Coldflash and Legends One-Shots

Racking Up Points (Rated PG13)

Summary:

Len following Barry around Central City started out as surveillance, a way to learn The Flash's secrets. But the more time Len spent following Barry, the more he got it into his head to start helping Barry out here and there ... so Barry would end up owing him one. Yup. That's the reason.

Notes:

Originally written for the ColdFlash Week 2016 prompt 'saving each other'.

***

Following The Flash wasn't supposed to become a past time for Len. It had started out as research. Strategy. Barry Allen was Len's only real roadblock to getting anything done in Central City, and now that Len had decided to extend his stay, he needed to know how to defeat him. Len had already learned two of Barry's biggest weaknesses – his compassion for others and his secret identity. But those were no longer leverage enough. Len had to really wedge himself underneath Barry's skin like a splinter, become a permanent presence, but not as a simple adversary. He had to evolve into something that would spark Barry's interest.

A pet project.

Len had to constantly blur the line between good and evil, be ambiguous enough in Barry's eyes that no matter what he did, Barry would see him as redeemable.

That way, Barry would always give him another chance.

But following The Flash around had become fun. When Barry wasn't in the midst of a battle, performing superhuman stunts and flinging witty one-liners, he was actually a bit of a klutz. In the time since Len had started chasing him down, he'd watched Barry smack into more flagpoles, trip over more air, and destroy more asphalt than Len thought humanly possible.

If Barry wasn't a superhero, Central City would be shaking him down for millions in repair costs.

Len kind of regretted not recording all of Barry's foul ups and uploading them to YouTube. He could sell his videos to the news stations and make some serious bank. And with the amount of conspiracy theorists trolling the Internet, searching for clues to The Flash's secret identity, maybe he could start a subscription only service and live off the residuals. Then he could hang up his cold gun for good.

If anything, it could be a way to transition Lisa out of this life of crime he'd unintentionally initiated her into. She could be the face in front of the camera, talking before the clips, and Len could work behind the scenes, providing the content.

The only downside was that if anyone found out that the recordings came from Len, they might stop seeing him as a credible threat and start seeing him as a fanboy. He'd have to quit crime altogether, possibly join Team Flash, and fight for truth, justice, and the American way.

Len chuckled at the absurdity. Like that could ever happen. Still, in another life, it might be something to think about.

For being a superhero with a secret identity, who performed secret experimentation in a secret lab, The Flash wasn't that difficult to find. It didn't matter that Len hadn't finished high school, which Dr. Snow kindly kept reminding the members of their team. It didn't take a lot of intelligence to use a screwdriver and a soldering iron. Or to buy a police scanner and a drone. S.T.A.R. Labs had their fingerprints on tech all over the city. Even with the cheap, electronic devices readily available to the average thirteen-year-old who'd swiped their parents' credit card, tracking S.T.A.R. Labs wasn't rocket science.

The trick was not to let them know that Len was watching. The second they knew, they'd find a way to knock him out, and then he'd have to start over from scratch. But by then, they might up their game. Len wasn't afraid of a challenge. He was always up for improving his skill set. But there was no reason to make things harder than necessary.