@hawkstincan Okay I got an idea while I was trying to get to sleep a few nights ago haha so time to give you my Answer: Part Two (Electric Boogaloo)
Space AU × Flirting Under Fire for Coldflash
Okay so my brain is stuck on Discovery with the newest season coming to an end, so I give you Michael!Barry and Book!Len (kind of). Spoilers for season 3 episode 1 of Star Trek: Discovery (and before), though I change details to match the characters (and the prompt) better.
Under a read more because it got long (I started it one day and then finished it days later)
When Barry lands in the future, he is alone. He doesn't truly realize this until after he's crawled out of the dirt where he'd crash-landed. After he's celebrated the presence of life in this new future. After he sent his father's suit back into the wormhole to destroy itself. It's not until he tries to contact his crew (his family) only to receive silence in return that he realizes the truth that brings him to his knees.
He’s succeeded in his mission, but he is alone.
Alone in an unfamiliar place, with no idea of the customs of the time or what to do now that he has no purpose, no mission to accomplish or people to save (devastation to take blame for).
Except he does have a mission. He can't give up on his crew, he can't give up on the Waverider. On Cisco and Caitlin and Iris and Joe and Wally and everyone that refused to just go home and stay in their time with their families--who followed him to the future.
He knows they're here.
They have to be.
. . . Because he doesn't think he can survive in this time without them.
Step one: find a comms system with a further reach. Maybe the ship he crashed into when he exited the wormhole will have one? He can see smoke rising into the sky over the hills of dirt. He tries to rise from his slouched crouch, but his body doesn’t listen to him at first.
"Stand up," he tells himself. "Walk," he commands his tired, aching legs.
So he walks.
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Len's not having the best day. First his heist doesn't go quite to plan and Santini's ship rains hell on his own (or tries to--Len's ship, the Rogues Galley, is much smaller and more maneuverable than Santini's clunky cruiser), then something person-sized collides with his ship flying outta some unnatural wormhole and causes them to crash into Hima, and now a tall and lanky form in a strange, body-fitting red suit with a small gold and red pack and a holster is creeping up on his ship.
He hits a button on his wrist control to cloak the Galley, making the scarlet stranger pause and cock their head. Len takes advantage of their confusion to launch an attack.
When the other turns around, dodging Len's strike with surprising ease and speed, he gets a glimpse of sweat-slicked brown hair and bright, intelligent green eyes before he's on the stranger again, not giving the other a moment to get closer to his ship. After giving Len a kick that knocks him back a step, the stranger raises their hands and looks at him with pleading eyes.
"I don't want to fight you!" Their voice is a calm baritone with an edge of panic and desperation. But he's been tricked before by a harmless appearance (and he's used the trick himself once or twice), and he refuses to put away his knife.
"You're not taking my cargo," Len sneers, circling the possible thief until the Galley is to his own back. "Just cause you knocked my baby outta the sky, don't think I'll just roll over and let you steal from me."
"What, cargo?" They do a good job of looking innocently confused, shaking their head in denial. "I'm not interested in any cargo. My name is--"
"Don't care," Len cuts the stranger off. Names are personal, and he's not looking to get close to anyone. He still has his knife pointed at the stranger.
"I don't want to fight you," the other repeats.
"If you really don't, then why don't you put that phaser in your pocket on the ground and step back?" He smirks. "Or are you just happy to see me?"
That gets a cute blush to work its way over the other's cheeks. It's almost bright enough to match that garish suit. But the stranger does pull their phaser (an old, antiquated model) out slowly and place it on the dirt, taking a step back. Good.
Len steps up to the antique, watching the other's reaction. Though they look nervous, they're not rushing over or pulling out any other weapons. Len pockets his knife and picks the phaser up, flipping it around and presenting it handle-first to the stranger. They look a little surprised, but take it with a grateful look and holster it again.
"You'd best get out of here," Len warns, feeling generous. "The Gorn ripping apart two light-years' worth of subspace means any info on artificial wormholes can net someone a tidy profit."
"The Gorn did what?" The stranger asks, piquing Len's suspicion even more. There's no one alive today that doesn't know about the Schism.
"You're not from around here, are you," Len states more than asks, sharp eyes focused on the brunette. "I suggest you move along home now; you're in over your head."
Those green eyes turn somber as the other replies, "I can't."
And Len hears the cracking of ice around his heart.
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Barry doesn't know why he trusted Len to hold his end of the deal. He’d already suspected that the man was a thief, even if he calls himself a “Courier”. He shouldn’t be surprised when the stasis beam wraps around his body and Len reveals he’d lied about the doorway leading to the subspace comms. The man hadn’t even told him his full name, just “Len”. But somehow he is. He’d decided to trust the blue-eyed stranger and this is what it gets him.
Even after their conversations on the way over, after meeting Len’s cat (and what kind of a bad guy has a pet they clearly love and spoil?), still he’s betrayed.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Barry protests as Len slides his pack from under his frozen arm. “My-My crew--” My family.
“Everyone’s got someone,” Len responds flippantly. “This antique tricorder alone isn’t gonna fetch me enough Dilithium to get where I need to go. Like you said, I’m a thief.”
“When I get out of here,” Barry warns, “I’m comin’ for you.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
And then he’s gone, and Barry is left frozen, trying not to let himself cry. He thought he was so close, but now . . .
“Do not move,” a drone flies over, “you are under arrest.”
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Len is expecting the punch when it comes, but it still hurts. Kid’s got a heck of a jab. “Hello to you too,” he drawls with a smirk even as Barry yanks his pack back, cradling it close. He keeps eye contact through the guards’ arguing over his fate, glancing towards one of the hand blasters pointedly. When the Syndicate boys start pointing their blasters towards Barry as well as Len, the other man gives a heaving sigh with his head tipped back before meeting Len’s eyes with a raised eyebrow. Len’s smirk grows.
In unison, they leap into action, knocking their enemies’ arms to the side and stealing their blasters. They back up slowly, firing back at the remaining guards as they get behind cover. In a moment with their backs against the wall of one of the cubicles, Barry asks, “Do you think I’m overcompensating?”
Len blinks at him blankly for a second before an amused smirk curls his lips. “They shot you with that stuff, didn’t they?”
A cute giggle accompanies Barry’s enthusiastic “Sure did!”
“It’ll wear off with all this adrenaline.” Len’s about to make another comment but then one of the guards is coming up around the side of the cubicle and he has to push away from the wall to knock the blaster away and snap the guy’s neck. When he turns back, Barry’s eyes are huge as they stare at the dead guard before looks over his shoulder to shoot again. Len’s not sure what to make of that look when the other man is shooting a lethal blaster at the other guards, but he doesn’t think about it and focuses on getting his own shots in.
While he’s taking a moment to check on his cargo via his wrist control, thinking about how to get out of there, he sees Barry running out of the corner of his eye. I takes him a second to realize what the man is going for, but when he does he carefully runs over as well, ducking behind the wall of the cubicle Barry’s in just in time to dodge a shot. He raises his blaster in Barry’s direction.
“Give me the Dilithium,” Len orders, Barry having stuffed several crystals into his pack.
“No!” Barry refuses, pointing his own blaster back at Len. “Where is the subspace communications array?”
Len groans in frustration. He’ll just have to take the kid with him. One of the shots pierces glass in the back of the cubicle, the pressure change knocking them both to the ground, and a particle field pops up at the entrance.
“Hold on,” he says, grabbing Barry’s arm as he activates his transporter. Time to get the hell outta dodge.
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Barry blinks around at his new surroundings, at the rocky walls and the back of a waterfall in front of them. One of the portable transporters he saw a few aliens using back at the Mercantile? Wait--he whirls around to where Len’s keeping a keen eye on their surroundings.
“Why did you bring me out here?” he demands. “I need to contact my ship!”
“There’ll be time for that later,” the thief replies, “for now we need to worry about--” He cuts himself off, pulling Barry by the arm towards him and firing the blaster over Barry’s shoulder. It’s only in that moment that he realizes he’d heard the sound of space warping just behind him.
Did Len just . . . save him?
There’s no time to think deeper on that, as more of the Mercantile guards seemingly pop up out of thin air around them, and he has to focus on firing his blaster and ki--he can’t think about that either. Focus on surviving, he tells himself. Soon enough they’ve taken care of the handful of guards that followed them, and then Len is pressing something pinned to his vest (the portable transporter?) and grabbing Barry’s arm again, and they’ve moved again, this time to the wide, flat top of a cliff. They circle around each other, back to back, keeping an eye out for more of the Mercantile guards.
After a moment, Len seems to sense something, for he starts moving, shouting at Barry to “run, Barry, run!” Barry obeys, hearing the sound of multiple transporters behind them and then feeling the heat and dust of near misses as they run in sync through the dust, Len grabbing his arm for another transport.
They both whirl around to shoot at the guards that immediately follow them, who are replaced by even more guards. How many does the Mercantile even employ? They seem endless, each one down killed, disintegrated is replaced by two or three more.
“30 seconds to recharge,” Len informs him in a lull, and Barry tries to think of some way to survive that long. Glancing over his shoulder, he spots an outcropping of rocks. The next moment he can, he grabs Len’s arm and they run for cover, shooting the guards that pop up in their way and avoiding the fire from behind them.
They crouch behind the large, dust-covered, rocks, and by some miracle, no more guards show up on their side of them.
“You know,” Len says loud enough to be heard over the blasters, drawing Barry’s attention, “my clothes look good on you.” The man ducks around the rocks to shoot at the guards again.
Barry glances down, remembering he’s wearing the other man’s extra coat and scarf to obscure his red undersuit.
“Bet they’d look even better on the floor of my ship.”
Barry blinks several times, flushes deep red, then looks over at Len’s smirking face with wide eyes. “A-Are you flirting with me? Now?”
“Why, are you busy?” Len asks, blue eyes twinkling.
Barry stutters in response, turning away, unsure what to say. It’s not like he’s ever had much, well, game. Hartley had to come up to him and tell him the fate of the ship rested on it to get him to even talk to Oliver at a party and, well, it’s not like that relationship was exactly . . . healthy.
He shakes his head. Now’s not the time to dwell on the past. Oliver chose to stay behind and try to make Section 31 into a better organization, while Barry chose to come to the future to save it. If he keeps thinking about the people they all left behind . . .
He pops up from behind the rocks and shoots his blaster, then ducks back down with a wince, sucking in air through his teeth. A blaster beam grazed his arm, just great.
“How are you with heights?” Len asks, apropos of nothing.
“Uh, not great?” Barry responds hesitantly.
“Don’t look then.”
With that ominous warning, Len launches up from his crouch, grabbing Barry’s arm, and runs them right over the side of the cliff.
Needless to say, Barry closes his eyes.
And does a lot of screaming.
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And that’s the end, folks! There was more in the episode, obviously, but that fulfills Space AU and Flirting Under Fire, and if I finished writing this I would just be compelled to write a full AU and . . . While I’m not exactly saying no, I’m not exactly saying I have the time for that . . .
I have to include this last bit though--
Once he’s climbed out of the water and onto the strip of land nearby, he turns around to find Barry pouting at him, shivering slightly, with water dripping down from his hair, his clothes, his whole body really. He looks like a puppy after a bath. Adorable.
Just imagine Barry standing there on the rocky shore all >:/ and Len’s just like how is this man so cute and so hot at the same time.
Also, for anyone interested who knows Discovery, my brain has a few characters in mind:
Paul Stamets: Hartley (come on, gay geniuses that have a bit of a personality issue? Tell me you don’t see the similarity)
Tilly: Cisco (best friends with Michael/Barry, talks a lot, [2nd] best character in the show)
Hugh Culber: Eddie (dies and comes back again [or he should have >: (] also super sweet and caring)
Tracy Pollard: Caitlin (actual doctor [unlike Eddie], probably standoffish at first)
Ash Tyler: Oliver (they're both violent, hide who they are, and do things from a questionable moral standpoint [I almost did Eowells but that would require redeeming him . . . And he works better as Lorca anyway])
Anyway, I do know what Mick’s involvement in the story would be, but that’s a spoiler for later in s3. For those who’ve already seen it, he would be kind of Kyheem (except what happens in s4 wouldn't happen). Lisa I’m uncertain about. Either she’s sick and the cargo will help her or she works at the Sanctuary Book/Len drops a trance worm off at. Or both? Yeah both might work . . .
I’m honestly not sure about anyone else. Especially Saru. I’m not sure anyone could be Saru, he’s too awesome and amazing and the best. (Can you tell I love Saru? Perhaps I should say it once more: I love Saru!) I do know that Iris, Wally, and Joe, at least, were also on the ship and came along. Though I'm not sure a whole family of officers would serve on the same ship . . .
I'm also not even sure how I would reconcile Michael's season 1 actions with Barry's character, even if he has her backstory. I think that would definitely change, which would change other things down the line, and then it's a whole different story . . .
Anyway, thanks for the prompt, Hawks! Sorry I ended up throwing in another fandom, it just would not leave my brain. I hope you enjoyed anyway. Feel free to send more prompts if you like : )
