#also not to be like that but this imaginary fic would definitely be rated E on ao3

[seldacharms]

The way I have zero motivation but if I could I would write 120k fic about those first days for Ryeon seeing the man she loved, the man she never thought she’d see again outside of haunting dreams and blistering, aching regret. But it’s not the same. She’d been told as much by the Director. He was a different man with his own mind and personality. Designed as her own personal hell. Still she’ll take it. She can’t help but want to be near him anyway and sometimes she’ll catch glimpses. An action or a word that will rip her through time and space, just for a second, a moment. The pain afterwords is almost worth it. Years pass and her aches become routine, his presence almost a comfort. He’d always be steadfast.

Case after case and she doesn’t realize that he sees her too. He doesn’t know her, not like that, but she’s competent. Does as she’s told and he appreciates that. She’s never wavered and it makes him want her closer. He respects her. Why wouldn’t he want someone as competent as she has proven herself to be by his side. He keeps her close and in that he sees more of her intentional or not. She fights hard and sometimes he’ll see a reflection of his style in her movements. Her gaze mirrors his when she’s bringing in the worst of humanity, almost as if she’s fighting the same demons he is. She’s in the standard black, but the color around her eyes makes her stand out. He stares longer than necessary sometimes.

All the way to the present when everything came crashing down. They managed to land on their feet, but it doesn’t erase the centuries of history. Ryeon is happy to resolve it knowing it will never fade completely. Where they are now is eons more than she thought she’d ever get, deserve. Things have changed completely and it will be a while before she figures out her own emotions. That and his smiles. Once so rare and treasured are now constantly on display for her. It chokes her up, makes her fumble in ways she hasn’t, doesn’t remember. Her cheeks match her eye shadow and it’s not becoming in a reaper centuries old. He’s not the same, no. How could he be? He has his memories back, but he’s lived hundreds of others since. Remade a cold man, rage a constant in his veins despite his complete control. Only now he has the past to anchor him, soften him just a bit now that he can let go of the misplaced anger. In its place something blooming. Reconciling the two parts is more confusing than she’d imagined. Especially now when he looks at her the exact way he once did.

[wheresarizona]

Anniversary

summary: With your toddler at his abuelo’s for the night, it means Javier and you have the house to yourselves, and you can be as loud as you want. 

rating: E (18+!! This is fluff and smut. Established relationship, pregnant sex, unprotected p in v (wrap it up!), creampie, oral sex (m), breeding kink, lactation kink mention, squirting, vaginal fingering, dirty talk, praise kink, body worship (Javier loves your pregnant body), Javier being the best partner, Javier being so in love, Javier being a good dad, so much fluff, feelings)

pairing: Javier Peña/f!reader

word count: 7.3k+

a/n: Can be read as a standalone or part of the Learning to Live ‘verse (it’s canon). To celebrate Learning to Live turning one and Pedro’s birthday, here’s a Javier and Cielito future fic and a glimpse into what their lives look like. Thank you to the love of my life @juletheghoul for betaing! I love you.

Thank you for reading! Comments and reblogs are appreciated!

Series Masterlist - Masterlist

The lighting is dim in the restaurant to set the mood, a candle lit on each table for some lovely ambiance. They sat you at a table instead of a booth, Javier across from you, holding the one-page menu in both hands low on the tabletop, his eyebrows creased as he read it over. 

He’s wearing the navy blue suit because he knows it’s your favorite, with no tie and a crisp white shirt beneath his open jacket. The first few buttons are left undone, so you can see some of his chest and the column of his throat, it working as he swallows, mesmerized by how his Adam’s apple bobs. You’re thinking about how it looks with a sheen of sweat coating it, always paired with a nice flush that moves down onto his chest, and the way perspiration catches in the tantalizing trail of hair below his belly button, leading to his hard—

“I can feel you undressing me with your eyes, Cielito,” he rasps, glancing up with a knowing smirk under his perfectly trimmed mustache. 

You feel zero shame at getting caught. 

“A suit with no tie and buttons undone?” you ask. “It’s like you’re waving a big sign that says, ‘I’m down to fuck,’ and I’m just admiring the goods before I decide to buy.” 

One hand goes to his mouth, his thumb swiping along his bottom lip, your attention drawn to it, arousal swirling in your belly. 

“Yeah?” he asks. “You gonna buy?”

“Maybe.” 

His hands go to his shirt, deftly opening one more button. 

“How about now?” he asks. 

“Javier!” you gasp dramatically, clutching imaginary pearls over your chest. “The townspeople will be scandalized by such indecency! They’ll think you a man of loose morals!”

One of his eyebrows arches. 

“You done?” 

Grinning, you reply, “Yes, and also definitely yes to us fucking as soon as we get home.” You wag your eyebrows. 

He looks proud of himself, crookedly smiling. 

“Knew this outfit would get you,” he says. 

“Because you exploited my weaknesses.” 

“And you just happened to decide to wear that tight fucking dress I love with no ulterior motives?” 

“We exploit each other's weaknesses. It’s honestly quite romantic.” 

“It is.” He nods. “You know what you’re gonna get? I’m assuming the pasta?” 

“Yep. I don’t know why you stared at the menu for so long; you’re just gonna get the steak.” 

“To rile you up.” He shrugs, setting his menu down on the table.  

God, he knows you so well. 

“I love you so fucking much it’s dumb,” you say. 

He smiles, a tender look on his face. 

“I love you, too, baby.” 

“Javi?” 

“Yes, mi amor?” 

“Is it always going to be like this?” 

His eyebrows furrow. 

“What?” 

“Just being so disgustingly in love and horny for each other. I know we’re still in the honeymoon phase, where everything is good and easy, and every day I love you more and more, but will this feeling fade?” you ask with a frown. 

“Cielito, we’re at this fancy fucking restaurant celebrating being married for four years…” he says slowly. “You’re gonna have our second kid in less than two months. We’re way past the honeymoon phase, baby—this is just how it is.” He smiles fondly. “I can tell you without a doubt that this feeling is never gonna fucking fade because what we have is real, and I love you more than anything.” He reaches over to grab your hand, his thumb rubbing over the diamond ring on your finger. “You’re the best wife and the most amazing mother to our son and daughter on the way, and I’m so fucking lucky that you chose to be with me all those years ago. I love you, Cielito, and I’ll never stop loving you.” 

Tears are in your eyes, your throat feeling tight as your lip trembles. 

“Javier, you know I cry easy. How dare you be so romantic!” 

He raises your hand, leaning forward to kiss your knuckles and the ring. 

“I’m sorry for making you emotional,” he says, setting it back down. 

You can’t help yourself, starting to weep, the tears rolling down your cheeks, thankful you aren’t wearing makeup. Your skin is far too sensitive to get all dolled up, and add in the fact that if you tried, you’d probably end up crying it off; there’s no point. 

“You’re not sorry, and I love you so much,” you sob. “You’re such a good dad and husband, and I feel like I won the lottery with you. Oh my god, I love you.” 

Concern is on his face. 

“Oh, baby, I love you, too,” he says in a calming tone. “Need a hug?” 

“No, I’m okay,” you reply, grabbing your napkin to wipe at your wet face. “I feel like I’m crying more this pregnancy.” You look at him. “Cried about the quesadillas you’d made the other night ‘cause they were so good and your mom’s recipe. Cried when I saw a mamma duck and her ducklings on my way to work.” 

Javi nods his head. 

“You cried when we watched Star Wars,” he adds. 

“The ewoks are so cute!” 

“They are. I’m still not sure why you cried while listening to ABBA…” 

“It’s ABBA, babe, and ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ is just that good.” 

He smiles. 

“Right,” he says. “It was stupid of me to even wonder.” 

The server arrives at the table, her eyes getting slightly bigger because she can tell you’ve clearly been crying. 

“Thank you for your patience,” she says with a Texas twang. “Do y’all need a minute..?” 

“Oh, no, we’re ready to order,” you reply. “Excuse the tears—pregnancy hormones are a bitch.” 

The woman nods her head in understanding.

“Oh, darlin’, say no more. I get it. What can I get y’all?” She looks between you both. 

Javi orders for you both, and once you are alone again, easy conversation flows between you.

The baby must’ve woken up, feeling her moving all about her tiny space, thinking she might be practicing kickboxing with the way she’s kicking so much. You jump from pain when she hits something low in your hip, making a face. 

“What’s wrong?” Javi asks, his eyebrows furrowed. 

Your hand is rubbing over your swollen belly, trying to calm the baby down. 

“Your child is using my insides as a punching bag.” 

“She’s my child when she’s being a dick, but ours when she’s cute?” he asks with a raised eyebrow. 

“You heard me–owe!” you yelp, thinking you got punched in a kidney. 

Javi is out of his seat instantly, coming around the table to crouch beside you, resting his big hand over yours as he gets his face close to the side of your protruding tummy. 

“Cálmate, mi bebita (Calm down, my baby girl),” he says in a soothing voice. “Porta te bien para tu mamá, por favor (Behave for your mom, please).” He switches to English, “You’re getting so big, mi princesa. I know you’re running out of room, but you gotta watch where you’re hitting. Aim for tu mamá’s belly button.” He presses down with your hand over the front of your stomach, feeling a kick to your palm. 

“Oh my god, she hit my hand.” 

Javi chuckles, kissing your belly over your dress. 

“That’s my girl,” he says, sounding proud. “Aim toward here, so you’re not hurting your mom.” 

It always surprises you how Javi can get the baby to calm down just by talking to them. It had been the same with your first, your husband speaking to your tummy and the kid mellowing out, which is happening now, the movements slowing as she relaxes inside you, his voice lulling her. 

“We love you so much,” he continues. “Can you be good for us while we celebrate? Your brother is with tu abuelo (your grandfather) tonight, and I’ve got plans for your mom when we get home, so I’m sorry if her screaming my name scares you. I promise she’s okay.” 

“Javier!” 

He laughs, kissing your belly again. 

He looks up at you. 

“Has she calmed down?” he asks. 

“Yes,” you answer. “You’re the fucking baby whisperer, I swear to god.” You’re resting your hand on your bump. 

He chuckles, kissing over your dress one more time before groaning as he rises up. 

His hand lightly grasps under your chin to tilt your head up as he leans down to kiss you tenderly. 

“I’m happy to help,” he murmurs onto your lips. 

“I’m counting on it.” 

He nips at your bottom lip, and it makes you moan. 

“I meant what I said about tonight.” 

“I can’t wait.” 

You really can’t with how you are throbbing between your legs, tempted to skip dinner and just go home, but it is your anniversary, and you are starving, ordering the safest option on the menu that wouldn’t give you heartburn. 

He kisses you one last time on the lips, then to the tip of your nose, pulling back to look you in the eyes with a soft look on his face. 

“Happy anniversary, Cielito,” he says. “I love you.” 

“Happy anniversary, Javi. I love you, too.” 

He returns to his seat, and you talk until the food arrives, both of you quiet while eating. You share a dessert; before you know it, the bill is paid, and it’s time to leave. Javi is there to help you up, grabbing your purse hanging on your chair, and making sure you have no issues as you get out of your seat.

Getting outside, he’s shrugging off his suit jacket to put it over your shoulders, one of his arms wrapping around your waist, his other hand still carrying your bag as you make your way to his truck. 

Pregnancy is crazy. 

The first trimester was exhausting, morning sickness hell, where Javi was an MVP and did more than his fair share to care for your toddler and keep the house running while making you rest since you were growing a baby and still working your full-time job. 

Then you entered the second trimester, and the morning sickness disappeared, being replaced with ridiculous horniness—it was insane how fucking horny you were all the time, pouncing on your husband any chance you got, much to his delight. It was the same moving into the third trimester, but now your stomach is getting huge, and you can’t move as well as before, needing Javi’s help to put on your shoes and socks in the morning. Sex has to be more strategic to make sure you aren’t uncomfortable, and your husband is more than willing to adapt, finding yourself being bent over the washer or the couch, him investing in a wedge pillow to support your belly when he was fucking you in bed. Honestly, you are beyond blessed to have such an amazing partner who can keep up and hadn’t tapped out the first weekend you had alone together after the horniness kicked in—you’d fucked nonstop, and afterward, Javi stocked up on sports drinks, and protein snacks to keep beside the bed. 

He’s perfect. 

There are some days when you’re too tired, or everything hurts, and all you can do is suffer—thankfully, those days are few and far between. 

Javi’s dad is a godsend who babysits any chance he gets, giving you guys at least one date night a week and occasionally a whole weekend to yourselves. This is a night that you have alone, not needing to pick up your son until the following day, who will be excited to tell you all about his adventures with his abuelo—he loves when Chucho wheels him around in his wagon to help feed the animals at the ranch. There’s a framed photo of him in the red wagon with a bucket almost the same size as him, holding a long carrot up to Daphne, one of the two grown cows you and Javi jokingly called your bovine children, Velma, the other one, standing next to her. 

Excited is an understatement for how you feel about getting home because even though you and Javi still have sex when your toddler is home and asleep in his own room, you always have to be quiet; things were a bit more subdued, but tonight the two of you can actually fuck, and be as loud as you want. 

You sit next to him on the bench seat in his truck, as close as you can get without being in his lap, unable to keep yourself from pawing at your husband while he drives. Your belly keeps you from blowing him, and your mouth waters at the thought, getting your hand in his pants to make yourself feel better. 

He’s fully hard by the time he’s parking in the garage at your house. 

He helps you get out of the truck and up the couple of steps into the house. Once there are no more obstacles, Javi is on you, his mouth fusing to yours in a hungry kiss while his hands roam all over your body—grabbing handfuls of your ass, rubbing over your swollen stomach, and along your spine under his jacket as he safely guides you to the bedroom. 

Your need for him is unreal by the time your giant bed is within reach, but there is one slight problem. 

Breaking the kiss, you’re panting, about to speak, Javi beating you to it with a smile on his kiss-swollen lips as he asks, “You gotta pee?”

“Yes! I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine, baby.” He kisses you quickly, giving your ass a smack when he pulls back. “Get in there.”

“I love you!” you reply, turning on your heel and tossing his jacket onto the bed, waddling as quickly as you can to the en suite.

“I love you, too!” Javi calls to your back. 

After emptying your bladder and thoroughly washing your hands, it’s go time, your body thrumming in anticipation. 

The bedroom lights are dim as you make your way into it, finding your husband completely naked and standing beside the bed, chugging a bright red sports drink. The sight stops you in your tracks, pulling your lip between your teeth as you watch his throat work, wanting to lick up the column and nibble on his jaw. 

“You ready?” His voice makes you jolt, so caught up in your thirsting over him you haven’t realized he finished drinking. 

His eyes are dark when they meet yours, his lips glistening in the low light from spit and his drink. 

Smiling, you answer, “Oh, yeah.” You point at the empty bottle in his hand. “Are you pregaming?” you ask. 

He moves to set it on the bedside table. 

“Gotta make sure I’m hydrated,” he replies, his attention solely on you, long strides having him in your space in seconds. His hands land on your hips, rubbing over the stretchy fabric of your dress, locking his gaze on yours. “I know you’re gonna keep me up all night.” Leaning in, he nudges his nose against your own. “Thank fuck you don’t work tomorrow.” 

Your arms go around his neck, pushing your fingers into the hair at the back of his head, feeling the thick, soft strands. 

“I know how we are,” you purr. “A big night—our anniversary, the house to ourselves, your wife so horny she’s had to change her underwear multiple times today. There’s not gonna be a lot of sleeping.” 

“Mmm,” he hums, smiling, “I better take care of my wife then.” His big palms move down to squeeze your ass while his mouth presses into yours in a searing kiss, moaning when his tongue pushes between your lips to tangle with your own. 

Arousal burns brightly in your belly, feeling your cunt throb and slick drip down your thighs. You want him with every fiber of your being—need to taste him, touch him, smell him, you need him, all of him, and you think you might explode if you don’t get his dick in your mouth as soon as possible. 

He’s kissing your jaw, nipping at your chin. 

“Wanna suck you off,” you pant. 

“Whatever you want, Cielito,” he rasps, sucking on your pulse point. 

You know he means it, too. With being pregnant, Javi always lets you be in control of these situations—you’re the one that calls the shots, and he makes it happen because only you know how you’re feeling and what you’re up for with your body changing day by day. Some days one position feels good, and the next, it doesn’t. Sometimes you can’t stand your breasts being touched, or everything hurts. There are too many variables, and Javi cares enough that all he wants is for you to be comfortable and actually enjoy yourself.

His hands go to the bottom of your dress, pulling it up and off your arms to be tossed on the floor. 

“Tits?” he asks, resting a palm on your bare stomach and the other moving to your back, unclasping your bra with ease. 

“Good to go,” you reply. “Just leaking.” 

He nods in understanding, and then he’s moving, his mouth on yours, kissing you hard while he pulls off your bra to let it drop to the floor, his hands moving up the sides of your belly to palm your breasts. His fingers pluck at your wet nipples, making you moan at the jolts of pleasure shooting straight to your core. Kissing a trail down your neck and over your chest, ducking low to lick at one stiff peak, the warmth of his tongue making your toes curl. He’s groaning at your taste, moving to the other side to lave at the hard bud, licking them both clean. 

Looking up at you through his lashes, there’s hardly any brown left, his voice lower and raspier as he says, “I hope you make too much milk again—fucking loved having to help.”

“I sure the fuck hope not,” you reply. “They hurt and were so swollen. I’d like to produce a normal amount of milk this time around; thank you very much.” 

He sighs forlornly, frowning. 

“Yeah, you’re right. Don’t want you going through that again.” Looking a little hopeful, he continues, “But if there’s too much for the baby or you get a blocked duct—” 

“Yes, Javi,” you cut him off in exasperation, cupping his cheeks with your hands. “You’re the man to call. Mr-Accidentally-Discovered-He-Has-A-Lactation-Kink-When-His-Wife-Forgot-Her-Pump-And-We-Were-Out-Of-Town-And-Away-From-Our-Baby.” 

“Hey,” he pinches your hip. “It’s better I liked it than found it disgusting.” 

“That’s a good point. Thank god you’re kinky.” You smirk with a wiggle of your eyebrows. 

“Yeah.” His focus goes back to your breasts, his hands groping them. “Fuck, I love when you’re pregnant.” 

“The bigger boobs?” 

“The bigger tits.” He crouches down, running your fingers through his hair as he rubs over your swollen stomach. “You carrying my baby.” Leaning in, he presses kisses all over the bump. “You’re so fucking sexy,” he says into your skin. “I love how your body looks.” His fingers get under the waistband of your panties and pulls them down your legs, him helping you step out of them. 

“I’m huge—I can’t see my feet,” you reply. 

“You’re sexy,” he corrects, standing with a groan. His eyes are on yours, grabbing your hand to press it to his dick, feeling him all hard and throbbing. “This is all you and how much I fucking love your pregnant body.” 

Your fingers wrap around his length, his mouth falling open as you slowly stroke him. 

It’s taking everything in you not to drop to your knees and start sucking him off, but you want to rile him up a bit. 

“Yeah?” you purr. “You like knowing you fucked a baby into me?” His eyes close, groaning loudly as his cock twitches in your grasp, making you smile—oh, you got him. “You like me pregnant with your child? You wish you could keep me pregnant, Javi? Just keep knocking me up and having your babies—you want to breed me, baby?” 

“Fuuuuuck.” The word is a drawn-out moan. His dick is weeping precum, your strokes getting slicker. He looks at you, seeing his throat bob as he swallows. “You’re playing fucking dirty.” 

Grinning, you reply, “Me? Play dirty? Never. Exploiting your weaknesses? Always.” 

His hands come up to caress your face as he crushes his lips to yours, kissing the breath right from your lungs. He wastes no time to get his tongue in your mouth, swallowing your moans as it slides along your own. 

You feel a little dazed when his mouth leaves yours. 

“You still wanna suck my dick?” he asks.  

Opening your eyes, you answer, “Yes, please.” 

“Knees or bed?” 

“Knees.” 

“You got it, Cielito.” He smiles, kissing you quickly before grabbing your hand and walking you toward the bed. 

There’s an assortment of pillows at the end of the king-size bed, most normal, but one was specifically for sex—the wedge pillow was a lifesaver. 

He grabs one of the regular fluffy ones, setting it on the floor and helping you kneel on it, thankful to have the cushion.

He’s standing in front of you, and you grab the backs of his thighs to make him come closer, Javi chuckling. 

“You hungry for my dick, baby?” he asks. 

His groin is at level with your face, reaching to take him in hand, feeling him hot and hard in your palm as you start stroking him. Looking up at him, you smile. 

“We both know I’m always hungry for your dick—can’t get enough of it.” 

“I know,” he says, crookedly smiling. “You gonna put it in your mouth?” 

“Someone’s impatient tonight.” 

“Someone wants to fuck your pussy.” 

“You’re the only man on earth who’d turn down a sloppy blow job.” 

He snorts, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“'cause I’ve been inside you. Nothing compares.” 

“That’s oddly romantic.” 

“I love you a-whole-fucking-lot. Please, suck my dick, baby.” 

“Impatient.”

You love teasing him and getting him all worked up.  

“Horny,” he corrects. “You said all that fuckin’ shit, and now I can’t stop thinkin’ about it.” 

“Sorry,” you say, not sounding apologetic at all.

His eyes narrow. 

“You’re a dirty fucking liar.” 

You give him a cheeky smile. 

“You got me,” you giggle, and before he can say anything else, you’re licking up his shaft from root to tip, swirling your tongue around the head to get all of the sensitive spots. 

His head falls back, groaning, you gathering spit on your tongue and letting it fall onto his dick before following it with your mouth, moaning as his thick girth slides inside to hit the back of your throat. It feels so good, bobbing your head, taking him as far as you can without swallowing around him. 

His hands are on your head, rough sounds falling from his lips. 

Coming off of him with a wet pop, you use your hand to wetly jerk him, keeping his cock out of the way, while your other hand cups his balls, lightly tugging to make Javi’s breath stutter. Looking up through your eyelashes, seeing him watching with his jaw slack. 

“You’re so fucking good to me,” he pants. 

You suck one into your mouth, gently massaging it with your tongue, getting it all nice and wet, and letting it pop out to give the other the same treatment. 

“Jesus Christ, baby,” he groans, watching you make a show of licking all over his sack, leaving it shiny with spit when you move back up to take his dick into your mouth again. 

You keep your eyes on his while your head moves up and down, feeling him heavy on your tongue, then licking from his base up to the head, suckling on him while fondling his balls, and moaning as you do so, having the time of your life. 

“You’re so fucking beautiful sucking my dick,” he husks. “My beautiful, pregnant wife, fuck, I’m lucky.” 

That flush you love is moving from his chest up along his neck, already staining his cheeks—a sheen of sweat glistens on his forehead and over his pecks, seeing drops starting to shine in the trail of hair below his belly button. 

Javi looks gorgeous with his eyes glazed over, lips parted, his hands resting on the back of your head while watching in awe, clearly enjoying what you’re doing with the way his taste is getting stronger, his cock steadily leaking on your tongue.

He sounds wrecked when he says, “Fuck, Cielito, I fucking love you.” 

It’s wet between your legs, the insides of your thighs coated in slick, feeling yourself throbbing, so turned on by what you’re doing. 

What you love most about sucking your husband’s dick is getting to make him feel so good. 

Obviously, he loves penetrative sex, which is undoubtedly his favorite, but with that, the focus was on you both. With oral, you get to focus solely on him, and pamper him, if you will. Let him relax and just enjoy himself, make him feel loved, and show that even after being married, having a kid, with another on the way, you’re still just as wildly horny for him as you were when you first started dating—even more so after getting to see him as a husband and becoming a father. 

Javier Peña is a certified DILF, the elite of the elite, and dear god, is it so fucking sexy, to the point that you can’t keep your hands off of him. 

It’s sloppy. There’s no finesse with how you’re bobbing your head, his hard cock sliding in and out with ease. Your hands move to grab onto the globes of his ass, squeezing the flesh while his eyes are on yours as you enthusiastically suck him off. 

The muscles in his abdomen are tensing, his breathing getting harder, and it doesn’t surprise you when he’s saying, “Shit, shit, fuck, you’re gonna make me come—wanna come inside your pussy.” He gently pulls you off of him, a line of saliva and precum connecting you to him, your chin wet, spit having fallen onto your chest and breasts, his cock shining in the low light.

His hand goes to grasp your chin, rubbing his thumb over your wet bottom lip, looking at each other. You suck it into your mouth, digging your fingers into his asscheeks.

“Baby,” he gasps.  

It leaves your mouth with a ‘pop,’ you smiling. 

“You wanna fuck me, Javi?” you ask in a sultry tone. 

Nodding his head, his voice is rough when he answers, “Yes.” 

“Help me up.” You hold up your hands to him, a soft smile on his face as he helps pull you up, your palm going to your belly. 

He’s suddenly touching the swell of your stomach, asking, “Is she sleeping?” 

“Yeah.” You nod. “Must’ve worn herself out. She’s been really active today. Thought she was learning karate with how she was punching and kicking.” 

He frowns.

“You should’ve said something,” he replies. “I would’ve helped calm her down.”

You wave away his words. 

“It’s good for her to get some exercise, and as long as she’s not hitting my organs, it’s fine. Plus, it was father-son yard work day, and you guys were having so much fun.” 

Javi has a carrier to strap your toddler to his back, using it when he mowed the lawn while you were tending to your small garden. He had to set up the sprinkler to water the grass, your son begging to play in it, and so you’d sat on the back porch drinking lemonade and watching them in their swimming trunks, having the best time playing in the spray.

Smiling fondly, he says, “Yeah. We need to make a trip to the city so I can go to Toys ‘R Us. I wanna get him a toy lawnmower and see if they’ve got anything else he’d like.” 

“Your dad will have to babysit him.” 

“Why? He should be there.” 

“Because you’ll end up buying the entire store, Javier. You are fucking weak to those big brown eyes of his. One look, and you fold faster than a beach chair in a hurricane. We will go bankrupt if we take our tiny child to a giant toy store.” 

He frowns, sighing. 

“Fuck, you’re right. I can’t say no.” 

You cup his cheek. 

“I know it’s hard. You just have to build up your immunity to the Peña puppy dog eyes.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yep.” 

“That why I can’t get away with shit anymore? You’re immune?” 

“I had to build up my defenses. If I didn’t, we would probably be on baby number four by now with the way you get baby fever, and we wouldn’t know what sleep is. One of us needs to have self-control.” 

“I’m not seeing how being on our fourth kid is a bad thing…” 

You snort. 

“You’re not the one who has to grow a human inside of you, and I’m exhausted at just the thought of four kids under five. I’m happy we’re at one and a half. Now, I’ll be back—” you pat his cheek. “—I gotta pee again.” 

He smiles, replying, “Of course.” He nods, giving you a quick kiss before you make your way to the bathroom. 

Both of you are used to the pauses when getting down and dirty. They are necessary when it feels like you have to relieve your bladder every five minutes. 

When you return, you’re feeling much better, your hands clean, and Javi is crowding you to kiss you fervently, his hands moving all over your body—palming your breasts, grabbing your ass, feeling your stomach. He’s walking you toward the bed, anticipation swelling inside you, digging your fingers into the backs of his shoulders, wanting him so badly you’re aching needily between your legs. 

Standing at the edge of the bed, your husband’s mouth comes off of yours to ask, “What sounds good? Want me to eat you out? Or do you want dick?” 

Sparks skitter down your spine, having to think quickly because his mouth does feel really good, but the thought of him inside you has you clenching hard around nothing. 

“Dick,” you answer.

Smirking, he asks, “How do you want it?” 

There aren’t many choices, and you’re too tired to be on top.

“Spooning sounds nice.” 

He kisses you, then moves to set up pillows at the head of the bed. He helps you get up onto it to lay on your left side with your head on a pillow, making sure you’re comfortable by grabbing the wedge to put it beneath your belly to prop it up and keep your back and hips from hurting, allowing you to relax. 

Soon he’s moving in behind you, the line of his body flush to yours, ghosting his fingers up your thigh and along your side, leaning his head close to whisper in your ear. 

“Comfortable?” 

“Very.” 

“Good.” 

He grabs your top leg to move it up onto his in order to open you up, sliding his hand between your thighs, moaning when he pushes his fingers through your folds. 

“You’re so fucking wet,” he says. 

His digits circle your perky little clit, making you gasp at the shocks of arousal igniting in your center. 

He presses his lips close to your ear, feeling his hot breaths. 

“Another thing I like about you pregnant,” he rasps. “Is you’re always ready to fucking go.” He pushes two fingers inside of you, loving the slight stretch, him feeling how soaked you are. “I fucking love eating your pussy or using my fingers—” He languidly pumps them. “—to get you off before we fuck. You know I love foreplay. But the times when all I can think about is getting my dick inside of you, it’s nice that you’re good to go.” 

“You’ve got pussy on demand.” 

He huffs out an amused breath. 

“I do. You’ve got dick on demand.” 

You wiggle your ass against his hardness. 

“I do, and as you’ve said, I’m ready to fucking go, so please put it in me.” 

“Who’s impatient now?” He sounds amused, his hand leaving you. 

“Horny,” you correct. “Put it in, Javier.” 

He chuckles, placing a kiss on your neck, then your shoulder. 

“What my wife wants, she gets,” he says, feeling him moving behind you. 

“Your wife wants your dick.” 

The thick head of his cock presses to your entrance. 

“You can have it,” he says as he pushes in. 

Your eyes roll back in your head, moaning loudly, him filling you inch by glorious inch, stretching you open, sliding in with one smooth thrust—loving how full you feel when he bottoms out. Your fingers are clawing at the bed, him pulling out almost all the way and pushing back in, doing it over and over, groaning behind you. 

His hand is on your belly, and you grab it, lacing your fingers over the swell, Javi slowly fucking into you, slickly sliding in and out. 

You’re so sensitive that the familiar heat is already growing in the base of your spine, knowing you aren’t going to last. That was a somewhat nice side effect of pregnancy: the sensitivity and ease of getting off from penetration alone. It had been a shock the first time it’d happened with your first pregnancy, coming in less than five minutes.

“You feel so fucking good, hermosa,” Javi husks. “Gonna fuck you full of me. You want that? Want me to fuck you full of my come? Want me to fuck another baby in you?” 

“Javi,” you moan, your cunt clenching around him, a wave of slick dripping out and soaking his cock. “You already knocked me up.” 

His hips speed up, pounding into you hard enough to make your ass jiggle. 

“I did,” he says. “And I wanna do it again.” 

His words have you feeling hot, ramping you up, getting closer and closer, feeling the build inside of you. 

You’re pressing back against him, your noises getting louder. 

“You like it,” he continues, kissing your shoulder. “You like carrying my children.” 

“Yes,” you gasp. “Love having your babies.” 

“I’ll give you another.” 

Your brain is fuzzy with pleasure at the thought of him getting you pregnant again, your pussy starting to spasm. 

“However many you want,” he adds. “We can fill every fucking room in this big ass house. Fuck, we can buy a bigger one.” 

It’s too much, everything he’s saying and how he’s fucking you causing you to crest, fireworks exploding behind your eyelids as you come with a shout of his name. Your body clenches up so tight that his pace slows to a grind, feeling every vein and ridge along your sensitive walls. 

“Fuck,” he groans, “My good fucking girl.” 

Euphoria is spreading through your system, feeling so fucking good, breathing hard. 

A sharp jab of pain erupts in your abdomen, making you hiss out, “Owe!” Followed by another and another. “Fuck, that hurts,” you whine. 

Javi is pulling out of you immediately, making you gasp from the sudden loss. 

“Did I hurt you?” he asks, his head coming up to look at the side of your face. 

“No. Your child is pissed off,” you say through your teeth, your ribs starting to get sore. 

“Shit.” His hand unclasps from yours, Javi sitting up and leaning over your body, rubbing over your big belly. There’s a grumpy look on his face, “Bebita, te pedí que te portadas bien para tu mamá (Baby girl, I asked you to be good for your mom),” he gently scolds. “Lo siento que te despertamos pero no significa que tú puedes dañarla (I’m sorry we woke you up but it doesn’t mean you can hurt her).” 

“It’s okay, Javi,” you sigh, the baby already starting to calm down. 

His eyes meet yours, a deep frown on his lips. 

“I don’t want you in pain.” He looks back at your stomach, his palm still moving along your skin. “And my daughter is going to be on her best behavior for the rest of the night.” 

You huff out a breath. 

“Dream on, babe. She’s your daughter.” 

“She is my daughter.” He smiles. “And she’ll listen to her Papá when I ask really fucking nicely for her to please let me fuck her mom without interruption.” 

“Javier!” 

“She doesn’t understand me.” 

“Still.” 

He sighs. 

“Te queremos, bebita (I love you, baby girl). Cálmate (Calm down). Todo está bien, te lo prometo (Everything is okay, I promise).” He glances at you. “Is it better?” he asks. 

“Pretty sure you could make millions if you offered this as a service, just calming people’s babies. We’d be rich.” 

He chuckles. 

“Is that a yes?” 

“Yep. She’s as cool as a cucumber.” 

“Thank god—I’m not done with you.” The bed jostles as he moves, Javi grabbing your hips from behind. “I need you to get up on your hands and knees, baby,” he says, helping you move into position. He stuffs a couple of pillows under your stomach for support, you leaning down to rest on your forearms and widening your legs apart. 

Quickly, he’s behind you, grabbing handfuls of your ass.

“Is this okay? Are you comfortable? Need more pillows?” he asks. 

Looking over your shoulder, you smile.

“I’m comfy,” you answer. “‘Speak, friend, and enter.’” 

His face pinches. 

“Did you just quote fucking Lord of the Rings?” 

“Yeah, and you can’t give me shit about it because you made us watch both movies the day they came out, you fucking nerd.” 

“Wanted to beat the crowds.” He shrugs.

Your eyes narrow. 

“Right. Put your dick in me.” 

One of his hands grabs his hard cock, sliding it through the sticky moisture of your cunt and notching it at your sopping opening. 

He has an amused look on his face as he stares down at what he’s doing.

“Mellon,” he says, and before you can respond, he’s sinking in and stealing your breath, your mouth falling open. 

He goes deeper and deeper, your pussy contracting around him like you’re trying to suck him in and keep him there for all of eternity. 

“You’re so deep,” you moan, resting your head between your arms on the bed. 

His hips finally meet the flesh of your ass, his fingers gripping your waist. 

“Is it too much?” he asks, his voice strained. 

“No, feels good.”

He starts slow, and it warms your heart because you know he’s making sure that there isn’t any pain, and there isn’t—it feels so fucking good the way his thick cock carves out space in your inner depths. 

He starts picking up pace, your breasts slightly bouncing, him working you up, feeling the threads of your orgasm making itself known and curling in your gut. 

You’re panting, every nerve in your body alight in pleasure, electricity humming under your skin.

Adjusting his angle has him rubbing against something heavenly that has you gasping out fuck.

“There it fucking is,” Javi grunts, focusing on the spot, snapping his hips faster, harder, every thought leaving your brain except for how amazing he was making you feel. “You gonna come for me, baby?”

The strong, steady thrusts have you drooling, the muscles in your belly tightening. His hands squeeze your asscheeks while he pistons in and out of you. 

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he groans. 

Your thighs are quivering, so close you can taste your end, chanting Javi’s name, getting louder and louder. 

“Scream my name, Cielito, let the whole fucking town know how good I fuck you,” he says through gritted teeth, hearing the wet squelch of your pussy taking him. 

It feels like something big is building inside you, your body trembling, Javi’s name becoming incoherent sobs from your lips. There’s a chance you’re going to explode, the pleasure growing, expanding, it taking over all of your senses. 

“I know you’re close, baby,” he grunts. “Let me fucking have it, and I’ll give you my come—fuck you full of it. Fill you to the goddamn brim.”

Everything winds up tighter and tighter, feeling like you want to pull him in as deep as possible but also push him out from how intense it feels. 

His hand moves to your front, massaging the ripe berry of your clit.

“Fuck!” you scream, shattering around him, coming so hard it pushes Javi out with a wet gush, splattering onto the bedspread. 

“Oh, fuck, baby,” he moans. “That’s my good fucking girl, drenching me.” One of his hands rubs comfortingly along your spine. “Shit, that’s good—so fucking sexy, Cielito, almost makin’ me come.” 

You’re shaking uncontrollably, the pleasure overwhelming you, your brain mush, head empty, zero thoughts. 

He only gives you a second before sheathing himself back inside you, fucking hard and fast, drawing out your high. He’s close, his hands on your hips in a death grip, grunting in exertion as he rails. 

“I fucking love you,” he pants. “Love you so fucking much.” Moans are stuttering from your throat, feeling like your orgasm just keeps going. “The best fucking wife,” he says. “The best mother to my kids. Fuck, I love you.”

He blankets over your back, his mouth at your ear, hearing his harsh breaths, him rutting into you to chase his own high, the wet sounds obscene between your legs. 

Shoving his face in your neck, he pushes his dick in as deep as possible, raggedly moaning, “Te amo.” His head moves, sinking his teeth in your shoulder as he comes, a rumbling groan bubbling from his chest, feeling the hot spurts of his come filling you, rolling his hips to fuck it as far inside of you as he can get. 

He needs a moment to catch his breath, not putting any weight on you. He pulls out, flopping down on the bed beside you, bringing you with him to cuddle on your left side, curling around your back, rubbing your tummy with his broad palm. 

“Happy anniversary, Cielito,” he whispers, kissing the skin of your shoulder. 

“Happy anniversary, Javi,” you croak. 

“Feelin’ okay?” he asks. 

“Feel fucking fantastic,” you answer, smiling dreamily. 

The baby starts moving.

Javi’s hand stops. 

“She hit me,” he says in awe, pushing down a little.

“I think that’s her foot, babe,” you reply. 

“She kicked me. Again.”

“Better you than my organs.”

He chuckles, excitedly getting up with a groan. You’re thankful you guys have such a huge bed, your husband easily moving to your other side, laying with his head next to your belly, his legs hanging off the mattress. 

He moves his other hand to the same spot, feeling her kicking away, him now able to kiss over where she was lying inside you. 

“Such strong kicks, preciosa,” he cooed. “You gonna be a soccer player like your Papá?”

“Javi, you hated playing soccer.”

“She could like it. Be better than me. Isn’t that right, bebita?” The baby kicked his hand hard. “See, mi amor? She agrees.”

“Right…”

“Your mom has her doubts,” he says to your belly. “But I know you’re gonna do great things ‘cause you’re mi bendición (my blessing), and I love you so fucking much.”

Your eyes start to burn, sliding your fingers into his hair to play with it while listening as Javi keeps talking to her—guessing what she’ll be like or what she’ll enjoy, if she’ll be anything like her brother, or either of you two. It’s soft and sweet, and you’re so fucking happy that the tears started falling, thankful to have this man as your partner and the father of your children. 

“I love you, Javi,” you whisper. 

His head tilts up, smiling at you. 

“I love you, too, Cielito. Thank you.”

“No, thank you.”

Series Masterlist - Masterlist

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to be tagged in my fics, please fill out the form in my bio, on my masterlist, or just let me know!

Tagging: @theorganasolo @nicolethered @lola766 @nessamc @vanemando15 @fiscinthirst @melancholyy-hill @hnt-escape @sherala007 @jadesabre83 @rainbeaubrightchild @blub-senpai @pedrohoe04 @theherothesavior @captain-creampuff @javiersjeans @zetasaturno99 @amb11 @lovedbyth3sun @siidereeus @marvelousmermaid @mrszdjarin @themarcusmoreno @woomen23 @ms-loverman-066 @star-wars-fan-2005 @kissing-stars @chloeinpink @notyourlovemonkey @unofficialavenger90 @fictionismyreality @sheetsof-lennon @damnyoupedro @katareyoudrilling @iamskyereads @enjoyourlattebitch @daddydindjarin @absurdthirst @kirsteng42 @littlemisspascal @athalien @thevoiceinyourheadx @elegantduckturtle @harriedandharassed @girlofchaos @mswarriorbabe80 @theewokingdead @guess-my-next-obsession

[hey-sherry]

I am still in a quandary. I'd happily read more fanfic with Sherlock and Jon but I don't really enjoy Jon is Real and I really do not like shipping Sherlock with Vogel. (To each their own, however! Ship as you will!) Unfortunately most of the fics I've found are one or the other, or even both, of those! 🤣 I am cursed with pickiness in a small fandom.😔 If you know of any fanfics that don't have Jon is Real, or at least keeps his status ambiguous, and definitely does not have any Sherlock/Vogel that might be hiding out there can you please share? 🙏

In the meantime I shall have to make do with your lovely screenshots and gifs of Sherlock and Jon and replaying the game.

Ah, yes, the joys of being in a small fandom. :D

We all have our preferences, that's totally fine! I also prefer the canon-compliant version of Jon, but yeah there aren't many fics like that.

(Also, I'm happy that you enjoy the screenshots and gifs! They're a lot of fun to make and share with you all. ♥)

Time to go down the AO3 memory lane and find some fics for you! Going backwards from the earliest ones (format: rating/word count/my comment):

Imaginary friend by traitorleech | G | 562 words, | a scene on the boat before the game starts

Bring me a dream by traitorleech | G | 1k words, a scene at the Manor

It’s okay, I’ll be right here. by Aurealis15 | G | 912 words | this one's nice but sad

Treasure Hunt by lionofwrath | T | 730 words | they go treasure hunting indeed!

A dream of a friend by AnnaTheHank | G | 1.2k words | a sweet dream after the final goodbye

Childhood Sleep by Arty_Girl | T | 886 words | relaxing and reminiscing about the good ole times, just before the Gilded Cage

Melody by InArduisFidelis | G | 246 words | scene at Mr. Jones' home

Threadbare by ShadowstarKanada | G | 1.4k words | post-Cordona holiday story, Jon returns as a ghost of the past

String Theory by aThousand_ghostlyRavens | T | 3k words | Jon teaches Sherlock to play the violin

Shelter in the Storm by storiesbytoria | T | 3.3k words | teeechnically Jon's more real, but imo it can be read as not-real and it's just a super cute and cozy story so I'm leaving it!

And a list that doesn't quiiite fit the requirements, but I figured I'd list them anyway - I'll explain for each:

The Tears You Haven't Seen by Lucere_Aeresta | E | 87k words | post-Cordona, Jon does return and accompanies Sherlock through the canon timeline up to a point. Johnlock endgame, though.

Just A Touch Of Your Love by xLoveMx | E | 2k words | Jon's not real but he feels more real through ~magic so ymmv. pwp.

And all he lov’d—he lov’d alone— by showingpitytowardsyourownkind | M | 4k words | crossover with Nancy Drew and Detroit: Become Human, with more imaginary friends

I (Would) Choose Us by TurnipKeep | E | 11k words | teeechnically Jon's not real! pwp. very pwp.

[maybeformepersonally]

Fic: from up here you can't beat the view (just watch me now)

Authors: kishere (@filisaceaf) & maybeformepersonally

Beta: @always-okay-katie

Artist: @kthnwss

Word Count: 22.6k

Rating: E / Explicit

Warnings: some slight internalised biphobia (it’s not a main plot point in the story) and brief mentions of Dan being bullied before the story starts. 

Summary: It's 2009 and Dan finds Phil on the internet when a well-meaning mate of his recommends him to a certain site she likes. Dan quickly becomes a fan: watching Phil's videos religiously and interacting with him on his socials. And, soon enough, Phil starts noticing him. 

A familiar enough story on the surface but here's the catch: Phil has never been involved with YouTube. Phil is a camboy.

Author Notes: We'd like to thank @phandombigbang for organizing this event and finally giving us the opportunity/excuse to write together that we had been searching for. We've been talking about this universe for a while and the Big Bang seemed like a great way to start the series with a bang so to speak. That does mean there are going to be other parts coming out in this series!

They always said it takes a village to raise a child and this is ours. I would love to thank our wonderful beta @always-okay-katie and our exceptional artist @kthnwss they dealt with our (reallyreallyreallyREALLY) erratic writing process and they are a blessing. We also have to thank the Phanfic Writing Discord (in particular @counting2fifteen and @sudden-sky) for alleviating some fears and looking over the fic along with the encouragement and support you have given.

Link to art: here!

(We don’t have enough words for how blessed we were to get these absolutely stunning art pieces to illustrate our story. The art is so ridiculously good guys, go show Kate some love and appreciation.)

[Read on ao3]

Chapter 1: sometimes you gotta try something new and that something new is a cam site

Dan could do this, he thought as he slowly hit the letters on his keyboard. 

Nicole had recommended the site when he’d been rolling on the floor of his room, going back and forth about finding men attractive. Again. He was bisexual, but he wasn’t sure just how bisexual he was. The occasional sneaked look in a locker room and some sweaty kisses at a party in the woods didn’t seem like enough to base wanting to have sex with guys on. 

“Have you ever even watched porn, Dan,” she had asked before laughing at him as he choked on the swig of Jack he had swiped from downstairs. Dad had been drinking more lately and wouldn’t notice the bottle had dipped low if he watered it down. He flipped her off and coughed a few more times to clear his throat. 

“You’re vile, Nikki,” he said, ignoring her as she gave him the finger in return. 

“Well? Have you,” she challenged, pulling her hair back into a ponytail, going from ‘funny Nikki’ to ‘serious, going-to-give-you-advice Nikki’.

“I mean... a little, but it didn’t really. You know,” Dan said, flustered as he didn’t make eye contact. “It didn’t feel… real.”

“It’s porn; there aren’t that many plumbing problems in the world. Have you tried live cams?”

“Live cams,” Dan echoed back hesitantly, feeling his nose wrinkle in confusion. He didn’t want Nikki to know he didn’t know what those were, but from the knowing looking on the girl’s face, he was failing. 

“Yeah. People like, film themselves getting off live and you can pay them for more private shit if you want,” Nicole explained. “I have a site I like sometimes. The girls on it are pretty hot.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dan muttered, glad about the shitty Skype connection between here and America. “I’m not having an issue with hot girls though.”

Nikki rolled her eyes at him and stared at him. “You… could look for guys on there… Daniel.”

“Brill idea Nicole,” Dan sassed back. “Let the underaged boy try to find… something… on the porn site.”

“Adult cam site,” Nicole corrected immediately. “And you don’t have to pay. There are plenty of people who use it just because they are exhibitionists.” 

“I… maybe. Send me a link,” Dan said after thinking it over for a minute.

So here he was, three days later in a finally blessedly empty house. He was sitting in a shirt and some boxers as he slowly typed out the link into a Firefox window. Dan could have just clicked on the link, but that felt too definite. Typing it out himself gave him some sort of… plausible deniability. ‘Haha, what a mistype,’ he joked with himself as the page loaded and wow. 

That was a lot of naked skin. 

Like a lot of skin. 

Mostly tits, but he spied a few chests that looked like they could potentially belong to dudes. He clicked on the first one he saw and made a face. It was a little too hairy for his taste. Not that he was averse to a hairy chest. Maybe. He didn’t know what he wanted, really, but he knew it wasn’t older with an extremely hairy gray chest that had the kind of moans that he thought made porn so inauthentic. 

Dan huffed in disappointment and looked in the top left corner, finding a drop down menu. He clicked on it and blinked at the… staggering amount of choices on the site. BBW, Anal, Trans, and… Gay. There it was, that stupid label, in gaudy, yellow letters, waiting for Dan to click on it as his cursor hovered over it. He clicked on it and felt his body relax as he saw so many more options available to him, and scrolled. And scrolled. Clicked on a few streams and exited out but none of them felt right until him.

xoxoAmazingPhiloxox 

First of all, he was hot. Inky black hair and insane blue eyes that Dan kept looking into when he wasn’t looking at Phil’s hand squeezing himself through (of all things) Donkey Kong boxer-briefs. Dan realized after five minutes that his eyes weren't just blue; it was a kaleidoscope of blue, green, and yellow. Second of all, the username had a little star next to the name, which Dan assumed meant they were good at what they did. Dan certainly thought Phil was good at what he was doing. Phil was talking as opposed to sitting there and just moaning, which… kind of helped actually, even if he was answering questions from another viewer about why he chose those hideous pants. He didn’t even have his dick out yet, just squeezing the outline of his dick through his boxers and Dan was hooked like the other 1500 people watching the stream.

“Well bigduck71, thank you for the tip, sometimes, I just get hard playing video games. It’s not that I’m attracted to the characters,” Phil was explaining, breaking off to moan into his elbow, “it’s just that I imagine that someday I’m going to have a boyfriend. I’m going to have a boyfriend to cuddle up next to me while playing video games and then if we want, we can. You know.”

Phil looked shy for a brief moment, but he stopped talking to pull out his dick after a very generous (at least $10 seemed generous to Dan, it was his first time after all) tip and Dan felt himself go from half-hard to fully hard. Fuck. His dick looked so good. Dan wanted to kiss it because it was pretty, the way its head was red and looked shiny, and it looked girthy from how wide Phil’s fingers were stretched around it. No guy should have that pretty of a dick and face and body all together; it was going to give the rest of mankind a complex, Dan thought as he reached down and squeezed his own erection, letting out a whimper as Phil continued to speak.  

“If we want, I could push him down and kiss him. I don’t think I would rut against him immediately; I think we could just make out, me laying on top of him, and the sounds of the Sonic title screen playing in the background,” Phil broke off here to hum the opening from Sonic Mania. “And I would kiss him until his lips were swollen. Slide my hands slowly underneath his shirt and touch how warm his stomach and sides are. Wait until he’s grinding up into me and grind back against him. I hope he grabs my ass, to pull me against him. Like it’s a decent ass, right? It deserves a little grab?”

Phil turned around and showed off his ass. He gripped it, his nails digging into the pale flesh that was dotted with the occasional mole, pulling apart a miniscule amount. Not enough to expose his hole, but enough to tease and show what he wanted his imaginary boyfriend to do to him.

Dan estimated he had bigger hands than Phil. He could probably grip his ass well, he thought as his hand sped up against his dick. Dan came embarrassingly quick when Phil turned back around and he was staring into those multicoloured eyes. He was mortified at how fast he came and no one was even in the room with him to justify him feeling this level of mortification. Reasons why Dan’s a fail, Dan thought as he felt the come cooling on his hand. Coming to an emo talking on a shady cam site and Dan hadn’t even typed anything into the chat yet to let Phil know he was watching him.

He waited until his heart rate slowed down a bit before typing in a simple ‘thank you’ with a little heart emoji attached to it before closing out of the screen to go clean off his hand.

*

“So how did it go?” Nikki asked him a few days later on Skype. Dan shrugged which made her roll her eyes. “You didn’t even do it, did you? Wimp.”

Dan sighed and looked up to meet her brown, judging, judgy little eyes and nodded. “I did do it. It was...”

Dan trailed off, unsure of how much he wanted to divulge to her. Because he did jerk off and while Nikki was pretty chill, he didn’t want to gross her out either. Did he want to say how enlightening it was to see a guy who had such beautiful eyes he wanted to go swimming in them? Did he want to talk about how he hadn’t stopped thinking about the show the past three days and was going to try and find him again because his face kept popping up in Dan’s mind all the time? Did he want to talk about how reaffirming of his sexuality it was to know how insanely attracted he was to men and that it definitely wasn’t a phase?

“It was fine,” was what Dan went with. 

“Ahhhhh,” Nikki said, her face transforming into something teasing. Apparently his poker face had been slipping since he no longer had to use it on a daily basis to survive. “Dan’s got a crush.”

“I don’t have a crush,” Dan huffed, voice going embarrassingly high for a moment. He took care to speak at a normal pitch after that. “Just… I have a mild curiosity.”

“Sure, buddy. Sure,” Nikki said, her tone drawing the words out before diving into a tangent about how insanely hard one of the missions in Black Ops was, and how it had been kicking her ass.

*

The “mild curiosity” kind of becomes a thing: Dan will get horny and instead of just using his ‘wild imagination’ (thanks every teacher he had in primary school), he’d go on the live cam site if he needed something to visualize. He didn’t always go straight to Phil’s page to see if he was online; he does try and look at other camboys, but none of them keep his attention like Phil. Dan was pretty sure it was because he treated the audience like a regular audience, but he just happened to touch himself while talking and playing music. 

Dan was a bit obsessed with Phil’s accent; it was very Northern and different than the chav accent he heard at school from the wannabe gangsters. Like today for example, Phil was just talking about something random going on in his life and Dan wasn’t even watching him to see if he was touching himself. He was working through his maths homework and had his headphones in to just listen to Phil talk as he tried to remember what his completely unintelligible maths teacher had said during class. He gave up after a while and turned his attention to Phil’s show, cushioning his head on crossed arms as he laid on his stomach. 

“So today I filmed something for my class,” Phil was explaining on the webcam. “It’s kind of different but a couple of my mates really liked it.”

Phil broke off to laugh at something in the chat.

“No, no, tiittyfucker96 nothing like this. I don’t think I could look them in the eye if I showed them a recording of me doing this,” Phil said, idly twisting a nipple and letting out a laugh that trailed into a moan as he (assumingly) pinched his nipple harder. Dan never thought someone could be so care-free during sexual situations. He was constantly worried that someone would hear that he had been with a girl and say that his bisexuality was a phase or that he was faking being straight which made him nervous to be intimate with anyone, even his ex-girlfriend. So watching the way Phil’s eyes would flutter in enjoyment as he gripped himself, watching the way Phil would give choked off laughs as he read filthy comments? It… it made Dan want to gain that kind of confidence. 

Before he had fully thought through his actions, he was typing into the chat-box, lucky that the basic, no-payment level of being a site member still allowed for chat interaction with the cam-workers. 

‘how r u able to be so confident on camera?’ 

Dan waited after hitting send and felt himself start to grow antsy after a mere second. He had sent messages before, casual things like ‘is that muse in the background’ or simple thank yous after he’d come. He didn’t think he was going to get anything out of Phil, but then he heard his now familiar laugh, and when he looked up he saw Phil’s tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, something Dan shouldn’t be fixated on but he was rapidly learning that his fascination with anything and everything Phil didn’t make any sort of rational sense and his dick simply didn’t care. 

“Well Dennis, no Danis. Danis-snot-on-fire.”

Dan wanted to die. He had been noticed and for all the wrong reasons. Why did he use the worst username known to man? Now everyone probably thought he had a snot fetish or some shit. 

“Very creative username,” Phil chuckled, looking right at the camera and giving the world’s most awkward wink Dan had been on the receiving end of. Mainly because he was trying so hard to wink, tilting his head to the side and trying but only managing to blink. Dan muffled his laughter into his elbow because if he was laughing, his mum would know he wasn’t completely focused on his homework and come in to check on him, and he really didn’t want to explain why he was doing his maths homework shirtless.

“Watch out guys, it’s about to not be a sexy time for a moment. But to answer your question, Danis,” Phil said as Dan resisted the urge to throw himself out the window every time Phil called him the wrong name, “I get my confidence from all of you guys. It’s actually part of why I first started camming in the first place. When I first started, I was pretty awkward. Like I did bad angles and there were times I got so nervous that I’d uh. You know. Go soft. But everytime someone said something encouraging, it really helped boost my confidence to what’s in front of you now. I kind of just learned that the worst thing that will happen is you’ll have to try again. So yeah!”

Phil ended the talk with jazz hands.

Dan hated how he tracked the way Phil’s hands moved, imagining how warm they would feel in person. His maths homework sat uncompleted as he had himself a wank to the freckles he wanted to bite on Phil’s shoulders.

*

It only got worse with time. This… infatuation. He’d still search the site for new camboys sometimes, but he got bored easily, grew frustrated when he didn’t find what he liked. He knew what he liked, was the thing. He knew who he wanted. The problem was: he only had access to the open camshows Phil made, at the moment. 

There was a whole library of old camshows archived on the site, but it was locked for paying clients, and paying clients needed to have a credit or debit card and to be verifiably 18 or older, which Dan wouldn’t be for another month. And even then, he’d still need to get some kind of card. Which was way too much trouble just to get more porn, right? There was plenty of free porn on the internet. He didn’t need a paid membership. He didn’t.

But he wanted one, he really, really did. There were years worth of Phil camshows in there, plus some kink-themed clips, and special features like the superchat, and Dan craved. 

He tried to hold off his burgeoning interest, but soon enough he’d fallen into a rabbit hole of online sites where Phil interacted with his subscribers and answered questions and uploaded photos with funny commentary; fallen never to be seen again. He couldn’t stop scrolling, couldn’t stop reading his twitter, his #asks tag on tumblr, his dailybooth (especially his nakedbooths, which he posted whenever he hit a milestone), his answers on formspring (almost all of them were sexual, and fuck, Phil had a way with words).

He had now reached the point where his mind drifted automatically to Phil whenever he wanked, or even when he got turned on, like the two things went together, a Pavlovian response. He’d accrued quite the collection of Phil-specific fantasies, and all his old fantasies had now cast Phil in the starring role. And he’d become addicted to checking Phil’s socials more than was maybe reasonable.

Like now.

Dan refreshed tumblr at just the right time to see that Phil had answered a few asks. 

anonymous asked: how big is ur duck

amazingphil: [picture of a rubber duck next to a 50 cm ruler]

Dan couldn’t hold back a snicker at the response. He’d discovered that Phil was hilarious very soon after discovering that he was gorgeous, and though he mourned the loss of opportunity to get a Phil dick pic, he had to hand it to him. It was funny.

Dan clicked on the ‘amazingphil’ url to check if there were any more answers yet. Phil normally did a few at a time.

And today was no exception. 

anonymous asked: is it true that you did linguistics at uni?

amazingphil: it is! I’m an english language and linguistics graduate. sounds professional, huh? i got good grades and everything. i could totally tutor you if you’re having trouble with your homework, i’ll even bring out the glasses if you’re into it… (i’m into it)

anonymous asked: whats your favorite sex toy

amazingphil: oh, this is a hard one. mmm... probably my blue vibrator? tho the purple dildo that comes inside you gets a special mention too, maybe it’s that it’s new and i’m still super excited about it lol but if you saw that one camshow where i used it you saw how much fun i had with it ;) and i’ve used it a few more times already so...

Dan had seen that camshow. That thing was huge. And Phil had taken it like it was nothing, moaning and pushing back on it like he couldn’t get enough of it. Dan had come twice during the half-hour-long liveshow. Dan refreshed the page, and a new ask appeared.

anonymous asked: hav you tried bondage? i’d luv to tie u up ;)

amazingphil: i haven’t actually! but i might be up for it with someone i trust. but i’ve thought about it! it’s a hot fantasy. i’d like my partner to tie just my wrists the first time, to ease me into it, but a second time i think it could be fun to be spread eagled, wrists and ankles, back to the bed. i’d like to be on one of those four poster beds so that you could have my legs up in the air. i think i’d like to be fingered slowly when i can’t move away, teased a little and then fucked into the mattress while spread open like that with no friction on my cock so i can’t come until you’re done with me and then you get to decide how to make me come, i bet that’d drive me wild. i can get a bit needy in that kind of situation haha but that’s half the fun of it, yeah? that’s y’know, sth i think about sometimes :)

“Ngh.” Dan was suddenly very hard, his mind having taken a wild swerve into the gutter as soon as he’d clicked on Phil’s blog if he was being honest, but that took it to a whole new level. He wasn’t sure how true these were, but the idea that these were actually Phil’s fantasies, that this was what he thought about when he got off by himself, it always made it so much hotter for Dan, so much more effective. He wasn’t sure if it was just that Phil talked about his actual fantasies differently and he was picking up on it on some wavelength, or if he just got off to the idea of knowing something so intimate about someone he was attracted to.

He wanted more, so he refreshed the page again, barely resisting the urge to touch himself as he squirmed just a little on his seat.

The page refreshed, and there was a new answer.

anonymous asked: ur so hot i love ur cock i want to sit on it and ride u until u scream

amazingphil: mm… this cock? [gif of phil’s groin from the chest to his thighs, completely naked, he’s pumping his cock slowly, once, twice, the third time, as his fingers reach the head, a few drops of precome slide down his fingers, then the gif loops] yeah that sounds nice. but i think i could make you scream first... race you? ;)

“Fuck,” Dan breathed out, his own cock twitching sympatheticaly inside his pyjama bottoms. He reached down to squeeze it and couldn’t help but buck up into it, breathing ragged and mind already lost in the fantasy. How would it feel to sit on Phil’s lap, to tease him by rubbing against him, to have Phil finger him open and then kiss him while he slid down onto that pretty cock, feel it stretch him until he bottomed out and then stay still, perfectly, maddeningly still, until Phil couldn’t take it anymore and said “please, Dan,” and then to move up, feeling that cock dragging against all those hidden places, making fireworks go off behind his eyes, until he was almost all the way out, and then-

Dan had pulled out his own rock hard dick and was pumping it furiously, basically fucking his fist by this point, imagining himself bouncing on Phil’s cock, picturing how Phil would grab his ass, how he’d grip him by the thighs as he pushed him down into his cock, how he wouldn’t be able to resist fucking up into him, hips rising without even thinking about it. 

In the stark reality of Dan’s bedroom, he brought his hand up to pinch his own nipple and moaned; in his fantasy, it was Phil’s long, elegant fingers doing it, Phil’s fist around his cock as he fucked him, Phil leaving bite marks on his collarbones, telling him how fit he was, how good he felt, how much Phil wanted him, and just like that Dan was spilling into his hand and his shirt, pressing his mouth into the fleshy inner side of his bicep to muffle the whiny, breathy moans he couldn’t quite keep in, and the pleasure came in waves down his body, had him writhing in his computer chair for several long moments that felt like a short eternity, and left him a boneless lump, breathing too hard and staring unseeingly into the computer screen.

“Huh,” he muttered to himself once he’d come down from it. That was... really good, actually. 

The gif was still playing on the screen. Dan right-clicked over it and saved it on his computer. For reasons.

*

Next came the not-so-natural progression of his little hobby into a whole new level. It began as a fantasy.

He’d been spending so much time in that damned camming website that it was hardly shocking that the thought would form in his mind. What would it feel like to be in front of the camera? What must it feel like to feel so confident about your own body and sexuality that you can put yourself on display like that with the expectation that people will come, that people will watch, that some will even pay for the privilege of telling you how good you look or to ask you to touch yourself in a specific way? How did someone like Phil feel, knowing he can turn on his webcam and have thousands of viewers’ undivided attention based purely on how hot he looks as he gets himself off, thousands of eyes following his every movement, his every word, feeling their blood rush and their flesh crave at the stroke of his fingertips? 

The first stray thought was followed by another, then another, and it all built momentum until he found himself caught up in the fantasy of having all those anonymous eyes on him, wanting him, wishing they could be touching him, thinking he was so desirable that they wanted to pay him in exchange for scraps of attention. 

So Dan laid down on his bed, over the covers, naked (so that the anonymous men from his fantasy could take him in, could watch him, all of him, on display like-like art, or a celebrity, or something worth attention. Someone deserving of this kind of attention). Instead of following all the shortcuts he knew would get him to the finish line faster, he thought about what Phil (and the few other camboys he’d tried watching) did to tease and titillate their viewers. What would they like to see, if there really were people watching him?

He ran the fingers of one hand lightly down his neck, shivering slightly at the sensation, then down his collarbones and further down his chest until they reached one nipple. His other hand was resting to his side, gripping the duvet in an attempt to anchor him and help him pace himself. He tweaked his nipple, squeezed it between two fingers, and his hips swivelled a little in place at the bolt of pleasure. Dan’s eyes never strayed from his own body, trying to see what others would see if they were looking at him right then. His cock was hard already, resting flush against his lower belly and throbbing a little. 

He trailed the fingers down, teeth catching on his pink plump lower lip as his hand reached the crease where his hip met his thigh and he bypassed the hard flesh aching for attention between his legs in favour of running his nails down his inner thighs, leaving reddish lines on the pale soft skin and moaning softly at the sensation. Would his viewers like the noise? Would they like him? Would these hypothetical men (and while he knew the people who watched the camshows weren’t all men, it was important to some recondite and unexamined corner of Dan’s mind that they would be primarily men) be intrigued enough to want to stay and continue watching him?

Dan imagined it, countless men watching him in lust, unable to resist sneaking a hand down pants that felt too tight and rubbing one out, never taking their eyes off Dan’s form as they fantasised about all the filthy things they’d like to do to him.

He dragged his fingers down to grab a handful of his own ass, squeezing one cheek and  spreading it slightly to reveal the puckered flesh between the cheeks, spurred on by the mental image of faceless men rutting into their own hands at the sight. He ran his fingers teasingly around the rim, sparks of pleasure shooting up from the place where his fingers made contact and moving all the way into his core. He tamped down on the urge to thrust his hips into the air in a natural bid to find friction.

He considered his options briefly, fingers tapping a delicious rhythm and making his legs spread a bit wider by reflex, and reached out with his other hand to fish out the lube from his drawer. He didn’t do this every time - it meant more work and cleanup - but right then he knew it was just what he needed. 

He coated three fingers as quickly as he could and returned his hand to its previous position between his legs, bending his legs and planting his feet firmly on the mattress for leverage.

He teased around his rim for a bit longer, his other hand wandering aimlessly up his body as he pretended that he was waiting for a hefty enough tip before indulging his audience. Someone would crack, he thought; someone would want it so bad that they wouldn’t even care about the money, they’d just send it over, and Dan would smile at the camera in satisfaction before dipping one of his slick fingers slowly inside.

He’d talk to them, probably, during the whole thing. He’d tell them how badly he wanted it, how hard he was, how much he needed it. It was quite unlike anything else, that particular feeling; and when he craved it, nothing else would do. He’d ask them playfully if they wanted to see how well he took his own fingers, he’d beg them so nicely to please hurry up, he needed more, one finger wasn’t enough and he was ready, he was so ready for more, but he couldn’t until he got another tip, right? So please? Pretty please?

And then another tip would come, maybe more than one, and he’d thank them, looking straight at the camera again, and he’d reward them by sliding another finger with the first, twisting them slowly (and here he’d be unable to keep his hips on the bed, he could feel himself losing that battle as they bucked up into the air by their own accord), and fuck he couldn’t keep the noise down, not when he was like this, but that was fine, wasn’t it? His viewers would like that, they’d probably compliment the whiny moans he couldn’t keep down whenever he brushed his prostate, they’d love them, if anything they’d ask him to make more noise.

Another? he’d ask, he’d request, and the tips would flood, as would the praising comments. He was close, and he hadn’t even touched his prick at all. He pulled out the two fingers he’d been using to furiously finger himself and dropped some more lube on them, before reaching back down and slowly, too slowly, sinking three fingers inside. It burned a little, but the pleasure was far more intense; it made his eyes close and his jaw slacken and he had to grip the duvet again to resist touching his throbbing cock. 

It didn’t take long before he was thrusting his fingers in and out, effectively fucking himself on them and letting out high, desperate-sounding short little whines. He imagined countless people (men) watching him, devouring the picture he made with greedy eyes and tight fists, getting off to the fantasy of him, fantisising about what it might feel like to fuck him, what he might look like with their cock up his arse rather than his own fingers, thinking probably that they could wring out even sweeter sounds out of him with a proper cock, like some of Phil’s viewers said to him all the time.

He was feverish with the thought, the sensations, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been this hard (he’d certainly never sounded this desperate, this needy before), and the stray thought of Phil’s viewers made him think of Phil and what if he was watching too? Pretty much everything Dan knew of camming he’d learnt from him. Would he think Dan was good at it? Would he be proud? 

Would he want me too?

The thought settled like an itch under his skin, setting him on fire. He unclenched the hand gripping wrinkled cloth to grip himself, felt his cock twitch as soon as it was (finally, finally) given some attention, and he tried to go slowly at first but he couldn’t, he couldn’t, the pleasure had been building for so long, so he just thrust into his fist and fucked himself on his fingers and imagined being watched and wanted and desired for all of it until the pleasure undid him. Wave after debilitating wave, all he could do was lie there and let it wreck him, and whine through it. 

He was left in a messy, sweaty, shaky tangle, quite sure that he’d just had the single most intense orgasm of his life and wondering if he’d even be able to walk to the bathroom for cleanup before his parents came home from work. 

(He was, eventually, but it was a close thing.)

*

Okay, so he’d discovered he had an exhibitionist kink. No big deal. It didn’t mean he had to do anything about it. 

Sure, he liked the idea of being watched by people who found him attractive, but that didn’t mean he’d necessarily enjoy the reality of it… Not to mention, exposing himself in the way that he’d been imagining - by doing a camshow where strangers could watch him - worked great as a fantasy, but who knew what kind of people he might attract... What if he got awful comments instead of praising ones? What if no one turned up? What if they didn’t even like him? 

The thought caused a ball of anxiety to settle somewhere around his lower chest, much as he tried to dismiss it. This kind of thing self-regulated, right? If someone checked him out and didn’t like him, they’d just leave to find someone more to their taste… 

Well, that thought didn’t help at all. With a grimace, he pictured a stream of people opening his camshow only to leave moments later, when they saw what he looked like, or heard how awkward he was. That’d be even worse than no one showing up.

And why was he still thinking about this, anyway? It wasn’t like he was actually going to go ahead and do it. It was just a crazy idea. 

He didn’t really want to do it. And he couldn’t, anyway. It’d be a disaster. 

And who knew how dangerous it might be. Better to file the thought away for wanking purposes and move on to more realistic endeavours in the real world.

...Right?

*

Apparently not.

He could not stop thinking about it. 

Every time he got off, even when he was watching Phil’s shows (and Phil’s shows were as captivating as they came), his mind drifted to this shiny new fantasy of his. He imagined himself in Phil’s place, imagined that the comments and tips were for him, (imagined that Phil was watching him, one of his regulars, that Phil was thinking about him when he grabbed and tugged and teased his own skin, when he lost himself in the pleasure, when he moaned and shuddered so prettily, when he talked about his future boyfriend).

And it wasn’t just that he was fixated on the sexual fantasy (though, that was how it got started). No, he’d started actually thinking about it. What it might entail. How it might go, as a job. How often he’d have to do it to live off it. 

He didn’t actually know if it would be viable as a way to make money, as a lot depended on whether people tuned in to watch him, and he couldn’t predict that. But surely it had to be a more attractive prospect than his shitty job at Asda, which he was barely holding on to as it was.

Going by the terms and conditions posted on the camming site (which he’d obsessively read several times over, heart in his throat and cheeks burning and feeling foolish and young and inexperienced), he’d get a fixed rate for number of subscribers, but the amount was negligible unless you were one of the heavy hitters. The real money would come from tips and private shows, and Dan was not sure he was ready to try doing private shows yet.

He wasn’t sure that he was ready to do any of it, if he was honest, but the more he thought about it, the more he was certain that he wanted to try. He wanted this.

It was a bit mad, yeah. Not the sort of thing you could bring up at Sunday tea time with grandma, that’s for sure. Not the sort of thing you could list on your resumé as a professional lawyer, either. And that wasn’t even going into the matter of romantic relationships, and how potential partners might feel about it. 

It was atypical, socially transgressive, scorned and undervalued by mainstream society; in a word, it was decidedly queer, in every sense of the word, but damn it if that wasn’t Dan all over. 

That’s how he felt, anyway. 

Maybe he should embrace it.

[Read the rest here!]

[mysunfreckle]

Best montprouvaire fics? (Besides yours)

I always get very nervous when people ask me for recs, because I don’t actually read that much (too busy writing ^^;;) and I’m very fussy about what I do like to read. So instead of a ‘best of’ I’ll give you a list (in no particular order) of Jehanparnasse fics I’ve read that stuck with me for a variety of reasons…

WARNING: One of the things I’m fussy about is happy endings, so this list contains spoilers in that respect.

@vintage-jehan‘s The Life and Times of a Sullen Coffee Shop Employee (5 parts, 18k)

It’s the fic my sister used to drag me into this fandom and I love it. I’ve reread it so many times, I podficced it, I just love it okay. It’s fluffy, incredibly funny and snarky, and all the conflict is imaginary and promptly solved. This is an excellent comfort fic. (Technically the Jehanparnasse might not be the main ship as they only get together at the end, but it’s Parnasse’s POV, so to me it counts.)

@theblazeofmemory‘s fae au: [1], [2], [3], [4]. 

These are four very pretty ficlets that I’ve been fond of from the start. A magically gifted Jehan wanders into the fae realm and gets found by a fae (?) Montparnasse. While it’s not quite wrapped up, it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger either. They just really bring the faerie mood and I love them for that:(Not angsty, but I wouldn’t call it fluff, it is a unseelie faerie story after all.)

Of Poets and Pickpockets by @fishandchipsandvinegar (3.5k)

This is a modern au one-shot that just makes me smile. It’s sweet and silly and deliciously free of conflict. It does have some slight ‘conflict with parents’ themes, but it’s mostly poetry and an adorable established relationship.

@just-french-me-up‘s Of Growth and Decay (5 chapters, 27k)

The other fic my crafty sister trapped me with. It’s a Greek Mythology (Hades & Persephone) AU and it’s full of dramatic tension and poetry. There’s a kidnapping theme and definitely some angst (and violence), but it’s enemies to lovers done well and I am weak for all the symbolism and the happiness at the end.

Black Coffee and Chai, also by @just-french-me-up (2.4k)

This is a delightful first (blind) date from Montparnasse’s POV and it has just the right amount of snark and awkward cuteness. Modern AU, conflict free, but does fleetingly discuss some of the shit of the world.

What flowers are at my feet, by @mardisoir (4.4 k)

This is a dark, medieval fairy tale that just manages to snatch a happy ending from the claws of regret. It’s magical, intense and even though I have to warn for both angst and violence I am still very much enamoured with this. Once again an enemies to lovers theme and it casts Jehan as a powerful witch.

Devil’s Backbone, by @feyland (16 chapters, 29k)

Speaking of angst and violence… This is a definite darkfic and a modern crime au. It ends well, but I have to admit that I skipped some bits. It has the protective criminal theme and it’s done well, but it is heavy. In between the hurt there are wonderfully soft moments though and it’s a thrilling read. (Rated M and please mind the warnings author Jane provides on this fic, I’m not kidding.)

Le chat et le moineau, by thestarsblinkjustforus (3.8k)

This is a dark one too and it’s the only canon era piece on this list. It’s pure dark poetry and for some reason this doesn’t register as angst to me. This is rated M on AO3 but I would rate it E and please mind the tags. I like it because the darkness in this has a glitter to it and canon Montparnasse the pretty murderer and Jehan the morbid Romantic are just so incredibly aesthetic.

Oh, we’re so disarming, darling, another by Mardisoir (1.2k)

Yes, this is short, but I have reread it enough times for it to take up as much space in my head as any fic (I am also still hoping for more). It’s a 1920′s au and it glitters and gleams. The word ‘wicked’ comes to mind. It’s fun and there’s no angst, because all the bad stuff happens to people of no importance. If you want aesthetic, this delivers. Trust me.

One Thousand Nights, once again by Mardi (10 chapters, 90k, WIP)

This is a modern au Jehanparnasse ‘origin story’ and it is, above all, realistic. There is happiness, there is pain, there is humour, there is anxiety, and they are all woven together around characters that feel like fully fleshed out human beings. This is not an easy read, it’s rated E and the world it takes place in is not pretty and so believable that it comes dangerously close to breaking my heart. But I have read this twice now and I am far too in love with all these characters to let go. Plus, a happy ending was promised and when this fic does decide to dish out happiness, you can feel it in your soul.

Thus ends my Jehanparnasse reading list :P

I hope this was helpful, anon! ❤

[coldflasher]

You Are The Music In Me

Coldflash Week 2017A

Day 7: Under The Influence (Of A Metahuman)

Barry gets whammied by Music Meister, who transports him and Kara to a mystical dream world where he works as a performer for one mob boss, is an informant for the other, and everyone keeps bursting into song.

Oh, and he’s dating Leonard Snart.

Rating: Mature

Read on AO3

AN: Some content warnings for referenced rape/non-con, nobody is actually sexually assaulted but it is mentioned as a possibility.

I don't watch Supergirl so all I know about Karamel comes from watching 3x17, a quick google search, and what I see on my tumblr dashboard - and none of it was particularly complimentary. The way Mon El/Tommy is portrayed in this fic kind of reflects that, so without wishing to offend any Karamel shippers, if you don't wanna see me trash Mon El a little bit... maybe steer clear? I tried to avoid focusing on Karamel over much here, but whenever they do show up, Mon El isn't really shown in a positive light. Sorry!

Just for context: Back in the real world, Barry and Iris aren't dating in this.

And yes that is ABSOLUTELY a HSM2 reference in the title I'M NOT SORRY

“Follow the script,” Music Meister had said.

Simple as that. All they had to do was follow the script of this messed up musical, click their heels and boom, it’d all be over. Back in the real world where they were supposed to be. Aside from being a little random, Barry supposed it wasn’t an unfair deal. Follow the script. Well, he’d have been perfectly happy to - but it sure would have been nice to have been given a copy.

They’d been hurled straight into the thick of things, left to tread water and try to figure out what the hell the plot was supposed to be all on their own. Barry, for one, did not feel equipped to deal with this hot mess of a situation. He’d just been forced to endure a chirpy musical number - and god damn, that song was going to be stuck his head for a week - and then that was it; Music Meister had left him and Kara to deal with this on their own. Barry buried his face in his hands. The only saving grace of this whole situation was at least they weren’t being forced to sing constantly instead of speaking. He thought he’d start banging his head against the wall if this whole world had to be sung-through.

“What the hell do we do now?” he demanded.

“It’s simple,” Kara said, sounding far more self-assured than Barry felt. “All we have to do is follow the script.”

“We don’t have a script! We don’t have a clue what’s going on here!” Barry ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t have time for this! I can’t be here, I should be back at the lab trying to fix this mess. I still have to figure out how to save Iris from Savitar, I have at least six future events that I have to counteract within the next two months, Wally’s still deeply emotionally traumatised from being trapped in the speed force - ”

“Barry!” Kara said sharply. “Breathe.”

Stopping, Barry tried to follow her advice. It didn’t help much, but at least it shut him up for a second. Turning to him, Kara grabbed hold of his shoulders.

“Okay, listen. None of this is happening in real time. For all we know, we could wake up and still be at the exact moment we were in when we were knocked unconscious.”

Barry shook his head. “No, because J’onn and Mon-El brought you to us in a coma shortly after you were knocked out. Time’s still passing out there, it’s just…” He rubbed his forehead. “Hopefully it’s passing a little slower than it is for us right now.”

“Everything is going to be fine,” Kara said reassuringly. “All we have to do is figure out what we’re doing here and then we can fix it. And hopefully avoid too many musical numbers on the way.” She smiled. “Why don’t you step outside for a minute? Get some air.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I…” Taking a deep breath, Kara said, “I’m going to do some investigating. See if I can figure out our plotline. I’m also going to try to find Mon-El - or whatever the hell he’s calling himself in this universe. He has some explaining to do. Hopefully I’ll find the restraint not to punch him in the face.” She patted Barry on the arm. “Take five. When you’re feeling better, come find me. We’ll figure this out together.”

“Right,” Barry said. “Okay. I’ll...get some air.”

Outside the cool night air was bracing, making the hairs on his arms stand on end. Breathing in hurt his lungs a little, but it definitely helped to clear his head. Barry stood in the back alley behind Cutter’s club, watching his breath fog the air and trying to soothe the uncomfortable knot in his stomach. Though he hated to admit it, Kara was right; there was little use in panicking. What they had to focus on was getting out of this situation, figuring out their roles and sticking to them.

God, it was galling to be gallivanting around some ridiculous imaginary universe, making a huge song and dance of things when he should have been focusing on patching things up with Iris. She was already mad at him for spending so little time with her because he was focusing so intently on keeping her alive; she thought they should be seeing each other as much as possible because ‘we don’t know how long we’ll have’, which Barry thought was morbid and horrible, and he didn’t want -

A horribly familiar click made him freeze mid mental tangent. His heart jolted in his chest, then set off racing at a frantic pace.

“All right, hands where I can see ‘em,” said a low voice. “No funny business.”

Something hard jabbed him in the small of his back. Flinching, Barry raised his hands in the air. Suddenly he was painfully aware of Music Meister’s warning that if they died here, they’d die for real. This had to be part of the script, but what the hell was he supposed to do? Spin around and start singing about how much he wished he wasn’t about to get shot? Puke in the street? The second option seemed far more likely. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, Barry settled for staying as still as possible and not breathing more than was strictly necessary.

“Turn around,” the man ordered. “Slowly. Keep your hands in the air.”

With a growing sense of nausea, Barry turned around. He kept his hands up, fighting the urge to run - without his speed he didn’t have a hope in hell of getting away, all he could do was hope that this was part of the story and he was playing his role correctly. Breathing shallowly, Barry lifted his gaze and came face to face with Leonard Snart.

He almost yelled Snart’s name before he remembered that this wasn’t the Leonard Snart he knew; it was some stranger with a pseudonym who might break out into song at any moment. The split second of relief he’d felt dissipated instantly. Warily, Barry looked Snart in the face. He was wearing a black suit, a dark blue tie and had a black mobster hat on, tilted at a rakish angle. It cast a shadow across his face. In spite of that, Barry could see him smirking.

“All right, now give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow you sky high,” Snart said.

Barry gawped at him, lost for words.

A beat passed. Then two. Barry was sweating, his mouth hanging stupidly open. His heart squeezed convulsively, his raised hands shaking.

Snart burst out laughing.

Barry stared. He’d never seen Snart laugh before, not like this. Oh, he’d seen plenty of sly smirks, the odd bark of amusement, but never a real, full-blown laughing fit. Taken aback, he frowned. Snart was tucking his gun away into his jacket pocket, still grinning.

“Should’ve seen your face,” he chuckled. “You really gotta work on your poker face, sweetheart. Thought you were having an aneurysm.”

“I - I don’t - ” stammered Barry.

“Relax,” Snart said. “Just a little joke. Mob humour. You get used to it eventually.” Folding his arms, he leaned against the wall. Tilted his head back so that the trilby cast a more intense shadow over his face. Apparently, Leonard Snart was a dramatic son of a bitch in every version of reality. “So. What’ve you got for me?”

Barry blinked. Oh, God. Was he Snart’s lackey? Some kind of drug runner, or arms dealer, or god knows what else? Fucking Music Meister could have given him some kind of clue! He didn’t even know what Snart’s name was in this universe, and yet apparently they knew each other well enough that it was perfectly socially acceptable for Snart to hold a gun to his head and call it a joke. His head spun.

Irritably, Snart said, “You do realise I didn’t ask you to join Cutter’s gang for the fun of it? Hate to break it to you, Barry, but you’re not actually here to be a singing sensation, you’re here to dig up information. Now. What have you got?”

He was an informant? Barry wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or relieved. On one hand, he wasn’t dealing in illegal substances, but on the other hand he was selling secrets about a guy who’d threatened to slice his face off earlier without a trace of irony. The sickening sensation in his stomach lessened, but only a little.

“I’m waiting,” Snart said.

“I don’t - I - ”

Sighing, Snart pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Barry winced. Oh, God. He’d screwed up, Snart was going to shoot him, he was going to die in this cold dark alleyway with slicked back hair in the middle of a musical and Kara was probably going to have to sing over his dead body in order to get back to the real world, and he was starting to panic and he thought he might puke on Snart’s stupidly shiny shoes, and all because he hadn’t been able to think of any plausible intel to feed the guy about Malcolm fucking Merlyn or whatever his doppelganger was claiming to be called -

“All right,” Snart said. “Not helpful, I know.” Opening his eyes, he gave Barry a sympathetic look. “Bad day?”

“You have no idea,” Barry said.

“Hm,” Snart said, pushing off the wall. Moving closer, he came right up into Barry’s personal space, looking at him appraisingly. He tilted his head. “How about I try and kiss it better?”

“Wha - ?” Barry said, and then Snart leaned in and kissed him.

Not that Barry had ever devoted much thought to what it would be like to kiss Leonard Snart - all right, maybe he had, a little bit. A lot. Whenever he got bored at work, and sometimes in bed at night when he couldn’t sleep, and okay fine whatever he thought about it a lot - but he’d always imagined the man would kiss the way he talked. Rough, cool, a little bit mean. To his surprise, though, Snart was strangely gentle. Cupping Barry’s face in both hands, he kissed him lightly, as if worried he might break him. Too shocked to do anything, Barry stood for a second before he recovered and started kissing him back.

He could have claimed he was following the script, that he was just letting things run their course like he’d been told. It would have been a lie. Truthfully, Snart was just a good kisser. Barry had always wondered what it would be like to make out with him, and now he wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity to try. Besides, he was having a really bad day. He figured he was owed a little bit of making out to turn things around.

When they parted, Barry was flushed and breathless. Dropping his gaze, he waited for something terrible to happen, like Snart punching him or shooting him or threatening him in some way.

Instead, Snart rubbed his thumb lightly against Barry’s cheek. There was something electric about his touch; it made Barry shiver, but there was no fear in it. Confusion and surprise aplenty, but he felt no desire to pull away. The way Snart cradled his face suggested that, in this universe at least, such interactions between them were commonplace.

“I know I shouldn’t have leapt down your throat like that,” Snart said softly. “You know I hate knowing you’re in there with that bastard Cutter. I’d shoot him right now if I could. Fucking asshole..” He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to jump down your throat.”

“That’s okay,” Barry said dazedly. Did Leonard Snart just apologise? Sure, he never actually said the S word, but hearing any kind of remorse coming from Captain Cold’s mouth was astonishing.

Snart pressed his forehead against Barry’s. The contact pushed his hat back a little, the brim of it brushing Barry’s skin. “You know if I could have anyone else take your place, I would,” he said in a low voice. “Any one of my guys could shoot a moving target from thirty paces. Unfortunately, none of them can sing. Cutter only had two vacancies, both for performers. Sometimes you’ve gotta strike while the iron’s hot…”

“I know,” Barry said, touched by Snart’s concern for him. “Don’t worry about it. I...you know I’ll do anything I can to help.”

“Still. I’d rather have you as far from the action as possible.” Straightening his collar, Snart leaned back to admire him. “Still. Here you are. My mole. We’ll make a mobster of you yet.” He brushed a speck of lint off Barry’s jacket. “C’mon. It’s bad form, discussing business in the street. Let’s go home.”

Barry felt like he’d just been struck over the head with something incredibly heavy. “H-home?”

Snart arched an eyebrow at him. From underneath the hat, it had an incredible effect; it looked at least twice as scathing as usual. “You know, that place where we both live…”

The urge to yell ‘we live together?!’ was astonishing. Barry didn’t know how he managed to restrain himself. The kiss had given him a somewhat blatant hint that he and Snart were involved somehow in this version of reality - but living together? He put a hand to his head.

“I’m freezing my ass off,” Snart said, “and whilst you may still have the luxury of anonymity, my face is a little recognisable. It’s risky enough coming to pick you up, without dawdling in the alleyway directly behind Cutter’s club. Let’s move.”

“Hold on,” Barry blurted out.

“What now?”

“I have to tell Kara I’m leaving.”

“Kara? The skirt who sings with you at the club?” Snart looked exasperated. “I keep telling you Barry, you’re an informant. You can’t make friends with the staff; you’re supposed to rat on them.”

“I know,” bluffed Barry, “but I can’t not talk to people, that’d look suspicious. I have to be seen as one of them, remember? Or else nobody’s going to tell me anything.” He gave Snart a pleading look. “Just let me talk to her. Five minutes, just to let her know I’m going home.”

“Fine,” Snart said disapprovingly. “But I’m not waiting around. You have ten seconds.”

“Thank you,” Barry said, relieved. “I’ll be super fast, okay? Ten seconds tops.”

He darted back into the building. Ten seconds sure didn’t stretch far when you no longer had super speed. Being normal got old really fast.

It took him a few minutes to find Kara - stressful, mildly panicky minutes, because he doubted that Leonard Snart was a patient man in any universe and he wouldn’t put it past him to ditch him, and then there was the small issue that Barry had no idea where they lived - but he found her eventually, talking to Not-Cisco. Bizarrely, Not-Cisco had a ponytail, which also seemed to be synonymous with every single existing multiverse where Barry had ever met an alternate Cisco. Apparently trippy musical dream worlds were no exception to the ponytail rule.

Grabbing Kara’s gloved hand - and arm, god, how far up did gloves go in this time period? He still hadn’t figured out when this was supposed to be, either. Twenties, thirties, forties? It was all kind of ambiguous, all he knew was that Snart was wearing a very sexy hat - Barry said urgently, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

Kara gracefully excused herself from the conversation with Not-Cisco, and together they hurried off into a corner. “Barry, I thought I told you to calm down. This is not calm!”

“This is an emergency,” Barry said. “In this universe, hallucination, whatever the hell this is - I think I’m dating Leonard Snart!”

“I have no idea who that is,” said Kara.

“He’s my nemesis!” Barry said dramatically. Then, “Well, was. Then we were kind of rivals, and then we had this truce thing going on, and I helped him to save his sister’s life and murder his father, and he broke into my house and drank cocoa, and then he went off on an adventure in a time ship and got himself blown up saving the rest of his team, and then he was a ghost in the speed force - and now he’s a gangster and he has this hat on, and we were just making out in an alleyway.”

“This is giving me a headache,” said Kara.

“Okay, basically, he’s evil, but not really, and he’s also dead, but we’re together and I think I live with him. He’s a gangster! And he’s getting me to spy on Cutter and that’s why I’m working here.”

“Great!” Kara said. “This is good, we can use this. The more we know about this whole situation, the better. This is all part of your storyline. Do I work for him as well?”

“No, I don’t think so, he doesn’t approve of our friendship,” Barry said, “but Kara, he kissed me! What do I do?”

“Go along with it,” Kara said. “You heard what Music Meister said. Follow the script, no matter what happens.”

Alarmed, Barry said, “But what if he wants to…” He lowered his voice. “ Do it? ”

“You’re an adult, Barry. Make your own decisions. Do what feels right in the moment. You probably won’t have to ‘do it’ anyway. Musicals aren’t usually R-rated.”

“And what exactly are you going to be doing while I’m playing happy families with Leonard Snart?”

Kara folded her arms. “I...am going to figure some things out. Turns out that Mon-El is Cutter’s son in this world, and I think we’re together, but we have to keep it a secret because no way would Cutter want the heir to his criminal empire to date a cabaret performer.” She managed a smile. “I already figured out the resolution. I’m going to decide that I deserve better than a lying, manipulative toe-rag who’s too scared to ‘fess up to his daddy, and then I’m going to dance off into the sunset and maybe date that gorgeous woman at table nine who looks a whole lot like Lena Luthor.” She coughed, and rubbed the back of her neck. “I mean, if I can figure out how to swing it.”

“That...doesn’t sound like the script,” Barry said. “This whole thing is supposed to teach us a lesson, and I don’t think dumping Mon-El is exactly what Music Meister had in mind.”

“Too bad,” Kara said grimly. “I write my own scripts. I decide where the story goes from here. Just like you and Snart. Only you get to decide how it plays out, Barry.” She looked him in the eyes. “I’m not going to sacrifice my principles just to get out of here. I’m nobody’s puppet. I’ll do what I have to do, but Mon-El doesn’t deserve my forgiveness. I won’t pretend to give it to him just to satisfy some arrogant alien who thinks he can pull on my strings.”

“...Wow,” Barry said. “That was one hell of a speech.”

“Thanks,” said Kara. “I’m thinking I might make a musical number out of it. Cutter still wants us to perform that original song later. I have a few lines already worked out.”

“Well hold that thought,” said Barry, “because this version of Snart is just as trigger-happy as the real one and he might actually shoot me if I don’t hurry up, but I would pay good money to hear that song.” He gave Kara a quick hug. “Wish me luck.”

“Break a leg!”

“Thanks,” Barry said, and rushed off outside to find Snart.

~*~

He half expected the man to already have cleared off, but Snart was waiting for him, smoking a cigarette and holding a big black umbrella over his head. The tip glowed cherry red in the darkness. Fine drizzle came down overhead. As soon as he spotted Barry, Snart blew out one last cloud of smoke - effortlessly cool, if a little melodramatic - then flicked away the stub of his cigarette and ground it underneath the sole of one shiny shoe. He gave Barry a look.

“Ready to go?”

“Absolutely,” said Barry, hoping he looked more certain than he felt.

Snart held out his arm. Stomach filled with butterflies, Barry took it.

All you have to do is follow the script, he reminded himself.

Snart held the umbrella over their heads, and they started walking.

~*~

Considering that Snart was the leader of his very own criminal gang, purportedly the most powerful in the city, his house was astonishingly normal. It took considerable effort for Barry not to gawp as Snart let them in. He’d kind of anticipated some dank, moderately evil lair, complete with torture devices hanging from the ceiling and bloodstains on the carpet. Instead, he was faced with typically preppy forties decor, all atrociously awful. Pastel colours, everything muted. It had to be a bitch to keep clean. There was floral print wallpaper in the hallway, a rotary phone resting on a gleaming table. And so much lace. Barry could never have anticipated that Leonard Snart would ever consent to share house-room with one doily, let alone a whole bunch of them, but here he was. There were even net curtains, he had noted when they were letting themselves in. It was fussy old lady kind of decor. Barry could only assume that when Music Meister set this scenario up, he had put hypothetical forties-era Barry in charge of the decorating. None of it seemed at all Snart’s style. In his sharp black suit, Snart looked completely at odds with the calm exterior of their home. Still, Barry supposed, that was probably the point. Deep cover, and all. This did not look at all like a gangster’s place of residence.

Helping Barry out of his coat, Snart hung both of their coats up on the rack, then conscientiously stowed his gun in a little drawer in the hallway table. Pulling the tablecloth back into place to hide the drawer, he even shook off the umbrella over the doorstep before putting it into the umbrella stand. Seeing Leonard Snart being so domestic made Barry feel all kinds of weird.

They moved into the kitchen, then, and Snart started rolling up his sleeves. Idly, Barry thought that he should probably start thinking of him as ‘Leonard’. They lived together, after all; they were definitely on first name terms. Of course, there was no guaranteeing that ‘Leonard’ was his name at all, in this universe. It would be nice to know.

“Now,” Leonard said. “Dinner.”

Barry, who had just sat down in one of the wooden chairs at the table, leapt up with some alarm. Of course. In this scenario, he was Snart’s trophy husband, for want of a better term. This was the forties, or thereabouts. He was going to be expected to do the cooking. He seriously hoped Snart wouldn’t expect something fancy. Barry didn’t even know what kind of ingredients they might be keeping in that painfully retro-looking refrigerator - it was yellow , for crying out loud - but he could only pray that it would be something easy to cook. Eggs, maybe. Then he could salvage the resulting mess by singing about it - currently it was a toss-up between How Do You Like Your Eggs In The Morning? or Food, Glorious Food, but he still wasn’t sure how the whole musical thing worked and the last thing he wanted was for Snart - Leonard - to have him sectioned for inappropriately bursting into song.

Leonard frowned at him. “What are you doing?”

“Um...dinner?”

“Oh, no,” said Leonard. “I don’t think so. You’ve been playing the dancing monkey for Cutter all day long, on my request. Don’t think I’m going to take that for granted. Sit back and relax. Dinner’s on me.”

Bewildered, Barry sat back and watched him get to work. Leonard moved around the kitchen with easy grace, without needed to consult a recipe book. Marvelling at his confidence, Barry was quite happy to just observe, and Leonard didn’t break the quiet. Aside from humming to himself every now and then, he just lost himself in his work. For the first time, Barry saw the tension leave him, that perpetual crease between his eyebrows finally easing. It made him feel strangely warm inside.

The silence carried on; neither felt the need to break it. It was a comfortable quiet, the kind shared between people who know each other well enough to be happy just spending time together, without needing to speak. In a way it was strange that Barry shared the sentiment; he shouldn’t feel so comfortable with Leonard Snart, of all people. But the man had dropped his barriers unabashedly. He was humming. Barry smiled in spite of himself, watching Leonard sprinkle something over the food.

A knock on the front door disrupted the quiet. Abruptly, Leonard stopped humming; he shrugged on his cold exterior like a jacket. The change in him was palpable, from expression to bearing.

Warming to his role of trophy husband, Barry rose from his seat in preparation to answer the door, but Leonard held a hand up. Barry paused halfway out of his chair.

Turning down the heat on the stove to a steady simmer, Leonard opened the cupboard directly above the stove and grabbed a gun which lay on the bottom shelf, nestled between two boxes of cereal. Perfectly calmly, Leonard turned and offered him the gun, grip first.

Appalled, Barry shook his head and backed away, the chair legs scraping on the tiles. They kept a gun in their kitchen cupboard? His ass hit the worktop, and he pressed himself up against it.

Shaking his head fondly, Leonard checked the gun, flicked the safety off and motioned for Barry to sit. Then he headed off into the hallway.

Weakly, Barry sank back into his seat. He gripped the edge of the table with both hands, feeling the wood dig into his palms. Leonard didn’t seem overly concerned, but he was a mob boss. He could probably shoot someone from across a crowded room without even looking at them twice.

The front door opened. Barry tensed. Low voices spilled in from the hallway, but he couldn’t make out any specific words, just a low rumble. None of it sounded hostile, but that didn’t stop Barry’s heart from thumping. He swallowed. Ridiculously, his stomach rumbled. Unbelievable, that he could be hungry at a time like this - but in his defence, whatever Leonard was cooking smelled incredible.

With a gentle creak, the kitchen door swung open. Barry’s breath hitched as Leonard walked into the room...closely followed by Mick Rory, also wearing a suit.

Barry let out the breath he’d been holding in an audible rush.

“Do try to remember to breathe, Bartholomew,” Leonard said amusedly. “It’s an essential bodily function.” Then he went back to stirring dinner. “Mick here has been gathering some information on my request. Investigating your little blond friend, Kara.”

“What?” Barry said indignantly. “Why? Kara - she’s just some girl who works at the club, she’s not involved in any of this.”

“She works for Cutter,” Leonard pointed out.

“I work for Cutter!”

“On my orders,” Leonard reminded him. “Little Miss Danvers ain’t on my payroll. Besides, it always pays to have more information on one’s associates. Mick here learned a few interesting tidbits - turns out your little friend is shacking up with Cutter’s kid.” He tilted his head. “Care to elaborate, Mick? I’m sure Barry’s dying to know.”

“Yes, boss,” Mick said. He raised his voice. “The skirt’s involved with Cutter Junior alright. Saw ‘em getting cosy round the back of the bar. Didn’t end well. Skirt’s a little spitfire. Tore him to shreds, from what I could tell.”

“Don’t call her that,” Barry said.

“What?”

“‘Skirt’,” Barry said. “It’s rude. Her name’s Kara.”

Ordinarily he’d never have dared to contradict Mick Rory in any situation, but Leonard still had his gun lying within arm’s reach on the kitchen worktop, and as trophy husband Barry reckoned he was allowed a fair bit of leeway when it came to bossing around the gang members.

Still, for a moment the stern look on Mick’s face made him think he’d overstepped - then Mick dipped his head in acquiescence.

“Yes, boss,” he grumbled.

Barry almost fell out of his chair. Boss?! For a moment he thought Mick might be making fun of him, but after scrutinising the man’s expression, he couldn’t find a trace of amusement in it. A little dizzily, Barry tried to disguise his astonishment. Mick Rory was calling him ‘Boss’? The whole situation was just too weird.

“We appreciate the heads up,” said Leonard. “Barry, it mightn’t be a bad idea for you to steer clear of Miss Danvers from now on. She’s fraternising with the enemy. On the other hand… if Tommy boy happens to put his foot in it and she fancies a little sweet revenge, feel free to recruit her to the cause. Hell hath no fury, etcetera etcetera.” He paused thoughtfully. “I bet she has some interesting information she could pass along...hm. I’ll think on it.”

“We done?” Mick asked, putting his hat back on. Barry watched interestedly, wondering where he could get one of those for himself. They were cute, in a retro sort of way.

“Yeah, we’re done. Unless you’d care to stay for dinner?” Leonard asked, stirring the stew.

“Not tonight,” Mick said. “Haircut’s at home keepin’ our bed warm. Hate to keep him waiting.”

“Hm, yes, do say hello to Raymond for me, won’t you? Those improvements he made to our firearms were...inspired. Excellent work. If he ever gets tired of working at the factory, feels like moving up a little in the ranks...I could use a man of his talents. It’s always nice to have better weapons.”

“Wait, Raymond?” Barry interrupted. “As in, Ray Palmer?”

They both turned to look at him curiously. Mick’s frown suggested that Barry had just said something painfully obvious.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Barry said, “I mean, obviously. Of course it’s Ray Palmer. The only Raymond we know of, a very good friend of mine, who I know super well and see all the time.” He smiled weakly.

“Ignore him,” Leonard said dismissively. “Working for Cutter has rotted his brain. You can go, Mick. Meet me tomorrow, usual time and place. We’ve got business to attend to.”

Mick inclined his head. “Snart,” he said. Then, after a moment’s pause, he nodded at Barry too. “Allen.”

Then he left, leaving Barry to ruminate and what he’d just learnt, and try not to explode at the concept of being in charge of Mick Rory, actual villain. It occurred to Barry that he could probably tell Mick to shoot someone just because he felt like it, and Mick would probably do it. Not that he intended to give such an order, but it still seemed like an alarming amount of power to just hand over like that.

“You’re acting very oddly,” Leonard said conversationally.

“Don’t I always?”

“...True. But tonight you seem to be making a special effort. What’s the occasion?”

Barry shrugged. “Maybe it’s the stress. You know, having to perform for Cutter, listen to him threaten to cut my face off just for the crime of a bad performance...I can’t even imagine what he’d do if he found out I was spying on him for a rival gang, you know? It’s making me a little tense.”

“I’m sure we can fix that,” said Leonard. Dipping a spoon into the pot, he scooped up some of the broth, then crossed the room, one hand cupped underneath the spoon to keep it from dripping onto the floor. He held it out to Barry. “Try this.”

Barry blew on it before obediently taking the spoon into his mouth. It was a little too hot for a second, but then the flavours kicked in and his eyes widened.

“It tastes amazing!”

“Hm,” said Leonard, critically eyeing the spoon. He tasted it. “You’re right. But it needs more salt.” He turned back to the stove and added another pinch of salt to the pot.

Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I know this isn’t easy for you. Undercover work isn’t really your thing; none of this is. But I promise you, I would never put you in any danger if I didn’t think you were more than capable of handling yourself.

“You’re the only one who was able to get close to Cutter, that’s true. It’s why I sent you in there in the first place. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have plenty of other guys in there on a far lower level, keeping an eye on you. If I thought even for a second that you were in any real danger, my guys could get you out of there in thirty seconds flat. Nothing is going to happen to you, Barry. I promise you. Your safety is paramount. Always has been.”

Surprised by the intensity of his remarks, Barry just sat back and watched him. After a moment, Leonard turned around.

“Everything I do is for you,” he said gently. “I know this isn’t your world, it’s all still new to you. Hell, it’s not exactly how I pictured my life turning out either. I got in deep at a young age, but I could still get out. If I had any other method of guaranteeing your safety, I’d leave all this behind in a heartbeat. Take you someplace safe and start afresh. But guys like us don’t get those kind of chances. Right now, my reputation protects us. Nobody’s going to give us any trouble, knowing who I am and what I do. If we gave all this up and tried to live normal lives, two men living together in a normal domestic street, I couldn’t give you the same guarantee.

“Ever since I met you in that crummy club you were working in, all I’ve ever wanted is to keep you safe. And I will. But to do that I need allies, and I need information, and I need Cutter to crumble and stop causing unnecessary opposition. And that’s where you come in. We’re going to take him down from the inside out, you and I.”

Touched, Barry felt himself soften at Leonard’s words. The man was a criminal and a mob boss, and all because his power was the key to keeping them both from being persecuted. Sometimes, Barry realised, he really should be more appreciative that he was born in a time and place where the worst consequences for being caught with a man might be some mild embarrassment or the odd dirty look being thrown his way.

“Surely there has to be another way,” he said quietly.

“Maybe. If we’d both met a nice woman and settled down, sure, things could’ve been different. But instead…” Leonard shrugged. “I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t trade you for the world. If shooting a few people every now and then is the price I have to pay to have you...doesn’t seem like such a bad exchange. Besides, what other job could I do where I get to wear this fancy suit?” He smirked.

Troubled, Barry tried to smile back, but he doubted it was convincing. Suddenly the whole mobster thing wasn’t as fun as it had been a few minutes ago, when he was bossing Mick Rory about.

Seeing his concern, Leonard offered him the spoon again. “Have another taste?”

Barry did. “It’s good,” he said.

“...But?”

Barry hesitated. He hated to be an asshole, but all this talk of prejudice and fear had kind of put him off dinner.

Luckily, Leonard seemed to read his mind. “Lost your appetite, huh?”

Sheepishly, Barry smiled.

“It’s fine,” said Leonard, switching off the stove. “We can eat later. Right now, how about we take a little stress relief?”

“Stress relief?”

Crossing the room, Leonard leaned over the table, resting his arms on the tabletop. He leaned in close, so near that Barry could feel cool breath on his cheek and smell the sharp tang of his cologne.

“Mm,” Leonard said in a low voice. “Stress relief.”

Barry stiffened.

Cautiously, Leonard shifted back a little. Barry tried to calm himself, to make himself loosen back up, but he couldn’t decide whether this was part of the script, whether he should play along, how to respond to Leonard’s advances...if he fucked anything like the way he kissed, sex with him would be incredible. But he wasn’t sure, didn’t know how he was supposed to react or if he was screwing things up with his reticence. Breathing shallowly, he stared at the table, watching the grain blur out of focus before his eyes.

Cool fingers touched his cheek, slipped under his chin, lifting it upwards. Flushing, Barry looked into Leonard’s eyes. There was no judgement in his gaze, only concern.

“It’s all right,” Leonard said softly. “No one knows about us, Barry. We’re safe here, remember? You don’t have to be scared of taking what you want.”

“I - I don’t - ”

“We’ve talked about this,” said Leonard, cupping his cheek. “You don’t have to be afraid, Barry. Not here.” He tilted his head. “You’re not still worried about…” He glanced upwards. “The old man in the sky?”

He was supposed to be religious in this scenario? Well, Barry supposed that made sense. It was the forties here, after all - or something similar. But he’d never had much faith in a god, unless you counted Savitar - hadn’t had much cause to; everything that had happened to him over the past few years, and he’d never even gotten so much as a hint of divine intervention. He wasn’t sure he could adequately feign being a believer. Instead, he shook his head.

“It’s like I keep telling you,” said Leonard, leaning in to kiss him lightly on the mouth. “If we weren’t supposed to do this...why would He make it feel so good?”

Barry had no answer for that, and he didn’t think Leonard expected one. Eagerly, he pressed forwards into the kiss, both to get Leonard to stop asking awkward questions, and because he wanted that mouth on his, kissing all the doubts out of his head.

The angle was awkward with them both leaning over the table; after a minute or so of struggling to work with the position, Barry got to his feet and started to move round to Leonard’s side - but a gentle hand on his chest gave him pause.

“Why don’t we take this upstairs?” Leonard suggested.

Nervously, Barry nodded.

Leonard took his hand and led him slowly upstairs, taking them one step at a time. His grasp was gentle, like at any second he expected Barry to pull away and flee. Barry didn’t plan to. His skin felt painfully sensitive, even the feeling of his clothes brushing against him felt strangely sensual. The places where Leonard’s skin touched his were tingling. At one point Barry stumbled a little in his uncertainty, and Leonard quickly put a hand on the small of his back to steady him. That one small touch made Barry’s whole body ache, desperate for more.

That was when he decided he didn’t care whether or not this was in the script, if he was supposed to be having sex with the man or not. Like Kara said, they could write their own stories from now on - and it wasn’t like he’d ever have had the chance to sleep with Leonard Snart back in the real world.

A little breathlessly, Barry took the last few steps at a jog and pulled Leonard eagerly towards him, initiating a kiss for the first time. He licked into Leonard’s mouth, deep and dirty, trying to convey that he was casting his anxiety aside. Appreciatively, Leonard made a low sound in the back of his throat and steered him down the hallway and into their bedroom.

It was pleasant, all muted colours; dusky pinks and deep purples, but Barry didn’t have time to focus on the decor. Leonard closed the door behind them, and then went to close the curtains. He didn’t switch the lights on. Part of Barry mourned, wanting to see his face, but he could see the value of caution. Besides, it was a little easier now that things were so dimly lit. Until his eyes adjusted, all he could see was a vague silhouette in the darkness.

Leonard took a step towards him, questioning, and Barry shifted closer in response. They shared another kiss, growing in urgency, and then Leonard started to unfasten Barry’s jacket. He moved slowly, taking care with each button before he slipped the jacket off Barry’s shoulders and cast it onto the bed. Then he pulled Barry’s sweater vest over his head and abandoned that too, just as Barry reached for Leonard’s clothes with nervous fingers.

He wasn’t sure how he would be received, but the other man just paused before lowering his arms to give Barry easier access. His hands a little clumsy, Barry fumbled with his tie, picking at the knot. Then he unfastened the buttons of his shirt, slowly exposing Leonard’s chest.

For a moment they paused, the only sound being their ragged breathing. Barry ran his hands lightly up and down Leonard’s sides, exploring his body. Then his finger snagged in a strange dip, and he paused.

For a moment, he brushed lightly against the imperfection, exploring, tracing it with the pad of his thumb. A deep concave in the skin, with ragged but healed-over edges. The tissue there felt rough, like a callus. An old scar, evidently. Leonard didn’t react as he explored, allowing Barry to investigate for himself. After a moment or so, he moved on.

There were a few other marks like that on Leonard’s body, in contrast to his own smooth skin; a ropey scar with a strange twist in it; a few symmetrical round holes where the skin was pitted - he had a nasty suspicion they were cigarette burns - and various other imperfections. They didn’t trouble him. As far as he was concerned, they were just stories - stories which, in this universe, he probably should have known by heart. Still, his curiosity didn’t seem to bother Leonard overmuch. He stood waiting for Barry to take his inventory, and when he was done and lowered his inquisitive hands, Leonard held them and kissed him again, just as gentle as before.

Then he moved on to removing the rest of Barry’s clothes with methodical precision. Tie first, wrapping it around his hand and then neatly placing it on the bed. Then his shirt. It was strange; with any other lover, taking off the clothes went one of two ways; tearing them off impatiently, or removing them slowly, to tease. This didn’t feel like any of those things. In a way it was like a process, like Barry was a skittish horse Leonard was trying to soothe. Leonard took of his own clothes in a similar fashion, slow and careful. They stood facing each other; Barry’s eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness and he could make out the outline of Leonard’s body, the glint of his eyes in the darkness.

His nervousness fell away like another layer of clothing falling to the ground. Something fluttered in his belly, but it was a pleasant feeling. An excitable one. He was starting to get hard now, his arousal building in response to the way Leonard’s eyes were wandering hungrily over his body. Evidently he liked what he saw. Neither of them made any attempt to touch; instead they explored with their eyes. Barry’s gaze lingered over Leonard’s nipples, his stomach, the smooth expanse of his chest...then dropped almost shyly to his cock. Apparently Leonard was far further along in his arousal than Barry was, and the size of him was… a little daunting.

It occurred to Barry then that he didn’t know if they were going to stick to hands and mouths or take things all the way, and that if they did take things all the way, he had no idea what people in this era did in terms of protection or lubricant. Without his powers, Barry was going to be a little less durable anyway, but without proper lube…

He tried to keep his expression blank, but either he failed spectacularly, or Leonard knew him well enough to be able to read him in spite of it. Moving forwards, he touched Barry’s cheek again.

“All right?”

Barry nodded. “Yeah, I’m...I’m fine.”

“Good,” said Leonard, and then he gave a small smirk. He pushed lightly against Barry’s chest. “On the bed.”

Barry sat down on the bed, creasing all of their clothes. Then he shuffled backwards until he was sat with his back up against the headboard.

Leonard moved forwards, cocking his head. Lightning fast, he grabbed Barry’s ankles and yanked, pulling him off balance. Barry yelped in shock as he was pulled downwards, landing flat on his back with his head resting on the pillows and Leonard’s hands on his legs. With a small smirk, Leonard bent Barry’s legs towards his chest. Then he started kissing his left ankle, moving upwards towards the knee. He went slowly, lightly, making Barry shiver. When his mouth was just above the left knee, he switched to the right side, beginning again at the ankle and moving upwards.

Barry was shaking like a leaf by the time Leonard crawled onto the bed and started kissing his mouth again. Kneeling between Barry’s legs, he kissed him until they were both breathless and Barry had forgotten his nerves, had forgotten that the man he was in bed with was in the image of his enemy. All he knew was that he wanted this to continue. Anything Leonard Snart wanted to give him, he would take with both hands.

There was a brief lull in the proceedings whilst Leonard reached into the drawer of their bedside table, and Barry started stroking himself in the meantime, too desperate to be shy any more. After a moment, Leonard produced a condom and a small bottle of olive oil - who knew they had condoms in this musical dreamworld? - and started slicking up his fingers. Messy, Barry thought, but without commercially available lubricant, he’d take what he could get.

“Ready?” Leonard asked.

“Yes,” said Barry. “ Please. ”

One of Leonard’s fingers pressed up against Barry’s hole, just lightly. Closing his eyes, Barry breathed out.

“Relax,” Leonard said softly.

“Yes, boss,” said Barry, grinning.

“I told you,” Leonard said, leaning in to kiss him. “It’s ‘boss’ for everyone else. For you, ‘Len’ is fine.”

Then he went back to rubbing up against Barry’s hole, a gentle but insistent pressure. It had been a good while since Barry had taken any fingers other than his own, and while it felt fucking good to have Leonard - Len - touching him like that, confident but careful, it was a little strange to have someone else’s fingers there after so long.

Barry took another deep breath and tilted his head up, pushing himself up on one elbow to try and get closer to Len’s face. Leaning down, Len kissed him, and as he did so Barry relaxed a little more and Len’s finger slipped inside him with ease, right up to the knuckle.

With a sharp intake of breath, Len broke the kiss and looked down at where his finger was pressed inside. He gave it an experimental curl, making Barry gasp quietly.

Then, Len looked back up at him and said, “Good boy.”

“ Oh ,” Barry said. “Oh my - ” He choked off ‘god’ at the last possible second.

“There we go,” Len said, pleased. “That’s my boy.” He kissed Barry’s forehead. “Good?”

“Great,” Barry managed. “Can you - another?”

Len responded by pressing in another finger. It was a shock at first, the sudden stretch of it - not painful, but he definitely knew about it. Perhaps he tensed, or made a sound, because Len slowed down, scissoring his fingers but with more care, taking things slowly again. Teasing, though he probably didn’t mean it that way. With a choked-off moan, Barry let his head fall back against the pillow. He moved his fist to cover his mouth and bit down on the back of his hand to keep from crying out. He didn’t know whether their neighbours were clued into their situation, whether making noise would be dangerous. That would be one hell of a plot-twist, if the musical ended with the two of them being torn apart by cops midway through sex and then thrown in prison - separately - and forced to do a rendition of ‘Jailhouse Rock’, or something.

Then Len’s fingers grazed his prostate and Barry really was fighting not to make any sound. He stuttered, let out a low whine, and then Leonard surged forwards to kiss him and the noises were lost into his mouth. Gasping, Barry pulled away, bit down on Len’s neck instead and struggled to keep quiet. Not that he’d ever been good at that; most of Barry’s previous partners had complained about his complete failure to shut the hell up during sex.

“Fuck,” Len whispered. “Wish I could hear you. Wish it didn’t matter who heard us.” He curled his fingers again, and white-hot pleasure burst through Barry’s body, making his toes curl. “One day I’ll take you somewhere far away. In the mountains, or some cabin in the forest. Somewhere isolated enough that you can make as much noise as you want, how’s that sound?”

“Please,” Barry whined, fighting to keep his voice low. “Fuck me, please - ”

“Shh,” Len warned him. “Unless you want me to cover your mouth like last time. Be good for me.”

Wrongly or rightly, the idea of Len covering his mouth to force him to be quiet made tremors shoot through Barry’s body. He closed his eyes, bit down hard on his lip to try and make himself shut up so Len would fuck him, to prove that he could behave -

A third finger pushed inside him; there was a little resistance at first and then Barry choked as it pushed past that tight ring of muscle and inside him, stretching him out. So good, burning a little bit but in the best kind of way. Like a test, a challenge, Len opening him up to get him ready for his cock, and Barry could only imagine how that would feel, how hot and full he’d be. Normally by this point he’d have been keening, gasping obscenities like a trooper. Instead he clenched his fists in the bedsheets and arched his back and gritted his teeth to keep the noises back.

“Ready?” Len asked. “Or do you need a little more?”

“I’m ready, I’m ready for you, please fuck me - ”

“Shut that foul mouth before I shut it for you,” Len said, but there was no real heat behind it. “Swear you never used to be such a guttermouth. Clearly my guys have been a bad influence on you.” He trailed his mouth down Barry’s jugular, just the whisper of a kiss against his overheated skin. His lips were cool, and Barry twitched in response. “We’re going to have to fix that. Can’t have my boy talking like a street hooker. Ain’t good for business. I’ll have to teach you to behave.”

“ Please, ” Barry whimpered.

With a rumble of approval, Len slipped his fingers out. Before Barry could protest, he was rolling on the condom, pushing Barry’s knees right up against his chest and pressing into him, a steady slide that stretched him wide open, until Len was pressed flush against him, bottoming out with a low grunt.

That sound alone was almost enough to make Barry come undone; he grabbed Len’s shoulders, raked his nails down his back in an urge to express himself, to give some kind of voice to the desperation building inside him. Len was leaning forwards, trapping Barry’s cock between their stomachs. He could feel precome wet against his stomach, leaking already, and the brush of Len’s cool skin against the head made his cock twitch. Aching with need, Barry let out a shaky breath.

“You’re alright,” Len told him, rubbing his thumb against Barry’s cheek.

Barry turned his head and sucked the pad of Len’s thumb into his mouth, twirling his tongue around it, sucking almost frantically. It got the reaction he wanted; Len drew in a sharp breath, his pupils dilating. Barry dragged his teeth lightly against Len’s thumb, then let it slip free of his mouth with a pop. Then he gave Len the most loaded, sultry look he was capable of. A challenge.

Gaze darkening, Len leaned over him, pressing Barry hard into the mattress. Then he started thrusting, all thoughts of gentleness gone out of the window. He fucked Barry almost like he was punishing him, setting a fierce pace that didn’t relent for a second. Barry closed his eyes and gasped and dug his nails into Len’s back so hard that his hands went numb, and he rode it out, trying to meet Len thrust for thrust.

It was so hot, heady, and knowing what was at stake if he couldn’t keep quiet only made Barry harder. Something about the danger of it brought his arousal to a crescendo. It kept building, peaking higher and higher, until his whole body shook and sparked with the feeling. Every thrust brought a rush of pleasure more intense than the one before it; he ached to touch himself but when he tried to get a hand between them, Len growled and pinned his wrist down.

That made Barry’s cock give another desperate throb, and he started rolling his hips disjointedly, ignoring the rhythm they’d been building. He was just blindly chasing the friction, trying so hard to get what he needed.

Len stopped dead and leaned in to whisper in his ear, “Don’t make me pin you to this bed, Barry. Don’t test me.”

“Please, I need to - I’m close - ”

“I decide when you’re close,” Len warned him. “Just like I decide when you can come. All of that is up to me.”

“Len, Lenny, please - ”

“Shh,” Len whispered, and he covered Barry’s mouth with one hand.

That was more than Barry could handle; only his mouth was covered, but suddenly he was fighting for breath, struggling to pull enough air in through his nose. His lungs felt tight. With a low groan, he went boneless against the pillows, only his hips still moving in disjointed thrusts, against his will.

Luckily Len was just as desperate for release as Barry was. He started thrusting properly, picking up the pace. The headboard banged rhymthically against the wall, and Barry closed his eyes and watched fireworks explode behind his eyelids. All he could hear was a strange rushing sound, his own ragged breathing and, very far away, the low sound of Leonard’s cursing. He gave a low groan, and just as he did so, Len slammed forwards and then came, swearing in a monotone, a litany of curse-words right into Barry’s ear. It was unexpected, dirty, and appallingly hypocritical, and Barry held him close as he rode it out, clenching around him to make it better, to wring every bit of his orgasm out of him.

For a moment Len was a dead weight on top of him, panting against Barry’s neck. Then he pulled out with a groan.

The loss made Barry whimper quietly, his hole fluttering in protest as Len removed the condom and tied it off. Then he was moving forwards again; the bed creaked, and then Len’s hand was on Barry’s neglected cock, working him towards his release. His fingers were cool, his grip just the right side of too-tight, and Barry was arching helplessly into Len’s touch when the older man lowered his head and took Barry into his mouth, right down to the base so that the tip of him nudged the back of Len’s throat.

Barry came with a muted cry, gripping the bedsheets so hard that he half expected them to rip. He thought Len would pull off, but he swallowed every drop, kept sucking until Barry had nothing left to give him. Then he licked him clean, tasting him from root to tip before he finally released him, crawled up the bed and collapsed at Barry’s side.

For a while they lay together in satisfied silence, waiting for their breathing to even out. Barry’s heart hammered. It felt a little strange to be so sated after one orgasm; with his speed, it usually took two or three - but he didn’t have his speed here. He was just an ordinary guy, and one incredible orgasm courtesy of Leonard Snart had totally wiped him out.

God. Leonard Snart had just fucked his brains out and then sucked him off afterwards. Giddily, Barry laughed.

“Something funny?” Len asked.

“No,” Barry said, grinning like a fool. “Just happy.” And bewildered. Maybe Music Meister had done him a favour after all; he’d just got to live out one of his greatest fantasies. He’d had sex with Leonard Snart. There had to be a catch; surely he didn’t get something that great for free… but for now he was more than happy to just bask in the afterglow, to appreciate the kind of all-consuming release he hadn’t felt in god knows how long. These days Barry was a little too busy facing off against Savitar to focus on his sex life. Anything more than a rushed, perfunctory release was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

“That’s what I like to see.”

Catching Barry’s face, Len pulled him closer and they kissed, slow and lazy. When they broke apart, it was with their foreheads pressed together. Barry closed his eyes and smiled to himself.

“Just like I told you,” Len said quietly. “Something that feels that good can’t be a bad thing.”

“Guess not...but you could make that same argument for murder. If you were mad enough, anyway.”

Len shrugged. “Gotta admit, in the right circumstances murder feels just as good…” He grinned. “But if I have to get jailed for one of the two...I know which one I’d prefer.”

“Mm,” agreed Barry. “Me too.”

They settled onto their backs, side by side. On an impulse, Barry reached down and twined his fingers with Leonard’s. He half expected a rejection, but was pleasantly surprised when Len squeezed his hand and didn’t let go. Things sure were different in this universe, wherever the hell it might be.

“Thank you,” he said.

Len stirred slightly. “What for?”

“For taking care of me.” Or the other Barry, the one who really belonged in this bed. There were so many questions he wanted answered. Did this place exist before? Had there been another Barry, a real mob husband to Leonard Snart who had been there before Barry arrived? And if so, had he just vanished when Barry arrived? Or had this all just popped up fully-formed, dredged out of their minds like Music Meister said, like a half-forgotten jumble of dreams and subconscious? That would explain a lot. After all, Barry’s conscious brain was very aware that he’d always been attracted to Snart; it stood to reason that his unconscious brain would take the opportunity to make it happen.

So many questions he doubted he’d ever see the answer to. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to be concerned. Right now, he was sleepy, sated, and curled up with a warm body beside him. Barry stifled a yawn. If this was what came of following the script, he had no complaints so far.

“I know this isn’t ideal,” Len said. “But I’ll protect you to my dying breath, Barry Allen. No matter what I have to do.” He kissed the top of Barry’s head. “Now get some sleep. Can’t have you snoozing onstage tomorrow. Gotta earn your keep, and Cutter’s gang isn’t going to destroy itself.”

“Yes, boss,” Barry said sleepily, letting himself start to drift.

“I keep telling you. Call me Leonard.”

~*~

“Okay, so run all of that by me again, but in a way that makes sense,” said Kara.

They were sat in the rehearsal room at the club, where they were supposed to be working on a new song and accompanying dance routine for Cutter. Of course, in reality they were doing nothing of the sort. Every now and then someone would poke their head around the door and glare at them to make sure they were working, until Kara shooed them out, shouting, “I can’t work under these conditions, I am an artist !” No one, apparently, wanted to argue with that.

So on the pretence of creating a musical masterpiece, they were actually comparing notes about what they’d learned of their role in this facade, and also trying to avoid any more musical numbers. Barry loved musicals in ordinary circumstances, but when people suddenly burst into song at random times, it could get a little disconcerting. Over breakfast, for example, Len had taken it upon himself to reassure Barry of his vigilance in terms of keeping him safe during his espionage, and had started singing something that sounded suspiciously like “ Not While I’m Around ,” from Sweeney Todd. Sweet as it had been, seeing Leonard Snart wander doe-eyed around the kitchen earnestly singing “ nothing’s gonna harm you, not while I’m around! ” was something that would stick with him forever, and not necessarily in a good way.

And Music Meister really should have come up with some original songs, because there were some serious copyright issues going on in this place.

“Okay,” Barry said. “So a lot of this is speculation, I’ve kind of had to piece it together from things Leonard has said to me, or the way he acts around me, and I don’t know how much of it is actually right because obviously I can’t start asking him how we met or anything like that - ”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, just - speculate away,” Kara said.

“Right. Okay, so Leonard is a criminal. Just like he is on my earth - was, rather, before he…”

Barry rubbed the back of his neck. He’d not spared a lot of thought for Snart lately, what with everything going on, but the thought of him being dead was...strange. Until he’d come across the guy in this weird parallel universe, he’d never really expected to miss him. But apparently Snart was showing up a lot in his subconscious lately, what with the speed force, and now this. Maybe his brain was trying to tell him something.

Taking a deep breath, Barry said, “This Leonard is a criminal. He’s a mob boss, like Cutter, but he seems to be in charge of a rival gang - if anything I think Len’s gang is actually higher up in the pecking order. Like the Santinis versus the Darbynians, back on my earth. “In this universe, Len and I met at a club. One far more seedy than this one. I was a broke singer down on my luck; left home to make my fortune and didn’t do so hot. He found me in this dodgy bar, singing for scraps, living from paycheck to paycheck. Best as I can tell, he...took a liking to me. We got close. He came to see me, we got to know each other...one thing led to another… however it is that happens in the forties.” Barry coughed, going a little pink. “Anyway, he took me out of there, put me under his protection and set me up in a safe place. We were together, and happy, and in love... Len didn’t ask for anything in return until recently. He needed someone on the inside, so he set me up as an informant.” Lowering his voice, he said, “I’m here to gather intel, to help him take Cutter down from the inside. Then Len takes over, becomes the city’s bonafide boss, no competition.”

“Romantic,” Kara said. “So what, your role is to just...snitch on Cutter? Stab him in the back so your boyfriend can take over? That sounds like it could take a while.”

Barry shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s more like...art reflecting life, in this instance.” He leaned eagerly over the piano. “Back on my earth, I always knew there was more to Leonard Snart than the cold criminal he pretended to be. I always knew there was good in him, and I kind of made it my goal to bring that out. To bring him into the light… I wasn’t completely successful; Snart stabbed me in the back a lot. Old habits die hard, I guess, and his criminal code only stretched so far. Best I ever got out of him was a no-kill deal. I left him to his own devices, and he agreed not to fatally injure anybody. But then he got picked up by this…crew, on a different kind of mission. Time travel,” he added conspiratorially. “He went off with the Legends...well, you met them. They’re not the most organised team I’ve ever met, but they must have had a good influence on him. Snart sacrificed himself, saved all their lives. He was kind of a good guy in the end. “I think that’s what I’m doing here, Kara. This Len, he never wanted to be a criminal. This isn’t the life he’d have chosen for himself, if he had any other way. The only reason he hasn’t turned his back on it is because he has a lot of enemies...and because of me. Two men living together in the forties, that’s kind of suspicious. If anyone figured out we were together, we’d be hunted down and arrested, and god knows what else. Len’s doing this to protect me. He thinks being a criminal is the only way to keep me safe.”

“I don’t actually know what’s more messed up; your life, or this musical,” said Kara, leaning exhaustedly against the piano.

Barry shrugged sheepishly. “I’d say it’s a pretty even tie. Go on, what’s your story? What’s happening with you and Mon-El?”

“More like Mon- Hell ,” Kara muttered. “Ugh. He’s a sleazy creep. He thinks he can sneak around with me behind his father’s back, but whenever I tell him to pull himself together and come clean, he starts acting like a sulky child.”

“So that’s your script,” Barry said. “You have to make him come clean. Love conquers all, and everything.”

Kara made a face. “Getting Mon-El to tell the truth is like getting blood out of a stone. He wouldn’t know honesty if it punched him in the face - and if I still had my powers, I just might.” She sat down on the piano stool with a thump.

“He can’t be that bad,” Barry said, coming to sit beside her. It took a significant amount of squeezing before Kara grumpily moved up. “I mean, you were dating him? Right?”

“We were never dating. There was...some making out involved. We spent a lot of time together. And the entire time he was lying to my face.” Kara folded her arms. “Mon-El and I were never exactly a match made in heaven in the first place. His people and my people have been at war on and off for centuries. This Tommy guy doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement.”

“The first time Len and I met, he was busting open an armored truck with a tank full of liquid nitrogen. After that, I caught him trying to rob the Central City museum and he shot a guy just to get me to demonstrate the full extent of my powers. We had...a turbulent relationship, but it seems to be working for us so far.”

“Barry,” said Kara. “You do realise none of this is real, right? It’s all just a distraction. Music Meister trapped us in here. We’re here to play our way through and get out, not get caught up in the romance of it all. That man you spent the night with isn’t really Leonard Snart, no matter how badly you’d like him to be. What happened to rescuing Iris? That has to be our focus, getting out of this place and back into the real world. We just have to play our roles. None of this is real.”

“I know,” insisted Barry.

It felt real, though. The satisfying residual ache from where Len had made love to him the night before - because that hadn’t just been sex; it had been gentle, tender, nothing he’d ever expected Leonard Snart to be. In a way it almost made Barry feel guilty to have slept with him, knowing that he didn’t feel even one tenth of the emotion the man felt for this version of him.

Kara put a hand on his shoulder. “I just don’t want you to get too caught up in this. At some point we’re going to wake up, or get transported back. Things are going to go back to normal, and this Leonard Snart you think you’ve been living with is just going to vanish. You won’t ever see him again, Barry. There’s no use in getting attached.”

“I’m not getting attached! I’m just...enjoying the perks.”

“Hm,” Kara said disapprovingly.

“I’m sorry, what was I supposed to do, just reject him? I’m not a saint, Kara.”

“Nobody’s saying you have to reject him. In fact, it’s probably good that you didn’t - we do have a script to follow. But...just try not to forget what’s real and what isn’t. Iris is at home waiting for you. She still needs saving.”

“I will save Iris,” Barry vowed. “I’m not going to just turn my back on the real world, on my family and everything that matters to me, just so I can stay here with Snart. I know what I’m doing, Kara, trust me. I know what really matters. But for now I’m going to handle this my way.”

“Okay,” Kara said. “As long as you know what you’re doing…” She got up off the piano stool and ran her fingers absentmindedly across the keys. “In the meantime, we have a song to write. Got any ideas? Because I’m coming up totally blank.”

Barry thought about this for a moment. He was a scientific person, not a creative one. But when everyone around you seemed compelled to burst into song - and an accompanying dance number - without so much as breaking a sweat...well, the whole thing got contagious after a while. And he did have a tune stuck in his head; something Leonard had been humming that morning, before he’d started singing Sweeney Todd.

“Yeah,” Barry said, smiling to himself. “I think I might have a little something in mind.”

~*~

Cutter loved the song.

It was no musical masterpiece, Barry knew. The rhymes were a little clumsy, their dancing wasn’t quite in time - especially Barry’s, since he still had an interesting residual ache from what he and Len had done the night before, and that was a novelty, since he’d normally have healed from that at this point.

But the song was fun, it was energetic, and both he and Kara had a whale of a time performing it. By the time it was over, he was exhausted but grinning - and when he came off stage, a man in a suit came to present him with a large bouquet of red roses.

“What’s this?” Barry said, startled, as the flowers were pressed into his arms.

The guy shrugged. “I just get paid to deliver, buddy. Guess you’ve got an admirer. I think there’s a card, I don’t know. Good show, though.” He clapped Barry on the arm and vanished.

Surprised, Barry rummaged through the flowers until he retrieved the card.

For the Scarlet Starlet, with love from your biggest fanatic. L x

“Scarlet Starlet?” Kara said, peering over his shoulder with a grin. “Jesus. This guy has it bad.”

“Kara!” Mortified, Barry hid the card behind his back. “That’s private.”

“Oh, Barry, don’t be silly. It’s cute. If a little nauseating.” Kara buried her face in the flowers. “No fan-mail for me? I’m heartbroken. Why does he call you Scarlet?”

“Back on my earth, I’d guess it’s because of the suit. Here…” Barry shrugged. “I guess some things I’m better off not knowing. That was a great show out there, Superfriend.”

She gave him a playful nudge. “You’re a dork. Listen, I’d better go find Mon-El...I mean, Tommy. ” She made a face. “Now that I’ve won his daddy’s approval I might stand a better chance of getting him to confess. You coming with?”

“What, to listen in on your mushy conversation? No thanks. I’ll see you in the dressing room; I’d better find some water for these.” He held his flowers up with a rustle.

“Sure,” said Kara. “I’ll be as fast as I can, okay? I can’t wait to get out of here.”

Smiling, Barry watched her go. He was delayed on the way back to his dressing room, waylaid by a number of fellow employees who wanted to wish him well - including Not-Cisco, who was evidently seething with jealousy that he did his utmost to cover up. Barry felt bad for him, really.

The ‘dressing room’ was essentially a large cupboard that he and Kara shared, decorated with flickering, poorly-wired lighting and a wonky mirror. Barry had to give up on his dreams of finding a nice vase for his flowers and be contented with a large jar full of make-up brushes, which he emptied into a drawer. God, forties make-up was cakey. He dabbed a bit of it experimentally on the back of his hand and made a face. Not that he was an expert, but he was pretty sure cosmetics in 2017 were of a far higher calibre.

For a while he was happy to just sit and ruminate over their performance, wondering if it could be tweaked at all, if they’d have to do another performance or whether they’d wake up before then...but eventually he figured he should really go and find Kara, see how things were getting on with Tommy...or Mon-El. Whoever he was. It sounded like she could use all the help she could get in this situation. Besides which, he still needed to figure out how on earth he was going to convince Leonard to become one of the good guys. He and Kara needed to work on a plan of attack.

He found Not-Cisco on the stage, clearing up after the performance. Scowling, Not-Cisco was scrubbing doggedly at the scuff-marks their impromptu tap-dancing had left on the floor. Barry guilty rubbed the back of his neck, contemplated exiting stage left before he was spotted, and then decided to just bite the bullet.

“Hey, uh...have you seen Kara anywhere?”

“Why, you two wanna make another godawful mess of my floor?” Not-Cisco said sulkily. After a moment, he relented. “I dunno, she went out in the alleyway with the boss’ kid, Tommy. They were having an argument. Sounded pretty heated. She’d better watch herself; she might be the star right now, but Cutter won’t hesitate to axe her if she starts getting mouthy. One word from Tommy and boom! She’s out on her ass.”

“I’ll be sure to let her know,” Barry promised. Then, before Not-Cisco could gripe at him any further, or break into a rousing musical number about the perils of inhaling too much floor-polish, he hurried off.

He took the same back exit he’d taken the previous night, when he’d been held at gunpoint by Leonard. When he got there though, the alleyway was empty, aside from a few trash cans and a whole lot of puddles. Frowning, Barry ran a hand through his hair, still stiff with whatever product he’d found waiting for him on the dresser that morning. The waxy texture made him shiver.

It was cold outside, his breath coming in faint white puffs. Barry was just about to step back inside and have another scout around when a clatter from down the alleyway made him jerk, turning instinctively towards the source of the sound.

For a moment he stood frowning, trying to figure out what could have caused the disturbance. Stray cat, maybe? Or another of Leonard’s bizarre jokes?

Then a scream rent the quiet.

Barry sprinted right for the source of the commotion, cursing his lack of speed. Barrelling around the corner, he was just in time to see Kara struggling with Mon-El, who had her by the arm and was tugging her towards the open back door of a car. Kara was fighting him every step of the way, her hair flying as she pummelled his arm, tried to stomp on his foot, scratched and clawed and screeched - but without her powers she didn’t have a hope in hell of throwing him off. Mon-El manhandled her like she was a child having a tantrum.

“Kara!”

Her head snapped up. “Barry!”

The distraction was enough for Mon-El to get a better grip and shove her, kicking and yelling, into the arms of a waiting henchman. He clamped her to his chest in an iron grip, resolutely ignoring her struggles, and then Mon-El was slamming the door closed, the tinted windows hiding her from view.

Barry knew this wasn’t the same guy who’d come to S.T.A.R Labs for help with Kara’s prone body in his arms, or the same guy she’d been hauling over the coals, but god damn. Right now he was tempted to agree with Kara’s prognosis: this guy was an asshole.

“Let her go!” he ordered, advancing on the car. Without his speed he had no plan, and probably even less chance of beating this guy in a fight than Kara had, but no way in hell was he about to let her get abducted without a fight.

He stormed grimly towards Mon-El, fists clenched - but then the man flicked his fingers carelessly, and something slammed into the back of Barry’s head.

He hit the floor hard. Someone stepped over him; a bodyguard had been standing right behind him and he’d never even realised he was there. There was a throbbing pain in the back of his head where the guy had punched him. Groaning, Barry tasted blood in his mouth. He spat pathetically onto the pavement, feeling it dribble down his chin. He managed to push himself up a little, and then the henchman’s boot collided with his side, biting into his ribs. It seared, made Barry howl and curl in on himself in response to the pain. Desperately folding into a little ball, he tucked his head in and shivered, waiting for the onslaught to continue… but then there was the sound of footsteps, the slam of a car door, and he looked up just in time to see the car squealing around the colour, brake lights blazing and the smell of burning rubber acrid on the breeze.

Choking, Barry tried to get up but was knocked back by the pain in his side. If this wasn’t real, it was doing a hell of a good job of faking it. He managed to claw himself onto his knees, grab onto the wall and try to haul himself up...but then he sagged uselessly back to the ground. Kara was gone; he had no idea where, and no chance of catching her. If this was the script Music Meister had intended, he had no idea how things were supposed to pan out from here.

He stayed huddled over like a wounded animal for a long time. Even when it started to rain, he couldn’t bring himself to move. Just let the water run down the back of his neck, slowly soaking him. He couldn’t save Iris in his world, couldn’t save Kara in this one. Never fast enough in any universe. What was the point of him, really?

“Barry?”

Barry looked up too fast and regretted it; pain spiked through his sore head. Hissing, he tried to stand again, but his limbs were like cardboard and the rain had made them soggy and useless. Panting, he stayed on his knees.

“ Barry. ”

Len dropped to his knees in front of him, still in his fancy suit, his hat tipped back to keep the rain off his face. Immediately he grabbed Barry’s face, carded his fingers through his hair, rested a hand on the back of his neck. His voice was all sharp edges, his face dark with fear.

“What the hell happened? Who did this? Give me a name, Barry, I swear to god. How badly did he hurt you?”

Those questions seemed oddly out of order, and Barry was too dizzy to try to make sense of them. “M’okay,” he managed, then turned his face away to spit another globule of blood onto the sidewalk. Len’s expression darkened.

“Who the hell was it? Was it Cutter, did he catch you? I swear to god, I’m going to shoot every single one of those assholes who were supposed to be keeping an eye on you, and then I’m going to punch Cutter’s teeth so far down his fucking throat that he has to shove a toothbrush up his asshole to clean them.” Len shook him gently, but even that made Barry groan quietly in pain. “You’re fine, I’ve got you. Everything’s gonna be okay. I’ll take care of you. Come on, get up, Scarlet.”

He wrapped one of Barry’s arms around his shoulders and helped him to his feet. Heavily, Barry leaned on him and tried to get his breath back. His ribs still ached, but standing helped. At least it made him feel less like he’d just been defeated.

Len pressed his cheek against Barry’s. “Alright. Now give me a name.”

“Kara,” Barry managed.

Frowning, Len said, “You got your ass kicked by a skirt?”

Barry shook his head. “Not her. Mon - Tommy. He took her. Bundled her up in a car and took her away.”

Len snorted. “More fool her. Clearly didn’t have a lick of sense in that pretty blonde head.”

“No,” Barry said urgently. “She didn’t want it. She fought him, he abducted her. I tried to stop him… he set one of his henchmen on me. Punched me in the head… I tried to…” He gripped the front of Len’s suit. “We have to go after them.”

“After Cutter’s son? You must be joking. I’ll have my revenge on the asshole who hurt you, rest assured, but I’m not going on some wild goose chase to save some woman I don’t even know.”

“Please, Len. Kara’s my friend. He could be doing anything to her - she didn’t want to go with him. He could rape her, or - or kill her, or - ”

“Not our problem,” Len said. “Our problem is making sure we don’t get involved...and getting you patched up.”

“You have to do something. Please. She’s my friend, we can’t just let him take her!”

“What do you want me to do?” Len demanded. “Go after them? Fight Cutter’s son and heir just for the sake of some skirt? That’s not how I roll, Scarlet. We’ve got no plan, no back-up, no chance. And I don’t do rescues.”

“You rescued me,” Barry said. “From that club, remember? Where would I be now, if you hadn’t saved me?”

“...That was a special case,” Len said, but he sounded a little less sure of himself.

“ Please . I’ll do anything. I’ll get on my knees right here. I’m begging you, Lenny. You have to save her, no matter what it takes.”

Len took a step back, one hand on Barry’s shoulder to steady him. With his hat casting a shadow over his face, it was difficult to read his expression. Barry could only look pleadingly into his eyes. He could feel blood coming from the corner of his mouth in a sticky trickle; he didn’t wipe it away. Let it speak for him.

“You realise what you’re asking for?” Len asked in a low voice. “This isn’t just a scuffle for turf, Scarlet. It’s not a little bar-fight, or a robbery. I’d do any of those for you in a heartbeat. Going after Cutter’s kid...there’s no turning back from that. We could end up with a full-blown gang war on our hands. None of us are prepared for that.”

“We have to,” Barry said. “We can’t leave Kara with him. If you won’t help me, I’ll have to face him on my own.”

Len closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them, his jaw was set. “You’re not going up against those bastards alone. I’ll fight for your friend. But I hope you realise what you’re getting us into. There’ll be blood running through these streets before we’re done.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Barry said.

Music Meister’s words echoed in his head: If you die in this world, you die for real. And even if Tommy didn’t kill Kara, there were other things he might do. Even if they made it out of here, if Kara woke up and remembered being raped in this other universe, and Barry hadn’t gotten to her in time… he clenched his fists.

“We don’t have a choice,” he said. “Kara’s my friend. We have to help her.”

“Then we’ll help her,” Len said. “If that’s really what you want. I’ll send someone to find Mick, see if Raymond has any of those special-grade weapons ready for us. But if we don’t make it out of this alive…”

“We will,” Barry said firmly. “We have to.”

Leonard smiled a strange, twisted smile and rubbed the pad of his thumb against Barry’s cheek. Then he pulled his gun out of his pocket, checked it was loaded, checked and double-checked the safety, and offered it to Barry.

Barry swallowed. Dream sequence or no, alternate universe or no, he’d never fired a gun. Never even held one. But with Kara’s life at stake…

The grip was warm against his skin, had stolen some of the heat of Leonard’s hand. Lifting his chin, Barry took the gun from him. Then, Len surprised him by removing his cool mobster hat and setting it on Barry’s head. He adjusted it slightly, pressed it down more firmly on Barry’s head, and then leaned down to kiss him. This struck Barry as dangerous, with the gun pressed between their chests; his heart pounded, but he didn’t pull away before Len did. The kiss had an edge to it, he noticed. He didn’t think it was just because they were doing it in public, behind Cutter’s club. Something had changed. Barry didn’t dare think too hard about it. He just slipped the gun into the breast pocket of his jacket, adjusting the fabric so the shape of the weapon wouldn’t be too obvious.

“Good,” Len said approvingly. He lightly touched the brim of his hat. “My little mobster in the making. Looks good on you.” Then he smiled another one of those odd smiles. “Well then,” he said, with that sarcastic drawl back in his voice. “Let’s go save the girl.”

~*~

As Len gathered his associates and resources, the atmosphere was tense. Barry kept his arms wrapped around himself and did his best to keep out of the way. In this situation, he was out of his depth.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t appreciated the seriousness of the situation when Len first described it to him, but seeing the reactions of his associates made it all seem far more real. They were all the kind of men who seemed comfortable with violence, all carrying guns, most with a perceptible air of menace around them...but when Len had gathered them all around him and made his announcement - they were going after Cutter’s kid, tonight - they all suddenly got grim about the mouth. There was an air of finality about the proceedings; people moved swiftly about, frequently consulting Len for his opinion on firearms or potential contingency plans. He delivered his verdicts smoothly, without hesitation, seeming so cool and capable that Barry was almost reassured...until he saw how tense the men were. The creases between their brows, the set of their jaws. There wasn’t a smile or a joke between the lot of them. Barry was no expert on gang etiquette, but he gathered that things weren’t usually quite this morbid. It was like being in a room full of people on death row, or a hospital ward for people with a terminal illness. Dozens of people hurrying about, all keeping busy in an attempt to forget that they were waiting to die.

Knowing that they were about to do so because of him, because he’d begged Len into giving the order, made Barry’s stomach churn. He did get to witness a surprisingly gentle farewell between Ray Palmer and Mick Rory, by far the oddest couple he'd encountered in any universe. As Len's second in command, Mick couldn't stray far from his side; he was needed to deal with nonessential questions or disputes, and give minor orders that weren't worth Len's time. When Ray arrived, however, he and Mick withdrew a short distance away and were mostly left alone. Barry couldn't help watching them interact, fascinated by their dynamic. Not wanting to eavesdrop, he merely watched from a distance.

Ray was plying Mick with dozens of strange-looking weapons, all his own design and presumably, for this era, state of the art. Where Mick was supposed to put them all Barry didn't know, but he accepted each and every one without comment, sliding them into various pouches or pockets in his jacket. Eventually, though, Ray's supply of modified firearms ran out, and he and Mick stood quietly together without speaking until Len shouted, "Alright, let's move out!" Raising his voice a little, Mick said, "I'll see you around, Haircut." He turned to leave. "Wait!"

Ray darted forwards, tugging a red bandana out of his breast pocket. A flash of crimson in the dark, the colour of fresh blood against the pale skin of his hand. Carefully, Ray tied the bandana around Mick’s neck and tucked the ends into the collar of his shirt.

“For luck,” he said.

Barry pressed his lips together, half expecting Mick to blow him off or say something crude - but Mick astonished him by actually giving Ray a genuine - albeit small - smile.

“You’d better come back,” Ray said.

“That an order, Haircut?” Mick asked, visibly amused.

“You bet,” Ray replied. He managed a shaky smile.

Then, Mick astonished Barry by doing something that he was sure the real Mick Rory would never have done. Yanking Ray almost roughly to his side, he kissed the top of his head and gave him a hug. It was actually more of a squeeze, and Ray made a quiet hiccuping sound as all the breath whooshed out of him - but Ray smiled genuinely then, grinning sheepishly at his feet.

Mick patted Ray on the ass - now that was something the real Mick Rory would’ve done, Barry thought - and then left without another word, moving to his position at Len’s side. With his head held high, Mick’s entire expression changed, wiped blank the second he’d released Ray. Now he was in full muscle mode, all emotion gone. A gun-toting robot at Len’s command. Unease rippled down Barry’s spine.

Mick didn’t turn back, but Ray watched him forlornly as he made his way to where Leonard stood. There was something distinctly puppyish in his expression - but behind the mopey look, there was genuine anxiety. Ray swallowed, licked his lips, and then squared his shoulders and walked away, vanishing into the darkness.

For all Ray Palmer knew, that might be the last time he and Mick ever set eyes on each other again.

Guiltily, Barry closed his eyes. None of this is real, he reminded himself.

That didn’t make him feel any less awful about Mick being dragged along on what was, to all intents and purposes, a suicide mission, purely on his say so. But Barry could see no other alternative. Kara was real, and if she died in here, she died in reality. Whether or not that rule extended to bodily harm in general, he didn’t know - but if Tommy went too far, if he killed her…

This was a musical. It was supposed to be cutesy and chirpy and feel-good. All of this, however, was leaving a sour taste in Barry’s mouth.

“Barry!” Len called.

Weaving through the assembled crowd of men, Barry went to stand at Len’s left. Mick, as his second in command, flanked his right side.

“You ready?” Len asked in a low voice.

Barry nodded. “Ready.”

“Alright.” Raising his voice, Len said, “Alright, let’s move out. We’re gonna teach that little bastard a lesson about how to treat a woman, which doesn’t involve smacking her around and forcibly throwing her into his car. And then when we’re done doing that, I say we cut off a few of his favourite limbs and send them off in the mail to his daddy. I got dibs on anything below the waist.”

A rumble of approval passed through the assembled horde of crooks. Barry just focused on keeping a blank expression and praying to god that Len wasn’t serious.

Unfortunately, he was at least ninety percent certain that he was very serious indeed.

~*~

At first it was impossible for Barry to get Len alone; Mick prowled at his side, looking askance at any of the underlings who tried to get presumptively close, and killing any chance at a private conversation. But eventually, the other man sloped off on Len’s command to go and check for stragglers or deserters in the ranks - apparently this Leonard Snart was no more tolerant of quitters than the real one had been.

Once Mick was safely out of earshot, Barry sidled closer to Len’s side. He’d realised that encouraging Len to set an entire mob of angry gangsters on Mon El was hardly following his side of the script, if he was supposed to be getting Len onto the straight and narrow. But maybe, he thought, there was still a way to salvage the situation. Although he wasn’t about to let Kara die just so his portion of the script could play out unhindered, he thought he might be able to turn things to his advantage.

“Have you ever thought that maybe there’s another answer?” he asked in a low voice.

“Another answer to what?”

“I mean...maybe we don’t have to kill Tommy. Maybe that isn’t the answer, you know? Responding to his crime with another, I mean, that doesn’t sound right. Maybe we can turn this around without violence.”

“Getting cold feet, Scarlet?” Len asked, with a small smile. He gave him a sideways glance. “Don’t worry. Like I’ve always said, your safety takes priority. After that, it’s mine, and Mick’s. Every other dumb bastard can take care of himself. If things go sour, we lose the advantage and I think things won’t pan out the way we want, I’ll cut my losses and get the hell outta dodge, don’t worry about that. You don’t have to be scared.”

“I’m not scared, I - ”

“You started this,” Len reminded him, a little harshly. “I told you there’d be no going back. We see this through to the end, no matter what.”

“Well, sure, but maybe the end doesn’t have to be a bloodbath,” Barry said earnestly. “There are other ways of handling things. Sure, if we go in there all guns blazing, no way is Tommy gonna back down. But we don’t have to take that approach. We don’t have to rush straight in and start lopping bits off him. We could try talking to him.”

“Sure, and then afterwards we could ride home on a fluffy pink unicorn,” Len said, bitingly sarcastic. He gave Barry a sympathetic glance. “I know this is intimidating, Scarlet. It isn’t your world. But trust me to handle this. I know what I’m doing.”

“You said you didn’t want this life. You said you wanted out.”

“I want a lot of things. I want a multi-storey mansion with all the modern conveniences. I want lower gas prices. I want an overflowing bank account and a new suit for every day of the week, but this is the real world. Some things just aren’t realistic.”

“We can still get away from all this,” Barry said pleadingly. “If you kill Tommy, Cutter’s never gonna let you go. We’ll save Kara, sure, but then we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives fighting this stupid war. It doesn’t have to be like that. I needed your help to find Tommy and get past his guys, but once we’re in, we could reason with him. We could at least try. ”

“No can do. I’m not a natural negotiator. Shoot first, ask questions later, that’s my motto.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Barry said softly. “You’re a good person.”

Len didn’t break stride; he stared straight ahead, chin lifted, hat casting a shadow over his face. “That’s where you’re wrong. You think that because you love me, I can’t be a terrible person. Well I got news for you: it’s entirely possible to love someone awful. To love someone in spite of all their problems, everything that’s wrong with them. You think that because you care for me, and you’re a good person, that I must be a good person too. That’s not how this works. “There are two kinds of guys in this world, Scarlet: bad men, and dead ones. No prizes for guessing which one I’d rather be.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. We can be better. We can do this the right way, and put all of this behind us.”

“This ain’t a storybook,” Len snapped. “Trust me, if I thought we could resolve this peacefully and go skipping off into the sunset hand in hand, I’d take it. But Tommy is Cutter’s kid, he’s probably already beaten your little friend into submission and left her to rot. There aren’t any happy endings for guys like me and him. There’s only one way to resolve this, and it involves a whole lot of bullets.”

“You’re wrong,” Barry said quietly.

He would prove it. He had to.

The way Len was looking at him made his stomach flutter unpleasantly. It wasn’t the cynical, amused look he would have expected. Instead, Len just looked tired. There was a distinct lack of hope in his expression.

“It’s okay to be scared,” Len told him. “But at the end of the day, it’s him or us. And I know which option I’m going to go for. Do you?”

~*~

They finally reached Tommy’s hideout, a large warehouse with suit-clad guards at every entrance. Crouching behind the shiny car that had been used to abduct Kara, Len dispatched his men to various points, delegating tasks as easily as breathing. Then he, Mick and Barry waited for them to be carried out.

The plan, as far as Barry could tell, was simple. Len’s gang were to subdue Tommy’s men as quietly as possible, so as not to alert anyone inside. Then they would surround the building, allowing Len and his inner circle to slip inside and go after Tommy. Under instructions to shoot Tommy or any of his entourage if they tried to make a break for it, the men would wait… and if things went wrong, and Len’s group didn’t make it out, they’d kill Tommy, torch the building, and fight amongst themselves until a new leader had been established… at which point, whoever he was would take over the ongoing war against Cutter.

The specificity of it concerned Barry, that they were all so certain things were going to end violently. Len had tried to convince him to stay behind, but Barry was determined he was going to see this through to the end, no matter what.

Until now he’d rarely had the chance to anticipate a fight; he’d always sort of been thrown into the deep end head first and ended up fighting for his life immediately. Now, he felt like a frog in a pot of tepid water, slowly being heated to boiling...but this frog knew what was coming. Had to fight the urge to hop out of the pot and run.

Not that running would do him any good. Without his speed, he was worse than useless. Under Len’s instructions, he clutched the pistol in his sweaty hands, but he didn’t think he had it in him to use it, even if all of this was just an elaborate illusion. Could he end someone’s life with no more effort than a squeeze of his finger? Barry didn’t think so.

He felt shaky. He wanted to throw up, he wanted to use the bathroom. He wanted to turn tail and flee. He did none of these things. Instead he waited, crouched in the cold behind the car with burning calves, waiting for Len’s signal.

Whatever you wanted to say about Len’s crew, they were efficient. It seemed like an eternity before Len spotted one of his men signalling him, flashed a hand-signal back and ushered Barry to his feet, but there had been no sound to suggest a handful of men being incapacitated. No alarms raised, no sign of a disturbance. When Barry, Mick and Len sprinted for the building, all tensed in case of an attack whilst they were exposed, Barry ran straight past the prone, suited body of a man and didn’t dare examine it too closely.

Not real, he reminded himself, and, you’re a CSI, you’ve seen plenty of bodies before, get a grip - but usually the bodies Barry had to see were long dead and completely vacant, not still warm and limp on the ground. It was easy to detach himself from the stiffening, day-old corpse of a stranger, but all too different to know that it was upon his orders, indirectly, that someone had been hurt. It made his stomach roil like a small, angry ocean, acid lapping viciously at his insides. Tasting acid, Barry resisted the urge to spit and instead put his head down and focused on running faster, until he was slamming into the wall of the warehouse and Len’s hand was on him, flattening him against the panels.

Holding him in place, Len raised his free hand to put a finger on his lips. Then he made a series of gestures which apparently made total sense to Mick, but whose meaning Barry could only hope to guess at. As best as he could tell, Len had spotted Tommy inside, and was dispensing further instructions. Not that he had a clue what those instructions were, and now Len was turning around, pointing his gun at the door.

Fumbling, Barry tried to mimic him, but his sweaty hands couldn’t get a good grip on the gun and then Len was holding his fingers up in a countdown, Barry’s ears were ringing and his mouth tasted like sawdust, and he felt incredibly ill. Then Len’s foot crashed into the door and it burst open, and they were rushing inside the dimly lit building, guns raised.

“Alright, hands off the girl,” Len was saying coldly, his gun levelled directly at Mon El’s chest.

There was an astonished pause as Mon El stared, frowning at the interruption. Kara was tied to a chair; when she saw Barry, her eyes widened and she started struggling violently against her bonds, but she didn’t speak. Her gaze fell upon the weapon in his hand, and she suddenly stopped and stared at him.

Kara Danvers could fire lasers from her eyes, but that perfectly ordinary, disappointed stare cut him far more deeply than any optical energy weapon could have. Ducking his head, Barry looked away.

A wave of motion cut through the room, then, as Mon El’s guards smoothly pointed their weapons at the intruders. Outside, with the entirety of Len’s gang at his back, Barry had felt fairly confident - but in here, the odds were far worse. Three of them against four gang members and Mon El, and Barry had no confidence in his ability to use the gun that he clutched in his sweaty grip. The way Kara was looking at him, he thought she might not actually be on his side in this situation. Barry’s head ached.

A clap as loud as a gunshot broke the silence, making him flinch; if the safety had been off on his gun, he’d definitely have fired it accidentally in his shock. Mon El advanced, slowly clapping, his eyes cold.

“You got me,” he said. “Well done. So what now?”

“So now you hand over the girl, we shoot you, and your daddy gets a couple of body parts in the mail,” Len said smoothly. “How’s that sound?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no, fellas. Not that it isn’t a tempting offer.”

Len flicked the safety off his gun; the low click sounded incredibly loud in the quiet of the room. “I’m afraid I have to insist.”

Mon El - Tommy, Barry reminded himself - made a sharp hand-gesture. Immediately, his men stepped forwards.

Barry leapt backwards, but Len and Mick rose to the challenge, Mick also turning off the safety on his gun. The barrels were levelled not at their opponents, however, but squarely at Tommy.

To Barry’s surprise, Tommy seemed unperturbed by this development. He gave a very dangerous smile, like a shark watching a diver descend into its tank.

“Well, gentlemen. It seems we find ourselves at an impasse.”

“You have ten seconds to let go of the girl, or I start shooting,” Len said. He sounded almost bored. “Nine.”

Tommy kept grinning away. You’d have thought this was the best fun he’d had all day.

“Eight,” said Len.

Barry looked frantically from Len to Kara to Tommy, desperately trying to catch someone’s eye. No one was playing ball. Kara was staring with thinly veiled disgust at Len, Tommy was still smirking straight into Len’s face, and Len hadn’t taken his eyes off his target.

This was all going horribly wrong. They were going to kill each other, and he and Kara were never going to make it out of this universe even if they didn’t die here, on the floor of this dusty warehouse. Barry’s heart beat painfully quickly.

“Seven,” Len said.

“Stop!”

Barry lurched forwards, dropping his gun into the dust. He had no plan, no idea what the hell he was doing, but he dashed towards Tommy, who took a startled step backwards, clearly expecting an attack.

Swallowing, Barry stepped in front of Tommy, shielding him from Len and Mick’s line of fire.

Len stared at Barry with abject disgust. “What the hell are you doing? Get out of the way.”

“Don’t shoot him,” Barry said pleadingly.

“Move, Barry!”

“No,” Barry said. “You can’t. This isn’t right. You can’t...not like this.”

Turning his back on Len - a dangerous past-time, leaving himself open and exposed like that, but Barry could only hope that in this instance, his trust wasn’t unfounded - Barry turned the full force of his desperation on Tommy.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “What’s the point?”

“Excuse me?” Tommy said, raising his eyebrows.

“Why kidnap her?” clarified Barry, gesturing at Kara. “How exactly is that supposed to solve anything?”

“I love her,” Tommy said, in a tone which suggested he was speaking to an idiot.

“So you tied her to a chair?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“Try me,” Barry said.

The atmosphere in the room was tense as a tightrope. There were still guns being pointed in every direction, Kara was still futilely struggling to free herself, and Barry felt as though he were balancing on the very brink of a precipice with wind buffeting at him from both sides… but he held his ground.

Tommy folded his arms. “Kara expects me to tell my father about our relationship, and if I don’t come clean, she’s going to leave me. I can’t allow that to happen.”

“You can’t tie me up forever!” Kara shouted.

Refusing to look at her, he said softly, “Not forever. Just until you understand.” He looked almost pleadingly at Barry. “My father would never let me marry a cabaret girl. She’s one of the staff. If he found out about us, Kara would lose her job and maybe her life. I’d never see her again. My father isn’t a forgiving man. He’d never let us get away with this.”

“I won’t be your dirty little secret, Mon El,” Kara said venomously. “If you can’t face up to the consequences of your actions, I want nothing to do with you or your family.”

“Sweetheart, you come up with the strangest nicknames,” Tommy said fondly. Then he returned his attention to Barry. “Surely you can understand that I want what’s best for her, even if she doesn’t see it?”

“That’s not your decision to make.”

“It is. It has to be. I love her; I won’t lose her. Some day she’ll understand that I had to do this, for us. All of this is for Kara’s protection.”

“You can’t keep me in a cage like an animal! I’m not your property, Tommy, I’m a person! I can’t live with your lies any longer. You let me go. I’ll walk out of here, I’ll leave you to your father. You deserve each other.” Turning her face away from him, Kara glared at the wall.

“None of you understand,” Tommy said. He reached to touch Kara’s face; she jerked away from him, and with a sigh, he lowered his hand. “I don’t know how to explain it to you. But one day when this is all over, you’ll realise why I had to do this.”

“She won’t forgive you,” Barry said.

Tommy narrowed his eyes.

“It’s true,” Barry said. “Deny it all you want. Even if she did change her mind, even if she accepted this deceitful life you seem to want that she doesn’t want to be a part of, Kara’s always going to know that you forced her into it. You abducted her and tied her to a chair . No matter how things pan out, how can she trust you? Your relationship is tainted. She’s going to know that if you ever have another disagreement, you could just do the exact same thing. Relationships are all about give and take - that’s all relationships, not just romantic ones. You really think this is a healthy foundation to build upon? The two of you disagreed, sure. But instead of respecting Kara’s decision and discussing it, you kidnapped her! How is that rational? How is that healthy?”

"I can't tell my father about us," Tommy insisted. "There can't be a compromise here. I won't do it. You don't know him; he wouldn't rest until she was out of the way. He'd kill her, and then find me some nice obedient mob wife to cook my dinners and bear my children." He turned to Kara, who had reluctantly turned back to watch him. "I don't want that. I can't lose you." "Then why didn't you just tell me that, Tommy?" she asked. "Why all the evasions and lies? If you had just been honest with me from the beginning, maybe I'd have understood. Instead you made me feel like you were ashamed of me." "I could never be ashamed of you. If anything..." He took a deep breath. "It's my father I'm ashamed of. Who he is. Who he's made me... this life he dragged me into. This was never what I wanted for either of us." Folding his arms, he said, "but none of that matters. I can't compromise on this." "Okay," Barry said. "So this is one issue you won't compromise on - and yet you expect Kara to just give in to you? That isn't how things work. If neither of you can come to an agreement, then you have to call it a day. Accept that you can't fix this and move on, for each other's sake." "But I love her!" "No one ever said love was easy," Barry said gently. "Sometimes it's the hardest thing in the world. It isn't always hearts and flowers. One of the most difficult, important parts of love is putting the other person's needs before your own. That doesn't always work out in your favour, but sometimes you have to put your own feelings aside and realise…” Barry hesitated, then said softly, almost to himself, “It's not just your feelings that matter." There was a long moment of silence. Len and Mick were still pointing their guns at him, waiting for any window of opportunity to shoot Tommy. The rival mobster was staring at Barry like he'd just said something very profound. But Barry, caught in the midst of his own sudden epiphany, couldn’t have cared less.

When Music Meister whammied him, he wasn’t speaking to Iris because of their argument. Her insistence that he should be focusing less on obsessively trying to counteract her future, and more on actually enjoying the time they had left. Not that he should stop trying to save her altogether, but that she wanted to try and keep things normal . To spend evenings together with their family and friends, watching movies, or playing board games, or eating dinner - not constantly hanging out at the lab whilst Cisco repeatedly vibed the future, searching for infinitesimal changes, and Barry stood morosely staring at their list of future events and coming up with ways to combat them.

At the time, Barry had been furious. Saving her had to be his priority; they didn’t have time for movies, or games! But in a rush of shame and understanding, he realised what he’d said to Tommy was just as true of himself. Iris’ life was in the balance; understandably she wanted to enjoy what she had left, rather than focusing on the axe hanging over her head. Just in case.

Barry was going to save her, of that he was certain. There was no alternative to that outcome. He refused to even consider it. But looking at things from Iris’ point of view...she thought she might die. Of course she would want to get away from that sometimes. To spend some quality time with her best friend, and not just obsess over her own approaching death.

Barry felt a sudden but intense urge to smack himself in the face. Pained by his own hypocrisy, he dragged himself back into the moment, where Tommy was gazing thoughtfully at Kara. She stared imploringly back, still tugging weakly on her restraints.

Barry said, “You gotta let her go, man.”

Tommy hesitated...and then glanced over Barry’s shoulder at Len. His expression hardened.

Turning, Barry looked Len in the eyes. “Put the gun down, Leonard.”

“Not a chance.”

“Len, please. It’s okay. We can resolve this like I said. No more fighting.”

“It’s a trick.”

“It isn’t.” Barry’s throat was dry. If he could fix this, if he could convince Len to let this go… he could go home. “Put the gun down.”

For a moment he thought he would fail, that Len wasn’t going to do it...but then a shudder rippled through the older man. Closing his eyes as though physically pained, Len lowered his gun.

Barry let out his breath in a rush.

Now only Mick remained, unwaveringly aiming over Barry’s shoulder. Even Len’s warning glance didn’t deter him.

“Mick.”

“It’s okay, Mick,” Barry said. “We don’t have to hurt him. We can do better than this. All of us.”

“The second I put down my gun, what’s to stop those bastards from blowing us all to kingdom come?” Mick demanded.

In all honesty Barry had forgotten that the five of them weren’t actually alone in the room. Aside from the fact that they were all pointing weapons towards him, Tommy’s henchmen were impressively unobtrusive. They hadn’t moved in several minutes; they blended into the background almost like furniture. Now his attention was back on them, however, Barry suddenly started to feel a little anxious. He hadn’t factored a whole bunch of strange henchmen into his plan.

His fears were unfounded, however. Frowning, Tommy turned to look at his men. Then, he made a dismissive noise. “Stand down, boys. Go guard the perimeter or something.” He gestured at the doorway where Barry and the others had entered.

“Be careful not to step on the bodies on your way out,” Len said mockingly. “Terribly sorry for the inconvenience. Ordinarily I don’t condone littering, but these were extenuating circumstances.”

“Leonard,” Barry hissed.

“Mob humour, Bartholomew. I keep telling you. You’ll understand the beauty of it one day.”

Barry shook his head. With a last wary look, the last of Tommy’s guards filed past them. Mick still had his gun out.

“Mick, you can put the gun down,” Len said. “Barry has this under control.”

Mick’s gaze flickered to Barry and back again, but he didn’t lower his gun. Hesitantly, Barry stepped towards him.

“It’s fine, Mick,” he said. “I got this. We’re all gonna go home after this. Ray’s waiting for you, remember? He wanted you to come home. You don’t have to shoot anybody to make that happen.”

Mick grumbled. “You sound just like him. Fucking hippy.” But eventually, he stowed his gun back in the breast pocket of his suit.

Such a massive influx of relief flooded Barry’s body at that moment that he actually went weak at the knees. Stumbling backwards, he hurried to Len’s side, where the older man put a supportive hand against the small of his back. Barry slumped against him, resisting the urge to lie down on the floor and breathe a great sigh of relief.

“Uh, Mon El?” said Kara. “You gonna untie me?”

“Oh!” Tommy said, and reached for her bonds. “You know, one day you’re going to have to explain to me why it is you call me ‘Mon-El’.”

“It’s a long story,” Kara said as the ropes fell away. Groaning, she rubbed her wrists. There were white imprints on both of them, ghostly bracelets where the ropes had been pulling too tightly. “ Man, it feels good to have those off.”

Tommy was staring at the marks. “I...I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Well that’s usually what happens when you kidnap someone and tie them to a chair,” Kara said a little sharply.

He looked at his feet. “...I blew it, didn’t I?”

“You kind of did,” Kara agreed. “And I know you have your reasons... had your reasons. I understand that now. And I can empathise. But that doesn’t change the fact that you lied, and I can’t accept that...Trust is important to me, and after what you did, I can’t trust you any more. We’re not going to work out, Tommy. I’m sorry.”

Barry knew he shouldn’t feel sorry for Tommy - after all, he’d abducted Kara and had his henchman punch Barry in the head - and he was pretty sure he shouldn’t feel sorry for the real Mon El either, although he had to admit he wasn’t as well-informed of the facts of that situation. But the way the man hung his head and scuffed his feet like a chastised schoolboy made it hard to stay mad at him...maybe that was the point. Barry folded his arms and stayed silent. He’d said his piece.

“Would you ever give me another chance?” Tommy asked. “Some day?”

“I...I’d have to think about it,” she said cautiously. “It’d take a long time to build up that level of trust again. I don’t think I’ll ever really forget what you did. But maybe one day, if you can bring yourself to step away from your family’s influence and learn to be honest with me, and to actually talk to me instead of just going off on your own…” She gave him a small smile. “Maybe I could come to care for you again.”

Tommy still looked crestfallen. Kara kindly put a hand on his arm.

“It’s not a no,” she said gently. “It’s...a possibility. And in the meantime, we can still be friends, right?”

“I’d like that.”

“Me too,” Kara said. “Why don’t you walk me to your car? You can drive me back to the club.”

"Sure," said Tommy, offering her his arm. "Hang on a second," said Kara. "I just have to have a private word with Barry before we go." Drawing Barry off to one side, Kara said in a low voice, "I don't think we've got much longer here. I'm getting this tingly feeling. You'd better wrap things up with Leonard, I don't know how much longer we have." Barry felt a strange tug in his stomach - part apprehension, part excitement. As nice as it had been to have a little escape from the mess with Savitar, he could have done without the stress of being beaten up and threatened. And he couldn't hide here forever; he needed to get back home and keep working on saving Iris...but not so obsessively this time. Thanks to his little epiphany, he now understood what Music Meister had been trying to teach him. He needed to value his friend while he had her, and not focus quite so intensely on things that were yet to come. Otherwise, he’d have lost her all the sooner without even realising it.

Still. There were certain things about this universe, he had to admit, that he was going to miss.

Kara patted him on the shoulder, took Tommy’s arm and allowed him to escort her towards the exit. They were halfway out when Tommy stopped and said suddenly, “Snart.”

Barry felt a sudden chill that had little to do with the draughtiness of the warehouse. They all turned. All of a sudden Barry felt ill. Of course he should have known it wouldn’t be that easy; Tommy and Len were enemies, he was the son of Len’s greatest rival, and in their culture, they didn’t let these kinds of things slide. Len had ordered the deaths of dozens of Tommy’s lackeys and pointed a gun at his head.

Kara’s storyline had been resolved; she had her happy ending. But Barry and Leonard’s wasn’t over.

“Problem?” Len drawled. He slipped his hand into his pocket.

“I never wanted this,” Tommy said. “It was all down to how I was raised. Ever since I was a child I knew who my father was, and what he did… I’ve always known it’s a legacy I would someday inherit. He taught me a lot of things. How to be cruel and cold. These seem like talents you’re pretty familiar with yourself.”

No, Barry thought. Please. Not after everything, don’t let Tommy turn on him now. He stepped closer to Len’s side, his palms getting slippery. Still, he refused to let his fear show on his face.

“Ever since I can remember I’ve had it drummed into me that I have to fight to keep my crown,” Tommy was saying, moving back into the room. Kara reached out as if to stop him, but her hand grasped only empty air. “And I know for a fact that my father’s been planning for years to try and take you down. If he fails to succeed, one day that mantle, that purpose, is going to be passed on to me.”

Mick and Len were watching Tommy the way one might watch a dangerous animal that hasn’t yet spotted you, but could turn and attack at any second. Barry’s thoughts whirled frantically as he tried to figure out how he could stop this, whether he could talk his way out of it again - but interrupting Tommy right now seemed like madness. He was almost speaking to himself, frowning slightly as if in confusion.

Looking up, he said, “My father wants you dead, Snart.”

“My condolences,” Len said. “He’ll have to get in line.”

Barry shot him a look. Sometimes he wished Leonard Snart knew when to shut up. The man seemed determined to die with a quip on his lips. Taunting Tommy, though, was bordering on suicidal.

“I’m not my father,” said Tommy.

He took a step forward. Barry grabbed Len’s arm, his heart pounding.

“I’d like to offer you a deal.”

Len’s eyes narrowed. “...What sort of a deal?”

“My father isn’t going to live forever. He has enemies - even if he doesn’t, one day he’ll be too old for this. It’s a dangerous business we deal in; can’t have a pensioner running the city. Old age will take him if nothing else does. One day, his mantle, his gang....that’s all going to get passed down to me.” He lifted his chin. “I don’t want it. I’ve never wanted it.

“I’m going to disband. He doesn’t know it. But when it’s time for me to inherit, I’m going to call off the men, have them disperse. Make it very clear to them that if they try to reform, I know who they are and where they live and won’t hesitate to make them regret it.”

“So what? You’ll step down? Leave me and my guys to take over the city?”

“Maybe,” Tommy said. “If that’s what you want. Or...there could be an alternative.”

“Such as?”

“There are plenty of ways to gain power. Legitimate ways, for example. Money and resources fairly dealt out, no risk of getting caught by cops. I want to run for mayor.”

They all stared at him.

“As mayor I’ll have the same influence I’ve always had - maybe more. And I won’t have to defend it from other gangs. Just rival politicians, which might actually be more dangerous, but I’ll take that as it comes. I’ll have the power to make changes, to rule the city from the spotlight instead of the shadows. I’d like you on my side, Snart. As part of my campaign.”

“You want me in your office?” Len said incredulously.

Tommy shrugged. “Or me in yours. I figured if you’d be interested. We could both run for mayor, side by side. Whoever wins, it wouldn’t matter. We could be partners, running the city together. No more hiding. You’d have just as much security detail, and the power to change things without having to resort to violence. We could put all this behind us. If you wanted.”

“You must be out of your damn mind.”

“Probably. But I’m a man of vision. It could take a long time before my dreams come to light, I won’t lie to you. My father isn’t stepping down any time soon. But when he does… I’ll have power, influence… and I’ll be free to marry Kara. If she wants.” He glanced at her and smiled shyly. “No more hiding.”

Kara beamed from the doorway.

“Mayor Snart,” Len mused. “I gotta say, it does have a certain ring to it.”

“So?” said Tommy. “You and I, future business partners. Disbanding our criminal organisations, heading onto the straight and narrow...what do you say?”

Barry was on tenterhooks. He had to strongly resist the urge to start chewing his nails. Praying that Len wouldn’t throw it back in Tommy’s face, having the awful feeling that he might. Tommy’s hand was outstretched, his expression confident.

Len looked down at Tommy’s fingers. For a terrible moment Barry thought he was going to scoff and slap his hand away…

Then Len reached out and took the proffered hand.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” he said. “Just so you know, I’ll be expecting you to make good on your promises. If not...let’s just say I know how to make trouble.”

“I do seem to recall you mentioning a few bodies outside.”

“Yes, sorry about that,” Len said with a remarkable lack of sincerity.

Tommy waved it away. “Write it off and call it collateral. These things happen. I think you and I are going to have a beautiful future together, Mr. Snart.”

“In office,” said Leonard. “Just to confirm. Because the rest of my future is right here beside me.” He tugged Barry close to his side.

“Oh, trust me,” Tommy said. “For that side of things, he’s all yours.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I know things won’t change right away. But for the future…” Once again, he offered Kara his arm.

“To the future,” Len said, tipping his hat.

And with that, Tommy took Kara’s arm and they left without looking back. Mick followed, muttering something about ‘rounding up the boys’ - and then Barry and Leonard were alone in the quiet, and Barry suddenly couldn’t bring himself to look Len in the eye. An uncontrollable smile was threatening to spread across his face.

Len turned to him, caught his chin and tipped his face up. “Penny for your thoughts, Scarlet.”

“I can’t believe that just happened,” Barry said.

“Neither can I,” Len admitted. “Who’d ever have thought Cutter’s kid had a secret hankering to be a white hat? ...What do you think? Me, running for mayor?”

“I think it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard,” Barry admitted. “But...I think you’d be good at it. Bossing people about. That always has kind of been your forte. And as mayor, you could change things around here. I know you couldn’t change the world, but we’d have security. No one could hurt us any more. No more hiding - well. Not as much. And no more rival gangs breathing down our necks.”

“Mm,” Len agreed. “You know, it’s a shame we’re going to have to wait so long...Cutter’s hardly in the prime of his youth, but he ain’t gonna bite the bullet any time soon. It’s unfortunate that killing Tommy's daddy probably wouldn’t do any favours for the future of our partnership.”

“Len!” Outraged, Barry shoved him.

Len grinned. “Just a little joke, Scarlet.”

“Mob humour,” Barry said fondly.

“Precisely. Knew you’d get the hang of it.” Len leaned down to kiss him. “You were right,” he murmured against Barry’s lips. “Swear to god I’ll kill you myself if you ever take a risk like that again...but you were right, Scarlet. There was another way. A better way.”

“Told you,” Barry said, a little smug.

“So you did.” Len put his arms around Barry’s neck. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For not being afraid to stand up to me. For helping me to pull my head out of my ass. Guys like me with an entire gang at their disposal tend to forget how to play by the rules. We aren’t used to being told what to do...but you’ve never been afraid to tell it to me straight. You and I are going to have a totally different life someday. Thanks to you.”

He stepped back a little, his arms sliding free. Confused, Barry tried to move with him. He was starting to get a strange tingling sensation, and he realised that as Kara mentioned, he was starting to be pulled back into the real world. For all his intentions to let go without a fight, a part of him didn’t want to let go. Even though it had only been for a few hours, he’d found a strange kind of security in the arms of Leonard Snart.

But Len gently stepped away from his embrace, backing a short distance away. Barry paused, frowning, wondering what was happening, whether this was part of it. Whether somehow, Len knew.

Then Len opened his mouth and sang,

“ I’ve heard it said,

That people come into our lives for a reason. ”

“Oh God,” said Barry. “Really?”

“ Bringing something we must learn,

And we are led to those

Who help us most to grow, if we let them,

And we help them in return. ”

Barry buried his face in his hands. Random singing might be perfectly normal in this universe, but now he was actually having to suffer through it, it struck him as incredibly embarrassing… and it was Leonard Snart. Singing Wicked. Mortified, Barry hid behind his fingers.

“ Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true - ”

“Please don’t do this,” Barry said. “This is so embarrassing.”

“ But I know I’m who I am today because I knew you…”

Len moved forwards and gently tugged Barry’s hands away from his face. He held them, smiling, with such an uncharacteristically happy look on his face that Barry almost forgot his embarrassment. Forgot to hide his burning cheeks, and the goofy grin he could feel fighting its way onto his face.

This was horrifically cheesy, but he figured...maybe he should just try to enjoy it?

“ Like a comet pulled from orbit,

As it passes a sun,

Like a stream that meets a boulder,

Halfway through the wood.”

“You’d die if the real you could see you right now.”

“ Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?”

Lifting Barry’s hand to his mouth, Len kissed it.

“ But because I knew you, I have been changed for good. ”

The tingling sensation was getting stronger now, a more insistent pull. He didn’t have long left - probably no longer than the duration of the song, and then he was going to have to leave, and never see this Leonard Snart again. Their relationship, from his perspective, had been both short and hectic...but strong. He’d truly felt something for Leonard, in this strange universe. Something more than the interest, the visceral attraction they’d shared back on his earth. There was something more tangible about this, about the way he’d let Leonard love him. Something he knew he wouldn’t forget. He had a feeling that in spite of his determination not to get attached, he was going to miss the strange, sweet relationship he’d had with this fictional figure in an alternate universe in the 1940s.

Barry figured they might as well go out with a bang. Shaking his head in amusement, he took Len’s hands in his and faced him - and then he started to sing, picking up the next verse with a sheepish grin.

“ It well may be,

That we will never meet again in this lifetime,

So let me say before we part,

So much of me is made of what I learned from you,

You’ll be with me,

Like a handprint on my heart. ”

He gripped Len’s hands more tightly, as if to anchor himself in this moment through determination alone. His heart beat faster. His cheeks ached from the force of his smile, and Leonard smiled back at him - something small and private, and theirs.

Lowering his voice, Barry sang softly, “ And now whatever way our stories end,

I know you have rewritten mine by being my… ” He stumbled a little, then figured a little lyric change couldn’t hurt. “Boyfriend… ”

Len’s eyes twinkled.

“ Like a ship blown from its mooring, ” Barry sang, “ By a wind off the sea,

Like a seed dropped by a sky bird in a distant wood,

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better, but

Because I knew you… ”

“ Because I knew you, ” Len sang quietly.

“ I have been changed for good ,” finished Barry, still smiling so hard that it hurt.

Silence fell, then. The tingling sensation was spreading, like his whole body was going to sleep. Not quite pins and needles; it was too gentle for that, too peaceful. A strange lightness, nothing like the sudden violence with which he’d been catapulted into this world. It was as though, having soothed and gentled the story that had been born here, he’d also softened the edges of the doorway he was being pulled through. Or maybe Music Meister was just a little more inclined to be kind, now that he’d followed the script.

Barry didn’t care. He focused on Leonard’s face, knowing that soon it would be gone. He ached for one last kiss, but maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. After all, maybe he wouldn’t be able to stop.

“You’re a good man, Leonard,” he said. “Don’t ever forget that.”

Len smiled and cupped Barry’s cheek with his hand. His thumb danced lightly across Barry’s cheekbone. “With you at my side to remind me, how could I forget?”

Barry managed to smile back. Then, Len leaned in for a kiss.

It was their last kiss, Barry knew, in typical storybook fashion; he clung on for all he was worth, holding Leonard tightly against him. Len returned his embrace with equal fervour, but things were blurring out of focus and Barry was starting to go numb, his whole body reverberating with a strange static fuzz.

Swallowing, he let go.

He was drifting, sliding away into peaceful silence. It wouldn’t last for long, he knew. Leonard was already lost to him, and there was another world waiting for him to come back to. A world of gods and monsters, where music was optional. A world where Leonard Snart was dead and gone, but Iris West was alive, and waiting for him to resume his role as protector...but more importantly, best friend.

In the strange in between space, Barry thought distantly of Kara and Mon El, and whether this experience would have changed anything between them. Certainly he felt wiser for it; he’d have to thank Music Meister for providing such an insight. This was an experience he intended to learn from.

And, with his heart beating rapidly and the sound of his friends’ excited voices in his ears, Barry prepared to return to a world where, he was hoped, everyone and everything could change for the better - even Leonard Snart.

Okay, so my original plan for this was ‘a short one-shot to give me a little break from my huge WIP, probably going to be about 5k.’

Originally I wasn’t sure whether to post this under the alternate earths prompt, but general consensus was that it was a better fit for ‘under the influence’, so...thanks to everyone on tumblr who helped me decide!

Huge thank you for reading, and feedback is always appreciated :D