Title: A Nice King
Fandom: The Flash (2014)
Rating: NC-17
Length: 2500 words
Content notes: Barry Allen/Captain Cold (Leonard Snart); dubious consent (implications of blackmail); semi-public sex; lack of condoms; casual use of homophobic epithets. All that said, still pretty silly.
Author notes: idek
Summary: Barry needs to move past forensics and into psychology. This is probably not the way to do that.


When he gets home after work, there's something wrong with his room. The bed is made, for one thing. His old Tony Hawk poster has been replaced with one of snowboarding legend Noah Salasnek (or so the text says; Barry wouldn't know him from Adam).

On his neatly made bed, tied up with a blue ribbon, there's a bottle of Inniskillin Vidal Sparkling Icewine 2013. The tag says to keep it chilled.

Barry stands stockstill for a moment, his hands opening and closing.

It's one thing to know that Snart knows who he is.

It's another thing entirely to know that he was *here*.

Tidying up and leaving presents?

-

The last time he tried to get into Saints & Sinners, one guy called him a narc and the bartender confiscated his entirely legal driver's license as a fake ID. So this time Barry helps himself to some of Joe's pomade, tries to comb back his hair, and whooshes over to borrow a red cardigan from Iris's closet. The sweater is too small, but it makes him look more like a hipster and less like what another charming patron had called him, "a junior high AV club dweeb".

At least he thinks so.

Snart squints up at the mirror over the bar. "There's twinks, there's rough trade, and then there's you. What is this, twink rumspringa? Gay Mormon mission?"

He hops up onto the stool next to Snart. "What do you want, Snart?"

"Make yourself comfortable," Snart says without looking at him, his tone as dead and sarcastic as ever. "Stay awhile."

Barry thunks down the bottle of wine before Snart. "Thanks for this, but I don't drink."

Snart motions for a refill on his highball. "Everyone drinks."

"Not me."

"Pure as the driven snow, is that it?" Snart doesn't turn, but looks at him out of the corner of his eye.

Barry toys with a stir stick shaped like a pirate's cutlass. "I just don't."

"And yet here you are, in a bar, all dressed up. Some might call that interesting."

"Seriously," Barry says. "Wait. Dressed up?"

"Well." Snart lifts his chin, looking at Barry in the mirror again. "For you, I suppose this counts."

"It's not a parka and steampunk goggles, no," Barry says, grinning. "But I try."

"Try harder," Snart tells him.

This conversation is getting away from him. Barry's better with forensics, physical evidence, not psychology. He's not a detective, or a journalist. He's going to have to get better at understanding people if he wants to be any good at this.

"But seriously," Barry says. "Don't break into my room, okay?"

Snart drinks down to the ice. When he swallows, his Adam's apple bobs a couple times in his long throat. After setting down the glass, he cuts Barry a glance. "I go where I like."

"Don't go in my *house*."

"Another one of your rules, Mr. Allen?" Snart turns a little, hand gripping the edge of the bar; his knee knocks Barry's leg. "So many conditions."

"Just don't. It's --"

"Cool," Snart says. He pats Barry's thigh; his hand is pretty big. Strong-looking. "Very cool."

Barry swallows. "What do you want, Snart?"

Snart turns back, dragging his hand down Barry's thigh. "I miss Mick," he says. "There. Now you know my secret."

"That's not..." Barry shakes his head. "Forget it."

"So I got to thinking. Leonard, I said to myself, you're a smart man. A clever man. One might even say a *brilliant* man --"

Barry snorts.

"Quiet, kid. So I'm thinking about this...problem of mine, and a solution occurs to me."

"Leave town and go find the pyro?"

Snart lifts his glass and shakes it a little to make the ice cubes rattle. "Better."

Barry waits. And waits some more. But Snart is immobile, patient as anything, and Barry realizes that he *isn't*. "So what's your solution?"

"What do you know about balance, Mr. Allen?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Yin and yang. Ebb and flow. Light and dark. *Balance*."

"Um," Barry says. "It's integral to many cosmologies?"

"Indeed." Snart spins around again, suddenly, hand coming down to grab Barry's shoulder. "It's *vital*."

He's leaning in, staring at Barry, blue eyes narrowed and intense. The silver in his hair catches the light from a string of Christmas lights over the bar.

Barry tries to hold still. He can't, not entirely. Snart seems to realize that, loosening his hold a fraction and starting to smile as Barry trembles.

"So it's vital," Barry says hoarsely. "That's nice, I guess?"

"Don't make fun of me," Snart says, his voice going even lower, rougher. He digs his fingers into Barry's shoulder and Barry is aware, suddenly and clearly, of how the bones articulate in the joint, of every tendon and muscular attachment point.

"I wasn't. I'm sorry."

Snart smiles again, if that tight, mean smirk can actually be called a smile. "You're a good influence on me."

"Yeah? Somehow I doubt that."

"No, you are. Challenging me, setting conditions. You're making me better. Levelling me up."

"That's. That's nice," Barry says, catching himself too late. He already said that. He doesn't know what the hell to say here. He sounds like a dork. And what does he care, anyway, if he's a dork in front of *Captain Cold*?

"Want to repay the favour," Snart tells him, and his hand's slipping up Barry's shoulder, to his neck. Barry goes rigid and Snart shakes his head. "Sssh. Chillax."

He can't help it; Barry snickers at the word. What is this, Bill & Ted's Excellent 25th Reunion?

"Have a proposal for you," Snart continues. He's all the way up in Barry's space now, parka creaking and rustling. "Think it's mutually beneficial."

"Are you --" Barry licks his lips and swallows. Everything's so *dry*. "Are you blackmailing me? Because I don't have anything to give you, dude. Like. I'm a municipal employee. We're not even in a union!"

"That's not good," Snart replies. He's massaging the junction of Barry's neck and shoulder, lightly but *well*. Really well. "You've got to have a union. Have to look out for one another."

"I *know*, but --" Barry shakes his head. He's getting off-topic. It's just, he realizes, really nice to talk to someone who knows about him. Not everything, but more than a lot of people. And unlike the guys at S.T.A.R. and Joe, Snart's not about to tell Barry how to do his job.

This guy's a murderer. A thief and a murderer and Barry needs to *focus*.

"What's your proposal?" he asks finally, sagging a little.

"Hmm?" Snart cocks his head. "Oh, that. I find I'm missing a distinct sort of presence in my life. Things are out of balance, you could say. That's where you come in."

"I'm not --"

"Yin and yang," Snart continues as if Barry had never spoken. "Light and dark, saint and sinner. Hot and cold."

Barry bites his lip. Snart rubs his neck a little more firmly, thumb digging in just right against that perpetual knot he carries from hunching over the microscope.

"I'm not a criminal," Barry says.

Snart looks surprised: that's kind of cool. He managed to surprise Snart.

But Snart quickly composes himself, finger-combing the back of Barry's hair and smirking. "No, you're not. But your...*skills* can still be put to good use."

Barry's trying to make sense of that when Snart pulls away and pushes himself off the stool to his feet. He says, very low, "Back room, three minutes. One hundred eighty seconds."

Hands in his pockets, Snart ambles away without a second glance.

Barry has to pay his tab. Of course he does. At least it gives him something to do in the midst of the utter confusion Snart left him in.

That's a lie. He's not confused. He knows exactly what Snart's asking for, proposing, whatever you want to call it. Barry can be the oblivious, easily flustered dork whenever he needs to be, but he's the only one here. He doesn't have to hide, not if he doesn't want to.

He just doesn't know *what* he wants.

No, that's a lie, too.

Barry rolls his head, loosening his neck, seeking the sense memory of Snart's hand, the warmth he'd sent through the muscles. Right, he's going to do this. This can't be any more foolish than anything else he's done lately. Maybe it even makes a kind of sense.

Balance, and all that.

He's going to lose his gay virginity in the back of a dive bar, to a criminal with a *theme*. Nothing about this makes sense, come *on*.

-

"One time," Barry's saying as he pushes in the door labelled "Saints". He thinks it's the ladies' washroom. It smells like flowers over bleach over grossness. "Just one time and --"

Snart's flattened against the wall, foot out, and he trips Barry as soon as he gets inside.

"Fmmmmmfff!" Barry hits the floor, starts to push himself up, but Snart puts his foot on the small of his back and kicks him down.

"There we go," Snart says and he sounds, of all things, *satisfied*. "Look real good like this, you know that?"

Barry glares up at him. "I could get up."

Snart almost grins at him. That's a lot of white teeth. "I know. Just like the view. Makes a guy nostalgic."

He remembers writhing in the mud at the train derailment, the ice somehow *burning* inside him. "You're crazy."

"Nah," Snart says and lifts his foot away. "Sentimental, yes."

Barry scrambles to his knees, then looks around. There's not much room in here; it's crowded with a toilet and sink and very smeary mirror. But it's not quite as dirty as he would have expected, which is nice.

"One time," Barry says, lifting himself onto the closed toilet lid. "I don't think -- this shouldn't be, like. A regular thing."

"Why, Mr. Allen," Snart says, leaning against the wall and uncrossing his arms. "You may overestimate yourself."

"No, I don't think so." Barry looks up at Snart, lets himself really *see* the guy - widow's peak, mean handsome face, big frame and lean muscle - and smiles. "What do you miss about Rory, anyway?"

"Heat," Snart says. He pushes himself off the wall, sort of flowing forward to close the short distance between them. "Fire. Red."

"That's his schtick, yeah," Barry says, but shuts up when Snart's *right* in front of him. He pinches Barry's chin, tilting back his head, thumb stroking Barry's lower lip.

"Mouth," Snart concludes and pushes his thumb in. Like punctuation, full-stop.

Barry's mouth is, somehow, ready for this. He didn't think he was, but maybe his body was, as usual, way ahead of him? Because his whole mouth is sort of...*molding* around Snart's thumb, sucking it deeper, feeling it scrape and press against his tongue before his tongue flutters and wraps around the big second knuckle.

"Hmm," Snart says.

Barry looks up at him. Heat, he thinks. *Friction*.

He vibrates his tongue, just a little, faster than anyone else could, and watches Snart's eyes widen and mouth open a little.

"Yes," Snart says finally and Barry lets his lips shudder and vibrate, too, and now Snart's finally, *finally* moving, yanking open his belt buckle with one hand and jerking himself out, running the head of his cock all over Barry's face, smearing and warming, and the whole time, Barry's swallowing around Snart's thumb.

He's really good at this! This is *awesome*.

"You're blushing," Snart tells him and pinches the top curve of Barry's left ear. "*Crimson*."

That could deflate him, Barry thinks, but he doesn't give himself time for that to happen. Instead, he grabs the fabric of Cold's pants, right over his thighs, and sinks down, mouth first, on Cold's straining cock.

Okay, this is a lot more than a thumb. *A lot*. And it moves weird, all these internal twitches and slipping skin, and the *heat* of it, the taste, isn't something Barry had expected. But it's essentially the same thing, right? Lots of vibrating tongue, thrumming lips and cheeks, swallowing and swallowing all the spit that's suddenly flooding his mouth. Like his body likes the taste, the sensation, stretching and burning; like he's *hungry* for this.

Snart tugs on Barry's ear, tips his head back more, and then braces his hand on the wall over Barry's head. He's grunting a little, which sounds more like Heat Wave than himself, and thrusting really fast. Barry knows fast, and speeds everything up, feels his face almost blur out as Snart's balls slap his neck.

"Christ," Snart says, once, precisely, then holds Barry's head with both hands and *surges* forward in one long thrust that fills Barry's throat, chokes off his air. He wheezes, panicking, then remembers to slow, to take it easy, and Snart's come slides down his throat, out the corners of his lips, and -- holy *cow*.

"Holy *cow*," he says aloud, wiping his mouth, blinking fast.

"You got moves, kid," Snart says. "Got some *good* moves."

Barry's wheezing and coughing but still nods gratefully. He's still *polite*, all things considered. He tries to smile, though his mouth is weirdly kind of numb and also sticky-gross, and says, "Thanks."

"Really takes the edge off." Snart's tucking himself back in his pants, and running some water over his hands. He bends over to tie his shoe, hitching up his cuff, and his socks are baby blue, decorated with images of the wizard-king guy, the one with a long white beard, from Adventure Time.

"Nice socks," Barry says. Snart shoots him a glare and Barry holds up his hands. "No, I mean it."

"Other one has the penguin," Snart says, showing him. "My sister gave 'em to me."

"Cool," Barry says. This is weird. Small talk and blow jobs and he's about seven million times harder in his pants than he's ever felt. He bobs his head, nodding, trying to stay casual. "Cool, cool."

Snart runs one hand over his hair, adjusts the hood of his parka, and catches Barry's eye in the mirror. "Something like that, sure."

He's halfway out the door when Barry speeds past him and blocks his way. "Where are you going?"

"People to rob, plans to concoct," Snart says. "You know how it is."

"But --" Barry doesn't know how to say it. What about me? sounds so whiny. "We had a deal."

"Blue balls. Fits the theme, don't you think?"

"Come on, Snart --"

Snart pats Barry's shoulder reassuringly. "You can take care of it. I believe in you."

"But --"

"Til next time, Blush," Snart says, stepping around Barry and walking away.

"One time! This was one time!" Barry shouts.

"We both know that isn't true," Snart says just as he turns the corner and disappears.

This, Barry thinks, *this* is why you can't trust criminals.