Coldflash and Legends One-Shots

Pinch Hitter (Rated PG13)

Summary:

While Barry sits alone at Saints and Sinners, waiting for a blind date that's never going to show, he consoles himself with the thought that no one is watching.

Except somebody is. Someone who would normally take great pleasure in watching The Flash squirm.

But not so much this time.

Notes:

Written for the ColdFlashWeek 2016 prompt - Day 3 'Saving Each Other'.

***

Barry looks at the time on his phone. Then he looks at it again. He unlocks the screen and checks for recent messages, but since he has it set to vibrate and he hasn't put his phone down in the last hour, he knows there aren't any. But you never know. One may have slipped by. He might have knocked the volume button by mistake and taken it off vibrate, put it on full silent. He scrolls through his text summary in search of a bolded message, an indicator that there's one he hasn't read.

But no. There's nothing there.

He contemplates calling, but that makes him feel pathetic. They'd been texting nonstop till about an hour ago, when Barry sent the message Am here. Waiting for you.

That's the last message in the conversation thread on his phone.

Nothing else.

Full stop.

Barry looks at the litter on his table – a single glass of ice that once was full of soda; a single basket of fries, half eaten; and a single rose, waiting to be given.

An orgy of evidence that one Barry Allen has just been stood up.

Luckily for him, his plight has gone relatively unnoticed, with the exception of his waitress, who has watched him check his messages obsessively. Who has heard him say, "I'll just give her ten more minutes." Who smiled at him with sympathetic eyes as she refilled his glass without asking, and delivered a plate of unordered cheesecake with the cheery remark, "It's from DaVinci's down the street. On the house."

And why would anyone notice? He's an adult man in a bar, not a teenaged boy sitting in a high school cafeteria, no matter that the anxious racing of his heart makes him feel the same way. No one's watching him, pointing and laughing at him, enjoying every second of his private humiliation.

Well ....

***

Len takes a sip of his second beer. He hadn't intended on having the two. He had ducked in to Saints and Sinners for a last minute meeting with an "associate" and decided to indulge. Regardless of the tacky name, the even tackier sign, and the small town Hoosier motif, this was the only bar in Central City that sold craft beer. The stuff that Mick keeps filling up his fridge with, Len considers piss water. So an occasional IPA really hits the spot, especially after the day he's had. The meeting was short, blissfully short, and though the greasy, wall-eyed man who came to see him, no common sense and all excuses, who had fucked up more times than Len should allow, will live for one more day (provisionally), it's the man sitting not ten feet away that Len is on the wire about.

Not that Len would actually kill Barry Allen. And besides, get rid of The Flash in something as common and uneventful as, say, a bar fight? Where's the fun in that?

Len figured he'd sit tight and wait for the opportunity to needle Barry a little. The man looked like he was on a date, waiting for his guest of honor to arrive. Maybe Len would hold off until the young lady (or gentleman – Len wasn't about to judge Barry on that account) arrived and then casually walk over, see if said date recognized him, and if they didn't, introduce himself as Sam Lane, a friend of the Allen family, maybe even drop a subtle threat.

That was over an hour ago.

Len watches Barry check his phone for the hundredth time as his doe-eyed waitress circles back behind the bar after delivering an apology slice of cheesecake, which Barry doesn't seem all too eager to touch.

"Hey." Len turns on his stool to the waitress busy filling shot glasses with tequila. "What's going on with stretch over there?" he asks, not letting on that he knows Barry's name.

"Oh, him?" the waitress, Candy (because that name couldn't be any more on the nose) replies with a wistful sigh. "I think he's been stood up. Blind date, too. Poor guy. He seems like such a sweetheart."

"You don't say?" Len says.

"Yeah, well, we've all been there, right?" she asks, trying to drum up camaraderie for the jilted man.

Len laughs once, the grin that chases it smug without shame. "Not me."

Candy chuckles guiltily. "Yeah. Me neither."

She puts her glasses on a tray and walks away. Len turns back to Barry, enjoying the last of his beer while watching the show. But with every sip of his drink, Len's smug smile fades.

Barry the super hero, always showing up unannounced, always on Len's case, puts a cramp in Len's style. And that burns Len's ass. But that's professional angst. Barry is the protector of Central City, whether the cretins sitting in this bar know it or not. Whether his lame ass date knows it or not. Maybe Len doesn't have too much respect for quote/unquote do-gooders, especially since most of the ones he's met do good deeds only for looks, but he does have a tiny soft spot for people who put their necks on the line for others, people who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by genuinely caring for other people.

People like his mom.

Plus, if he's being honest with himself, he may have a more than tiny soft spot for Barry Allen, and not in the professional sense.

Barry pushes the plate of cheesecake to the other side of the table, as if its presence is a beacon that other people will see and know he's been stood up, and Len shakes his head.

Barry looks like he's ready to call it a night - get up from his table, pay his tab, then probably go back to S.T.A.R. Labs since he seems to be there more than his own place, wherever that is. It suddenly occurs to Len what a fucking horrible night that will be. His friends probably know where he is, what he's been doing. They'll ask him a hundred questions, and he'll recount this story a hundred times. They'll give him all sorts of awful, cliché advice – give her/him the benefit of the doubt, there are plenty of fish in the sea, that sort of thing. And on top of hating how that sounds (and hating himself for hating it), Len realizes that Barry doesn't deserve that. Because underneath that red suit, he's just a regular guy, looking for companionship.

Being a hero can be a lonely business.

Almost as lonely as being a thief.

Well, if Barry's going to be telling stories, they might as well be interesting.

Len gets up from his stool at the bar just as Barry slips his jacket off the back of his chair and over his arms. Without a word or an invitation, Len sits in the empty seat at the table, picks up a clean fork, and digs in to the slice of cheesecake. Barry stares at Len, dropped jaw clamping shut with a thunk, lips pulling into a tight, indignant line.

"Are you lost, Snart?" Barry snaps as Len devours the last of the cheesecake.

"Not at all," Len answers, putting the fork on the plate and pushing it aside. He grabs the arm of a waitress (not Candy) passing by. She glowers at him, but only for a second. When his slow smile burns on his face, she bites her lower lip and giggles.

"What'll it be?"

"I'll have an IPA," Len says. "And put it on his tab."

"Right away," she says, not even consulting Barry. She gives Len a wink and hurries toward the bar.

"What the hell are you doing?" Barry looks Len up and down as if he's started growing three more heads out of his neck. "And why do you think I'd pay for your beer?"

"Because" – Len sits back in his seat, folding his arms over his chest, looking far more relaxed than Barry with this current situation – "as of now, you and I are on a date."