lasso again?”
They let Len stay until Barry was coherent enough to form sentences, and he promised that he would keep an eye out for Bart and Wallace, and that he would break in and feed McSnurtle the next day. He held Barry’s hand and stroked his hair long after he fell back to sleep, his temperature finally dipping.
He was sent back through one of the matter transporters, and it was even worse than traveling through mirrors or with borrowed Speed. Armed with glossy photos of the metal that had been sewn into Barry’s suit, he walked into his house and dismissed the Rogues.
Most of the Rogues.
Placing the photos on the table, he stood tall and imposing.
“Axel. You and I are going to have ourselves a little talk about my rules. And what happens when you break them.”