#and setting

Barry let the man drag him down the stairs, heart in his throat.

Moving helped him stay calm. To focus again. He was so sure he was dead, so sure there was no way out. Now there was. It was almost more nauseating - hope. But he had to stay calm, keep his head clear, wait for an opening.

Getting away from the rest of the crew had to be a good thing. It would be so much easier to run from one guy than four.

But whatever was coming next… he had to keep the conversation going. Couldn’t give away everything. Had to make himself seem useful.

He wished the man – Snart? – didn’t have his arm in a vice grip. His phone was in his pocket and maybe when he wasn’t looking, Barry could call Joe, mute the phone, and Joe would know, and find him.

The night air was cooler when it hit him the second they got out of the warehouse, not much lighter here on the other side where Snart had parked his… motorcyle?

“Uhhh…” Barry started, the first of them to break the silence, startled into stopping when Snart made a beeline for the only vehicle in sight. He wondered for a second where the other guys had parked.

Snart stopped and glanced at him. It wasn’t much lighter out here than in the warehouse even with the ambient city light and Barry couldn’t make out the details of his expression all that well, but he was pretty sure it was either impatient, amused, or pissed. Hard to say.

“Don’t even think of trying anything.”

Right, he should be - Barry tensed, ready to bolt but the man had him up against a wall in a second, hand on his chest, gun out.

“I just said –”

“I didn’t!”

“You were going to.”

Barry swallowed thick. Negotiating with them man who was going to kill him anyway.

In his back pocket, his phone started to ring and vibrate.

Both of their eyes widened as one. Barry almost forgot to breathe, heart hammering in his chest. Snart moved and Barry whipped into action, throwing his bodyweight against the man and getting all of four steps away before Snart was on him with a snarl and Barry’s face was against the wall this time, stucco digging into his cheek as he swore. Snart grabbed and twisted his arm to get his wrist away from his back pocket where he was reaching for his phone.

Snart pulled it out for him. Barry was breathing heavy, waiting. 

“Looks like it went to voicemail.”

Barry swallowed. “Who…”

Somewhere behind him, his captor snorted. “Does it matter?”

It did to him. “Please?”

There was silence for a moment, before he heard, “someone named Iris, according to your contacts.”

Barry felt his body sag, not even sure if it was in relief or disappointment. It wasn’t Joe. But fuck, it was Iris. His best friend. Who was probably worried about the fight he’d had with Joe.

He heard a rustle and then he was being hauled off the wall. Snart kept the gun out for compliance as he dragged him over to the bike. He was tempted to fight but was sure it wasn’t the right time. Snart had his arm like a vice and even if he could pull off some badass manoeuvre and run, Snart seemed plenty fast on his own.

“What’s your name?” Barry asked.

“Trying to build a case?” he seemed grim and Barry winced. The answer was yes, but -

“No! Just - just want something to call you.” Everyone told him he looked innocent.

The man snorted. “I know you heard it. Playing dumb won’t get you anywhere. Neither will trying to outsmart me. Or trying to run. Let me make something clear before you get any more ideas, Barry. You run, you fight, you call for help - you don’t live to tomorrow.”

He shivered at the ice in the man’s voice, dread filling him despite the counterfactual here. “Does that mean there’s some version of this where I do live to tomorrow?”

In his field of vision again, Snart looked amused, tilting his head to the side. “Let’s see how the chips fall, hm?”

He got Barry on the bike ahead of him. It was dangerous and uncomfortable, hands still tied behind his back. He tensed his thighs hard around the body of the machine under him and clutched the fabric of Snart’s shirt to hold on. Snart had him boxed in by his arms but he felt far from secure, and was unspeakably relieved that the man didn’t go fast, or far.

He really did take them down to the docks.

Barry shuddered when the bike purred to a stop but they didn’t get off immediately.

Snart was right behind him. “Ready to talk?”

Barry let out a half-gargled laugh, his anxiety seeping into it, suddenly fighting back tears. “Jesus, what’d you even want from me?”

The man finally moved off the bike but had his gun out in a second, trained again on Barry. “Off, c’mon.”

Barry obliged.

He walked them to an alley not far from the water, in between a close cafe and a spare parts shop. 

“What I want,” he said finally, when he had Barry up against a wall and Barry’s uncertainty was reaching a peak, “is an assurance. That no one else is going to come poking around that warehouse, or that your little murder investigation doesn’t get traced back to me and my pals.”

Barry wanted to cry. “I can’t- I can’t do that. I don’t have the power to–”

“The chemical you traced to the warehouse, how do we assure ourselves it’s not on us, forensically speaking?”

“Just throw out your clothes, shower, it’s not that complicated.” He sounded so strained.

“And your detective?”

“He’ll follow up with the warehouse but I don’t - I can’t tell if he’ll find anything of yours!”

“You’ll process the scene?”

“Not if there’s not scene to process!”

He glanced away, down the alley. Joe’s voice was in his head, years of warnings to be careful, to not go off on his own, to not run away. He’d been so stupid.

And the serial killer was probably right in front of him, demanding all the information he’d need to cover his tracks.

“Tell me, Barry, how many murders’ve there been?”

Barry should be lying. He could feed him false-information and make it easier for the cops to find him, not harder. He should be lying but he was so bad at it unless he planned in it advance or dodged the question. With a man like Snart, there was no dodging the question. But this information, telling him how close or far the cops might be…

Was he ready to betray the investigation for the man most likely responsible for the murders?

“Barry?”

Would it even matter?

He closed his eyes and forcibly willed down the fear with a deep inhale before he kept talking. “Three prostitutes. One of them one was male. One of the women had the chemical under her nails. The detectives weren’t sure to connect the cases but the evidence…” he glanced down. “The killer is taking trophies. Staging the bodies.”

“A real psycho,” Snart said, sounding sardonic. Barry didn’t know a lot about profiling, but the derision with which he said it… he didn’t know what to think. 

Everything he’d said so far was going to come out in the press in a day or two anyway, other than the chemical part which he’d already spilled the beans on. Except that he wasn’t given the whole truth. There was a fourth victim. Not that Joe was willing to count the one Barry thought was part of the case yet. The forensics were there, but the link wasn’t, not in terms of victimology. It was a woman who worked at that warehouse they’d just been in, a few years back when it was still in business. She wasn’t staged like the other victims, no trophies taken, but she was strangled. It was a crime of passion, then. Maybe the killer’s first.

He swallowed. “Untie my hands.”

“Excuse me?”

“You asked me to give you information that could lose me my entire career, I want some assurance I might not die.”

He had a pocket knife out in a blink, lips twitching up. “Cute.”

Barry tensed, wondering how bad it would hurt to be stabbed, but the knife went behind him and Snart didn’t need to see his binds to cut through them, apparently. He did get awful close, though, and Barry was starting to suspect he was doing it on purpose. The way he’d touched Barry’s neck and wrists, earlier - just like he was right now, fuck. A caress against his pulse point. He shivered and Snart withdrew, stepped back.

Barry swallowed and brought his hands forward, cradling them, rubbing circulation back into his fingers. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Snart was staring at his hands and Barry looked away. “Tell me, how long apart were the deaths?”

He couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why do you care so much Snart?”

“So you do know my name.”

Barry rolled his eyes heavenward. Like they were playing a game. The man with the gun and knife and who the hell knew how many other weapons who’d crowded Barry into a creepy alley by the docks to murder him was acting like they were playing a game.

“If you killed them all, you already know how far apart the victims died and the only reason you even care is so you can cover your tracks and I’m not gonna make it easier on – “

“I didn’t,” he snapped, angry, finger up like he was admonishing. “Murdering call girls isn’t my style, Barry. I’m a thief, and not a good man, but not a serial killer.”

He desperately wanted to believe that was true, if only for his own well being. But, “Why should I believe that?”

“Why would I lie if I were just going to kill you? Wouldn’t I reveal my grand plan and watch you suffer?”

Barry tensed, for some godforsaken reason. If Snart really wasn’t behind any of this… “Then why am I even here? Unless… unless you just don’t want to kill me?”

Snart’s eyes narrowed and he took a step forward. “Make no mistake, Barry, I’m capable of it. But you’re proving… useful.” His eyes flicked down Barry’s frame and he felt like a piece of meat. 

“I’m not going to give you information. I’m not some mole.”

He tilted his head. “Consider your bargaining chips here.”

“I think I’m alive because you wanted to cover your tracks and now you’ve done that.”

“You’re alive because there’s heat involved with killing a badge, especially one who’s dad’s a detective. A detective who’s already going to be looking for clues in the right places.” His voice dropped low a moment later, less sardonic and cruel. “If you give me a reason to keep you around, I just might take it.”

Could it really be as simple as that? Barry tried to study Snart, but he was so close, keeping Barry boxed in, too close for him to run unless he wanted to tussle again but he was still tempted. He swallowed.

“What’d’you want from me, Snart?”

He tilted his head, meeting Barry’s gaze. “Keep the heat off me.”

He let out a half-laugh and on instinct, moved a hand up to drag through his hair. Snart tensed at his sudden move and Barry half-expected the knife in his gut but it never came. Snart was looking at him too intensely.

“If I say no, you’ll kill me?”

“Unless you have something else to offer me. It has to be worth the risk of keeping you alive and able to squeal. Otherwise, you’re as good as dead.” He was deadly serious and then, a second later, a smirk pulled at his lips. “Which would be a shame, really.” His eyes were on Barry’s lips again and he swallowed.

Bargaining chips.

Snart was in his space and Barry had to decide, fast and sudden, if he thought sleeping with Snart might help him get through this, and if he was willing to do it if it would.

It turned out that the answer to both of those things was ‘yes’.

He leaned forward and closed the barely-extant gap between their lips, inhaling sharp and deep when they connected. For a horrible, dizzying second, he thought he was wrong, that he read Snart wrong. But he wasn’t. Snart kissed Barry back. 

In a second he had Barry back against the wall hard, brick grinding into his back as the man cupped his face and slotted their bodies together and Barry took it. He kissed Snart and opened his mouth to let his tongue inside, responding in kind. He didn’t even know where the knife or gun had gone, only that Snart’s hands were bare and far too close to his trachea, so he kept kissing, gasping when Snart raked his teeth over his lower lip.

He also started to shake. Body trembling. His hands fisted Snart’s sweater over his biceps, anything to hold onto, willing himself to just do whatever Snart asked of him.

After breathless moments of being kissed, Snart pulled back first. One of his hands had made its way to Barry’s hair and his throat constricted to quell the rising tide of nerves.

“You’re shaking.”

He made some noise and managed to push words out. “That’s what people do when they’re scared.”

Snart thumbed his cheek. “What a shame.”

“What?” Barry opened his eyes. Snart’s gaze flicked to his lips and back to his eyes. 

“You’re only doing this because it’s life and death, I take it?”

Did Snart need him to pretend to want it? Could he? “If you need me to - I can pretend I–”

Snart put his thumb over Barry’s lips and stepped back, the heat of his body leaving a sudden cool in its wake in all the spots they suddenly weren’t connected.

“Some people get off on the thrill – danger, adrenaline. Thought you might be there with me.”

Oh. Barry didn’t want to poke the man with the gun, but he couldn’t help but indignantly snap back, “why the hell would I want to sleep with the guy who keeps promising to kill me?”

He was fully out of Barry’s space now, hands entirely to himself, and he seemed to actually concede the point, nodding halfway to the side, gaze flicking around like he was… less angry, more entertained. The rejection didn’t seem to phase him all that much.

“Fair,” his voice was so nasal, “but you can’t pretend you don’t have a fear-boner, Barry.”

He glanced down. Shit. That was… awkward. And embarrassing. And new. But Snart kept talking before Barry could start to have an existential crisis about hi body’s betrayal.

“We’re left at a crossroads, though.”

He glanced up. Snart was back to cold, and calculating, just as flat as he’d been in the warehouse, all the heat and humor of a moment ago gone in an instant.

“You don’t have to kill me.”

“You’ve seen my face, you know my name.” He paused. “Isn’t this the part where you promise not to tell?”

“Is it? Would you believe me?”

“… no.”

“You’re not the Midtown Murderer.”

“I’m not.”

“Then… I don’t care. Who you are. What you are. You won’t use that warehouse again and unless another victim gets linked back to you, there’s no reason why…”

“Why?”

He glanced at his feet, wrong and right suddenly twisting up inside him. “Why I would need to even tell anyone about tonight. Just a private citizen who ran into a man with a gun and didn’t report it. Happens all the time.”

“And your detective dad?”

Barry’s eyebrows drew together. “My real dad’s an innocent man in prison. I don’t tell everything to Joe.”

There was a low whistle. “Now all of this… I almost do believe you, Barry.”

He met Snart’s gaze. “I won’t tell anyone I found you there. You won’t kill me and dump me in the river. And if… if something happens with this case that implicates you…”

“You’ll what?”

His resolve hardened. There were still some things he wouldn’t do. “I’ll bring you in.”

The man laughed. Actually laughed. “I’d almost like to see you try. But know this.” His voice lost any mirth and he was in Barry’s space but there was nothing sexual, or even sensual about it. It was pure threat. “I know your name. Your friend Iris. Your foster father detective. If I have any reason to, Barry - I won’t start with you. I’ll start with them.”

He stayed stock still. When Snart finally left his space, his jaw was so tense it hurt.

“Do we have a deal?”

“Yeah,” he rasped, thinking of Iris, of Joe. “We do.”

. 

. 

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[i’m sure this is getting darker than some people were wanting/expecting, but with this kind of setup, that’s pretty much the only place I knew to take it. not to mention i’ve been kind of craving a noir feel recently, and I miss a cold version of Cold. I like to be the one to thaw the bastard out through a story haha, so I don’t always use the version where canon’s already done that for me.