#coldwest

I haven't done one in ages so i thought [mariah carey voice] IT'S TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMEEEEEEEE. These are my fave fics from 2024 + two or three I read in 2025 already but I wanted to include them :)

Writing game: post the last line you wrote and tag someone for every word in that line

Never mind her dad and his gun. Iris is going to kill Leonard herself.

Coldwestallen As a Romantic Comedy • While You Were Sleeping

Leonard Snart is an aspiring con-man and a thief. He comes to the Motorcar every day to listen to the police radios and learn the response times of the precinct, and to flirt with Barry, the cute (but oblivious) guy who always comes in to eat his lunch at the same time as Len. Len may have have accidentally-on-purpose bumped into him a couple times… but he's always stopped short of actually asking him out.

On Christmas Day, Len rescues Barry from the Central City "L" train after muggers push him onto the tracks. He accompanies the comatose Barry to the hospital, where he overhears a nurse mutter that Barry is both an orphan and also the sole heir to the Allen family fortune. Len manages to get his hands on Barry's personal effects by pretending to be Barry's fiance to the staff, hoping that cleaning out the rich stranger's bank account will solve all of his problems.

Unfortunately for him, Len hadn't accounted for Barry's loving, caring, and close-knit foster family, the Wests, and has to invent an entirely imagined relationship with this stranger when he's introduced to them as Barry's soon-to-be husband. Len has to be very careful not to arouse their suspicions if he wants his plan to succeed and agrees to come spend a belated Christmas with the Wests. But there's a catch: Barry has a gorgeous foster sister, Iris, who knows something's a little off.

Iris has just come back to town for the holidays and hasn't seen Barry since he confessed his feelings for her a little over six months ago. Before Barry fell into a coma, she was planning on telling him that she hadn't stopped thinking about him and that she was ready to give this thing between them a shot. Sick with worry over Barry, and suspicious and maybe jealous of Len, she is determined to find out more about Barry's strange fiance. As she gets to know him, however, Iris soon realizes that there's more to Len than meets the eye…

Lila: coldflash!!! I love it. Coldflash and coldwave are my two favorite ships. Coldflash has so many great possibilitys and their dynamic is awesome. They balancing each other out. I would have loved to see Barry and Len on a different earth beeing together. Just imagine Earth1-Barry‘s reaction to it. 😝

they both come from cop families, but whereas iris really seems to have faith in the institution to the point where she wanted to become a part of it, len is so obviously vehemently against the police force and everything it stands for (clearly the superior take, sorry iris), and both of their worldviews have been influenced by their fathers. lewis was a dirty cop who had the system work against him, whereas joe was a huge believer in that system up until season... 7? 8? i lose track, whatever season it was that they had him quit the CCPD

then there's the fact that both len and iris had a parent who was an addict—again, it's affected them both in very different ways. lewis was in and out of len's life, generally for the worse, he was actively abusive and physically hurt him, i believe it's implied largely due to his alcoholism? meanwhile, iris's mom was actively neglectful on at least one occasion to the extent that she put both their lives at risk (also this defo contradicts canon but i headcanon that iris knew damn well that francine didn't tragically pass away due to illness—six years old is more than old enough to remember a seriously traumatic life-threatening event like having to call 911 to save her overdosing mother during a potentially lethal housefire).

again, that's a very different trauma to having a present abusive father with a violent streak, but. neither of them had a mom growing up. we do love mommy issues, i know the show focuses more on len's daddy issues but he defo has mommy issues as well. i wish they'd addressed even vaguely what happened to both len and lisa's moms—the most obvious explanation is that they both left to escape lewis's abuse, but then neither of them tried to take the kids? len also briefly mentions a grandfather in one ep—i believe the grandfather played a more prominent role in his life in the comics, kinda wish they'd gone more into that relationship in the show as well