#who ended up being an informant/snitch turned undercover cop

[daydreamerdrew]

Marvel Mystery Comics (1941) #2 and #4

[butwhyduh]

If you're doing the writing prompts then could you do a dick grayson x reader for 'Betrayal by a lover to the enemy' but it isn't actual betrayal and she's just going undercover?

Warning: cursing, alludes to sexual activity, angst.

You ran as fast as you could on the rafters of the building. If you could just get to the window, you could escape. If luck was on your side, you could leave before Dick ever saw you. Batman, Robin, and Nightwing were fighting thugs down low. Your legs and lungs burned as you moved.

But you weren’t lucky. Far from.

You were yards from the edge when you were yanked to the foot path on your stomach. You groaned and tried to scramble away. Instead you were roughly flipped. Nightwing pinned you down and you struggled to free yourself.

It was all but useless. His legs were on either side of your legs holding them down. Dick’s hands grabbed your wrists and pushed them above your head to the concrete floor. You yelped in pain and wiggled and strained.

“You can’t get away. You’ve been working for Deathstroke. It’s time you get put away,” he said shifting your hold both wrists in one hand. You gasped and shook your head as he moved his hand down to your domino mask.

“No,” you moaned, trying your best to shake him off. It was no use. He was much larger, stronger, and, frankly, madder than you were. You knew you were going to have bruises on your wrist from his tight grip. He was going to know your identity.

Dick peeled the mask off and gasped. He froze but his grip never lessened. His eyes widened and his brow creased in confusion followed by pain. Your lips parted to speak but nothing came out.

“You? No...,” he said completely shocked. “Can’t be. Why... why would you hurt me?”

You had cut him shallowly a few weeks earlier because he got too close. You hated yourself for it but he hadn’t needed any stitches or anything. But at this moment, he probably meant the other pain you had caused, betrayal.

You closed your eyes and looked away. You couldn’t tell him. There was too much on the line. This mission was too secret. Not even Batman knew.

Dick stroked the side of your face and you quickly turned to look at him. “I loved you and you hurt me,” he said and the grip on your wrists tightened. You whimpered.

“You’re hurting me,” you gasped. His grip loosened slightly.

“I can’t believe you. I loved you,” he said and you noted the past tense of his words. This job just lost you your boyfriend. You clenched your jaw to stop from crying. It wouldn’t help anything to speak when you couldn’t say the truth.

“I love you,” you couldn’t help but say. Dick turned away and his jaw clenched in anger. His fingers tightened enough to hurt around your wrist. You whimpered.

“Not when you’re working with him,” he said. Dick reached for his pockets and pulled out cuffs, meta cuffs, and cuffed your wrists to the metal bar on the rafter. The use of meta cuffs showed that he had no trust in you any more. You had never shown any powers.

“You don’t understand,” your voice cracked.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“I- I can’t,” you said, feeling defeated. Dick nodded roughly.

“Enjoy prison. Blackgate is nice this time of year,” Dick said but his usual quip sounded more angry. There was malice and pain in his voice and his eyes looked at you through rage.

“No,” you whispered. You pulled on the cuffs but knew it wasn’t going to help. They could tie up Superman if they needed to.

Dick climbed off of you and stood above you. You could see why Nightwing was an imposing looking hero now. There was no love, no happiness in his face. You were never going to get that back. You yanked at the cuffs with tears coming down your face.

“Don’t bother. GCPD will take care of you,” Dick said coldly.

“Dick, please,” you whimpered. “Please let me go. Please.”

He stared at you with his jaw clenched and face screwed up for a second before flipping off the rafters. You breathed a quick “no” before feeling terribly alone.

It was about a half hour later that police made it up to arrest you. They roughly shoved you in a cop car and to jail. You were placed in general population for 2 hours before finally getting pulled out. You were brought into a private room with the head in charge of the mission.

“What the hell? You make me go to the warehouse and get arrested? You knew they were there. I was identified by Nightwing,” you said bitterly. The officer shrugged.

“Get better at hiding your identity. You made bail and got out,” he said with a shrug. “Your mission is fine. Complete it and you can go back to a normal life.”

“No. I quit. I could have died. What if it was Red Hood and not Nightwing? I could have been shot,” you said furious.

“Sure. Your information might accidentally get leaked to the press is the only issue. And that might get you killed. You know? By Deathstroke,” he said nastily. Your mouth gaped. You were being blackmailed by the police. You understood why people said the police were worse than criminals. You thought they were the same.

“That’s what I thought,” he said with a satisfied sneer. “Get the fuck to a safe house tonight. And get the information on Deathstroke or you might end up dead. Also.... don’t get arrested by a dude in tights. It’s a shit ton of paperwork. Get the fuck out.”

He motioned to the door and you left. It was useless to argue. You should have compromised the mission. Dick should know. You should have told him. But the police would definitely snitch and you’d be on Deathstroke’s kill list and he didn’t get that name for nothing.

You scampered to your safe house where you changed and cried in the shower. You noticed small little bruises around your wrist from Dick and the cuffs. You wanted to call him, tell him what happened but Dick would have found you that way. And you weren’t sure he would believe you and might arrest you again.

Over the next 48 hours, you saw very little. They were worried that you were a snitch since being arrest. But GCPD didn’t seem to care. You got an angry text.

If you don’t have anything new within 24 hours, count your protection as cancelled.

You gulped as you read it. You didn’t want in this anyways. You’d have to be more dangerous, take more risks. It was truly going to be bad.

“Can I come?” You blurted. Deathstroke looked you over and you shivered. His helmet gave away nothing of his thoughts.

“Why?”

“I- I want to learn more. How to be better,” you said.

“You have your training,” he said dismissively.

“But can I come?” You asked. You were wanting to die, hu? No one questioned him. He turned completely back to face you.

“Fine. Clean up duty,” Deathstroke said. You nodded quickly but your heart sank. Clean up duty was usually helping to cut up and burn the bodies and you had been lucky to stay far away from that.

And that’s how you ended up, once again, in the rafters of the same building you have been caught by Dick only 3 days before. You weren’t a superstitious person but this felt bad. Deathstroke was somewhere else waiting for his target. You were watching and reporting. To Deathstroke and GCPD.

You sighted the target. But another worker was with him so Deathstroke didn’t take a shot. This target was a nasty guy. His ex wife’s boyfriend put out the hit and from what you read, you couldn’t blame him. Harassed the wife, hit the kid, and had a domestic violence rap sheet that was long. This guy liked to hit women and children.

As you lay on your stomach on the rafter, you felt a slight movement.

“I guess you like your job?” Dick said. You slowly turned. Your taser was in your hand. “But you didn’t learn your lesson.”

“Are you going to arrest me again,” you said feeling frozen. His jaw clenched again before he shook his head no.

“I should. Why do you do it? Money?” Dick said walking closer. You scrambled to your feet. Your taser was held tight in hand and you slowly backed away with every step he made towards you.

“It’s complicated,” you answered.

“Uncomplicate it. I’d like to know why the woman who slept in my fucking bed was working for my enemy.” He was white hot with rage. Dick sometimes had anger issues he took out on the bad guys he took down. He’d never done anything like that to you. But you weren’t his sweet girlfriend anymore. And his face was terrifying.

“I-“ you wavered on your resolve to the mission. Maybe he could help you.

“You what?” Dick asked and you felt cold metal of the end of the rafters against your ass. Your breathing was erratic.

“I’m-“ you started before pulling out your comms and smashing it in the ground. Dick’s eyebrows rose. “GCPD is blackmailing me. If I don’t get info on Deathstroke, they’ll release my files. He’ll kill me,” you said hanging your head in shame.

Dick froze. Despite his rage, he still loved you. He searched your face for a sign of lying but found none. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you. Got you out. Goddamn it! I have so many connections. You didn’t trust me?” He finished with a realization. Dick looked over at you with a sad frown.

“I know your work is your life. I just... I just didn’t know. Dick, I fucked up,” you said miserably walking towards him. The distance felt so far away. He started backing away this time. “I love you.”

“Don’t,” Dick said and you stopped. Enough people had stolen his consent. You weren’t going to. “I can help you. But this,” he motioned between you both. “I don’t know.”

“Dick,” you whispered, half a second from crying. He shook his head and another step back. A week ago he looked at you so in love and now? He had a stony pained look. It broke your heart. You broke his heart.

——————————

One week ago

Dick lazily drew circles on your back as you laid on him. You both were nude, the air hot with your earlier activities despite being in the middle of a snow storm. You held his other hand in yours and you traced along scars and callouses. His palms had matching ones from swinging on a bar. He’d had those his whole life. The thumb had a ridge from training and using escrima sticks. An old divoted scar on the meat of his palm was from when he was a kid in the circus and tried to swing on an old swing set without checking it first. 7 stitches and weeks out of duty.

There was a healing cut along the backside of his hand that intersected multiple silvery healed scars. You touched along those, careful to avoid anything fresh. Dick looked down at you as you gently caressed his scars.

“What are you looking at, baby,” he said. His voice was rough with sleep. You were putting him to sleep.

“How much you’ve been through,” you said simply. He turned his head to look at your face better. “So rough but so kind.”

Dick smiled at that one and moved his hand to hold your cheek. He ran his thumb along your cheek and you leaned into his touch. “You’re thinking pretty deep, sweetheart. Penny for your thoughts?”

“I just love you,” you said, gazing into his eyes. Dick’s smile grew and he gave you a soft kiss.

“I love you too.”

It was soft, simple, kind. And to remind you that you were far from free, your phone rang. Only one person dared to call you at that hour. You climbed out of bed to answer it.

“Hello?”

“North Shore Docks. 2 hours,” came the rough voice before hanging up. You gulped before putting your phone down.

“What was that?” Dick asked.

“Wrong number. It’s nothing,” you said climbing back in bed. If you could get him to fall asleep, you could leave on time. He nodded before pulling you close. His heartbeat was slow and steady. He wasn’t nervous.

It was only 20 minutes later that he got a call. He hung up after a few minutes and turned to you with an apologetic look.

“Batman calls. I answer. I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you, okay?” He said. You felt guilt that you were relieved. You wouldn’t have to sneak out.

“What’s going on?”

“Down at the docks is supposed to be a meet up. Deathstroke. I’ve got to go. See if I can stop him. He’s got some new people working for him and maybe I can get some info from them,” Dick said climbing out of bed to pull on his suit. You nodded.

“Be safe. Stay warm,” you told him, knowing you were tipping Deathstroke off about the meeting so hopefully he’d call it off. He didn’t know you were dating Dick, neither did GCPD, but you could have gotten a tip from anywhere.

You stood in front of Dick without bothering to dress. He pulled your body flush against his and kissed you deeply. “I’m sorry, baby. Hopefully I’ll be back soon.”

You nodded and he flipped out of the top window of the loft. You waited 10 minutes before calling Deathstroke back.

“Batman has a tip off about the meeting. He’s coming and bringing friends,” you said. Deathstroke was silent on the phone.

“Meeting is next week. Same location. No batboys.” He hung up.

You peeled back a floorboard in your bedroom floor and pulled out a burner phone. You put the SIMs card in and turned it on. GCPD wanted a report and now was a good time. You called the only number on the phone.

“What?”

“The meeting is cancelled.”

“Why?”

“Deathstroke got spooked. That’s all I know,” you lied. Maybe you were getting too good at lying. He cursed.

“Anything else?”

“No. Not yet. I’ll call you,” you said.

“You fucking better,” he growled. You hung up and turned off the phone, taking out the SIM card and putting it back under the floorboard.

Dick came back 2 hours later. His nose was bright red and he shivered all over. You ran him a shower to warm up and he still cuddled close to you afterwards.

“Nothing. Dead lead,” he said. “Nothing but a fucking snow storm. Could have stayed in bed with my baby.” He pulled you tight to his body in a hug. Your heart clenched in guilt. You were a terrible girlfriend. The barely visible scar on his chest was glaring at you. At least Dick didn’t fight Deathstroke. “Thank god you aren’t in that life.”

You kissed his lips softly. Guilt. So fucking much. He pulled you on top of him and you had sex. You poured all of your love into it. You wanted him to feel loved because he deserved it, even if you didn’t. You kissed his scars and bruises. You fell asleep entangled with him until late morning as the snow fell all night.

———————————

A week and a 3 days later

Back at the warehouse

Dick didn’t offer any comfort. You had hurt him so badly. But he kept his word. He pretended to knock you out and arrest you. Batman and Deathstroke were fighting down below but both saw him carrying your unconscious cuffed body. Dick carried you to his bike where he placed you on and drove off. He didn’t take you back to your shared apartment. He had changed the locks already and you weren’t welcome there.

He took you to a safe house. Basic and non-descript. He didn’t uncuff you but sat you on a kitchen chair.

“Dick can you,” you asked pulling your arms cuffed behind your back.

“Not right now. Explain and I might,” he said pulling off your mask. He took off his own mask and sat both on the table.

“Dick,” you said softly but he ignored you to sit in a chair. Dick just glared at you. “I had no choice.”

“Besides me. Your boyfriend,” he reminded you.

“I didn’t know how you would react. They threatened me. They threatened you. I was scared. I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you. I know I did. I got in too deep,” you said hanging your head. Dick clenched his fists.

“GCPD threatened you?”

“They said they’d leak the press my secrets. It would be enough for Deathstroke to kill me. They’re right. He would. Kill you too if he thought I shared with you. He doesn’t know who you are. I never told him anything about you,” you said earnestly.

“So not full betrayal,” he said coldly with a dry smile.

“Dick,” you breathed.

“No. Don’t. You don’t get to act like that with me. You know,” he said roughly pulling his suit down his chest before running his finger along a silver mark. Your Mark. “You cut me and left a scar. I guess that’s why you always kiss my scars, hu? Because you helped to make them. I thought about marrying you. And you cut me.”

“Dick... I’m so so sorry. I didn’t want to. I hated it. But if I didn’t...” you said crying at this point. Your hands were starting to tingle from the cuffs.

“Deathstroke would know you weren’t loyal. Guess I’m lucky you didn’t cut my throat,” Dick said. You gasped and sobbed.

“I would never. I love you so much. I promise, it wasn’t what I wanted. Please understand,” you said wetly. He looked away clenching his jaw before sighing deeply.

“We’ll pay off Deathstroke and GCPD will loose all of your info. But I want you the hell out Gotham. I don’t want to see you ever again,” Dick said and you felt your world crumble.

“No,” you whimpered. “Please.”

“Do it or I won’t help you.”

You were shaking and sobbing uncontrollably at this point. Dick could barely look at you. You tried to control yourself before nodding. If you had known. If you had known that single kiss was your last. You would have changed everything.

“Dick. I love you so fucking much,” you pleaded and it was too much. He left the room. It was a full ten minutes before he came back. His face was stony but his nose and eyes were red. He didn’t look you in the eyes.

“Deathstroke won’t bother you. Bruce paid him. And it’s like you never existed in Gotham. Babs made sure of that,” Dick said and you winced. He had gone to his ex to help you. God, what had he told her?

“Thank you,” you said. Your voice was raw from crying and your hands were numb. You tried to move them around. Dick grabbed his keys and de-cuffed you. You moved your fingers and grimaced at the blood returning tingle.

“Stay here tonight and leave tomorrow. I’ll pack up your stuff. I know someone in metropolis that can get you a job and temporary place,” he said all business. You wanted to run into his arms, kiss his face, tell him that you love him. But that wasn’t an option any more.

“You’re a good guy. Helping me. I don’t deserve it but you’ve been nothing but good to me. I hope I can make it up to you someday,” you said quietly. He closed his eyes for a second before nodding. Dick had his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, protecting himself.

“I’ve got to go. I can’t stay here,” he said after a minute. He couldn’t stand to be in the same room as you. A week ago, the look on your face would have had him doing anything to make it go away. Today he caused it. He couldn’t handle it.

“I’m sorry. Be careful in the weather,” you said unsure what to say. It was too late. Far too late.

————————————

The morning before Dick caught you

Your apartment

“Morning, baby,” you said, running a finger along the bridge of Dick’s nose. He mumbled and moved a little before opening his eyes with a smile. He caught your hand before you could touch his face again.

“What are you doing there, sweetheart,” he said and you giggled a little.

“Bothering my man. He’s too pretty to let sleep,” you said pulling him closer.

“Hmm, haven’t you heard of beauty sleep? We were up half the night and you want to wake me up. What if I’m tired,” Dick said. There was a glimmer in his eyes.

“I wore out Nightwing? That’s something to be quite proud of,” you said grinning. He chuckled.

“Well it isn’t every night that we do all that. Something got into you and I’m not complaining,” he said kissing your cheek.

“I think it was you. Four times,” you said with a smirk. He definitely chuckled at that. Dick looked over at the clock.

“Shit. I’m late. I guess it’s good you woke me. I should have been at work an hour ago. I’ll have to blame the storm,” he said trying to get up. You wrapped your legs around his waist.

“What if I won’t let you go?”

“I’d probably be fired and be a little sad,” Dick said playfully. He held your jaw and gave you a lingering kiss. “So I have to go. But I’ll make it up to you tonight.”

“Counting on it,” you said finally releasing him. He threw on his uniform and left. You stretched in bed, ready to lounge the day away when your phone rang. It could have been anyone but your heart clenched. You know who it was.

“North Shore Docks. Tonight. 2300. Be early,” Deathstroke said.

“I can’t,” you said. It was way too early. That was only 11 o’clock. Dick would definitely miss your presence.

“.... if you aren’t up to task then you can be replaced. Do you want to be replaced?” He asked. You had a nasty feeling replaced meant murdered.

“No.... I- I can make it,” you said.

“Good,” he said hanging up.

You wracked your brain with what to say. What to do. You couldn’t just leave at 10:30 at night. Dick would flip out. You had to lie to him again. A friend was in town.

“Hey Dickie,” you said giving him a call at work. He was always half distracted when you called him there.

“Hi sweetheart,” he answered and you heard a keyboard clacking.

“A friend came into town so I offered to take her out,” you said.

“It’s supposed to snow pretty bad. Just invite her over,” Dick said. Shit, that was a good point.

“She’s staying at the Grand Mariners Hotel. We’re just hitting the hotel bar and then her room,” you said. It was a nice hotel in the Diamond District that was plenty safe. “I’ll stay over with her if it’s bad enough.”

“Okay. Be safe. Call me if you need anything. Love you,” Dick said.

“Love you too,” you answered. You didn’t know it was the last thing you’d say before he found your betrayal. The last lie too.

2 years later

Metropolis

You thought about Dick Grayson all the time. You hadn’t come back to Gotham since. But you tried to move on. Even tried dating that failed horribly. Who could compare to Nightwing?

You walked downtown. You worked for the paper as an assistant. You got coffee and changed the printer paper. You’d made friends with the other office assistant who was a local of Metropolis.

Besides the fact you lost the love of your life, Metropolis was nice. Crime was much lower, it snowed and rained way less, and your apartment building had a pretty nice coffee shop across the street. Deathstroke and the Joker didn’t make news. No more Batman and Robin. People weren’t instantly distrustful. There were billboards with pictures of Superman saying things like “safest city in America” and “rated best family friendly city 3rd year in a row.” You had to change your attitude and walking habits because you were too scary for the friendly city. It was the Gotham way.

Today you were in a hurry. Your skirt whipped in the wind and a piece of hair stuck to your lip gloss. Your heels made obvious clacking sounds as you overtook others on the sidewalk. You got a lot of looks. Who runs like that? Especially with coffee in their hands?

You practically jumped out of the way as a dog got in your way. This pushed you right into a man walking the opposite way. Your coffee, thank god it was iced, smashed directly into the crisp white dress shirt on his firm chest.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” you gasped. You tried to swipe off the icy pieces that clung to his shirt.

“It’s okay,” he said grabbing your wrist. You looked up and almost dropped your bag. It was Dick. He looked good. A little taller maybe, his hair a little longer. You gulped.

“Dick,” you said softly. You didn’t dare say anything else. He stared at you back. “What are you- what brings you to Metropolis?”

“I’ve got a job for Bruce. You look good. I didn’t expect you to stay here,” he said rambling. You didn’t know where to look. At his chest covered in coffee with a now see through shirt that clung to every defined muscle. Or his face that you weren’t sure even wanted to see you.

“Well, I liked the job,” you almost whispered. Your voice betrayed your fear. Dick smiled a little.

“Good. That’s good. We should talk,” he said and your eyebrows rose.

“We should?”

“Yeah. Can I buy you a drink later? Tonight?” Dick asked. You could only nod yes. You were terrified. Clearly you were still in love with him.

—————

You fretted with the hem of your skirt on the cab ride to meet him at his hotel bar. Wayne Enterprise owned half share of it. The last time you saw Dick he told you that he never wanted to see you again. He sat at a table in the corner with a great view of every door. You smiled shyly as you walked over.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he said motioning to the open chair. You sat down and fiddled with your bag before looking up. You were stalling.

“How is Gotham,” you asked, regretting it instantly. It’s a shit hole.

“Bad. But not out of the ordinary. I thought about calling you. A lot,” Dick admitted. He gulped before continuing. “I overreacted. I shouldn’t have banished you. Hell, I shouldn’t have been allowed to. You were- you thought you were protecting me in your own weird fucked up way.”

“I was wrong. You were mad and you should have been....And Metropolis is nice. Low on assassins and freaks,” you said and he nodded in agreement. “I missed you though,” you blurted out. You probably shouldn’t have said that. Dick’s eyes softened and he looked at you.

“I missed you too. A lot. I- I wanted to see you. But I didn’t know how to talk to you and the Titans got busy,” he said.

“I heard. You guys did some good work,” you said, admitting you followed Nightwing’s career at the least. The truth was that you stalked his admittedly quiet Instagram and any Nightwing news despite yourself. You had to search it out. Metropolis had Superman and didn’t care much for the Titans doing work in another state.

“Thanks. Yeah. I- can I take you out? On a date?” He asked suddenly.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, why- what? Why are you smiling?” Dick asked feeling lost.

“Dick, we’re at a restaurant right now,” you teased. Your heart felt a little warm despite the fact that you should definitely be cautious.

“Right. I mean, a proper date. Or whatever,” he said. It was weird to see Dick look nervous.

“Of course. Always. But I’ve got to ask why,” you said and he grinned before registering your question. “I betrayed you, Dick.”

His smile fell a little. “I know. I know. But I’ve made some mistakes too. Let myself fall into the grey between black and white. I’d tell you about it some other time but I’ve come to learn that it’s not easy. Not always good and bad. And if I can’t get you out of my head 2 years later.... it must mean something, right?” He sounded a little desperate. Like he was holding on to this idea of love.

“I’d like to think so,” you answered quietly. He offered a shy smile.

“How about we start over? Can I hold your hand?” He asked and you nodded. His fingers slowly slid over to yours he softly gripped your hand and you both smiled.

You were both a little scared. Could this work? Things were not the same. But there could be 2 little broken birds holding hands full of hope. Maybe it could. Maybe it could work.

[auswriteforyou]

Better Man. (Antonio Dawson, Chicago PD.

Summary: Can I request an Chicago PD Antonio x Reader where he goes undercover in a gang and ends up falling in love with Reader trying to save her from abuse and success

TW: Abuse, graphic, cussing.

Who are you? That was the biggest unanswered question in life wasn’t it? You used to think you had a pretty good idea. A nursing degree under your belt, a great job at Chicago Med on the way and then shit hit the fan.

You chalked it up to wrong place, wrong time. A man who wouldn’t take no for an answer, your inherit need to help people, a man’s inability to take a fucking hint. You had been walking home from your shift at the bar, not a glamorous gig but it paid the bills, when you rounded the corner and there they were. Your nightmare. A gaggle of boys stood, muscular and inked to the teeth with familiar symbols. You adverted your eyes, going as far to switch to the opposite side of the street but nothing helped you that Wednesday, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

Miles “Chipper” Franks was taken with you from first sight. A kind hearted girl who obeyed the rules of passing them by. You were beautiful, and you were going to be his. He called out to you, noting the badge hanging off your purse that stated your credentials as a nurse at Chicago Med that you’d only gotten the day before. His buddy had a bad cut and while you were always willing to help, no one could deny the group if they wanted. It wasn’t allowed.

You should have ran, you should have moved fucking states and never looked back because now? Who are you?

The cracked lip, the bluish, red bruises speckling your body slowly turning yellow left you unrecognizable as you surveyed your body. You were his ‘girlfriend’ but you preferred the term punching bag or obsession. Victim is one that might fit.

The house door you ‘shared’ with him and his closest cohorts slammed open, voices yelling with your name mixed among them and you made quick work of skittering down the stairs. You had become the unofficial medic in your months there and you knew better than to keep them waiting.

They were hauling in a man you’d never seen before, stab wound to the leg and you bristled at their lack of intelligence in at least covering the wound. His head was lolled back so you couldn’t see any features, only familiar tattoo marking and the makings of dark brown hair. You grabbed your kit, hoping Miles had refilled it after last usage and landed on the ground beside the man. The crash barely pained you, your body having learned to absorb the highest pain.

“What happened?” Even your voice sounded different, distant. Like a whisper from yards away in a rock concert.

“Some bangers jumped us on our own fucking corner.” Miles raged, grabbing you by the back of the neck and forcing you to look up at him. “Fucking fix him!” He slammed your head into the arm of the couch, leaving you rattled for a few moments before you got to work. You really needed more information but decided to just be extra cautious.

Your patients eyes were open now, concern in deep brown irises as your own swam with the impact. You muttered some reassurance to him that you were going to fix him and there was no need to worry. He didn’t acknowledge it, just kept staring at your messed up face.

That was the first time you met Antonio Dawson, or as you knew him then - Dante Alonzo.

He was apparently good at whatever it was he did for Miles, quickly taking the spot of right hand man in only a couple months when the old one mysteriously disappeared. He was one of the trusted ones, being left at the house sometimes to make sure you didn’t make a run for it but with your ear present injuries you highly doubted you’d make it far anyway. In those two months, you learned so much about the man it made you feel human again, made you keep ahold of whatever shred of hope stayed alive in you. He was funny, smart and so kind to you that the day he told you he was a cop and going to get you out of this, it didn’t surprise you at all.

Miles had broken your ribs, shattering two with a hard kick of his boot after you ‘back talked’ him. You asked him what he wanted for dinner. He said chicken. You said there was none in the house. He beat the shit out of you. That night he’d left you with Antonio, who you talked through fixing the ribs Miles hadn’t let you tend to until dinner was fixed. It was then that he divulged his secret to you, and all that hope filled you once again.

It was two days later that Antonio’s team raided the house, taking down the whole group in one swoop during the monthly meeting. Antonio cuffed you for show as he had told you he would those two long nights ago, not at all alerting the group that you would in fact be the snitch. They had such loose lips around the girl that wasn’t really important in the first place. You rolled on them like that Chef Boyardee can in those old times commercials.

“Good morning!” Maggie greeted you as you walked through the glass doors of Chicago Med, “Excited for your first day?”

“More than.” It had been two more months, your skin healed and spirit lifting through countless therapy sessions. Chicago Med had been more than happy to reaccept your application after learning that you had not in fact bailed on your first day almost a year ago. You’d already finished your paperwork and training, this was your first day on your own and while you resented everything that happened to you, it came with a pretty good side effect too. Not much scared you anymore.

“First patient is in Room B,” She had a smile on her face that you didn’t know how to read but took the file from her anyway.

“Hi, I’m -,” Your words cut off in your throat as you read the name on the line. “Dante.” Your eyes snapped up, smile spreading on your face as you caught sight of Antonio reclined on the bed.

“I think I might have a concussion, mind checking me out?” He grinned as you pulled the curtain shut, his gentle hands pulling you to him in a soft tug. You laughed, looping your arms around his neck as he hugged you to him.

“You have something wrong with you alright.” You laughed, tugging on the soft strands your fingers found purchase in. “What’re you doing here?”

“Just checking up on you, I know you said you’d be fine but I’m not.” He laughed lightly. He had kissed you about two weeks ago, panicking immediately after until you dragged him in by his collar and showed him just how much you didn’t mind. You’d been in love with him after that first time you’d been left alone together.

He was everything the pain hadn’t been. He was soft touches and kind eyes, longing looks and longer hugs, patient smiles and stupid jokes. He was your humanity, the one who made sure it wasn’t hero transfer before wrapping you in his arms and deciding to never let you go. And yeah, Antonio Dawson was the best hero Chicago had ever had.

But he was an even better man.

—

Trying to get to the requests you guys sent me like forever ago! I know this is kind of all over the place but hope you enjoy it. :)

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 1 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you're on his list, you're in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who's developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

A/N: This first chapter (slightly updated) was originally a prompt by @litrapod​ that I filled for Coldflash Week, but it's now a novel. I'm hoping to post updates twice a week - current plan is Tuesdays and Fridays, but we'll see what groove I settle into.

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"Forgive me if I don't get up to say hello," Len drawls as Captain Singh walks into his office. He leans back in his office chair and gestures vaguely towards one of the seats, because if he doesn’t Singh will take one anyway.

Singh smiles tightly. He’s trying to be nice, but it’s hard for him. He takes a seat and makes an effort to make the smile more appropriate for the nice, friendly chat that they’re not actually going to have. "Of course not," he said, nodding at Len's injured side like he knows something.

He knows nothing.

Oh, it's common knowledge by now that Leonard Snart, one of the CCPD's finest undercover agents, recruited into the joint task force with the FBI, had been grounded at last when information about his identity had slipped out to such a degree that those who had worked with him in the criminal underworld had turned on him.

Everyone knows, also, that Leonard Snart took a bullet to the gut and another to the thigh and that he's still healing from them, but that he refused time off and insisted on coming back to work – even accepting a position that was largely a desk job to do so.

Everyone knows, last but certainly not least, that Leonard Snart is a hell of a lot smarter than he seems, because his humble acceptance of a desk job (to keep busy, he said, with a straight face and a bowed head) that was designed to keep him out of trouble was in fact just another stratagem, because it got Leonard Snart the job he's been angling to get for who knows how long.

Internal Affairs.

Head of Internal Affairs.

Leonard Snart's time spent underground – over a decade at least, and possibly two – gathering invaluable information on the criminal world had been rewarded with a promotion and an assignment to a seat that most cops reviled.

That wasn't an issue for Leonard Snart, as the department soon discovered, because he hated most cops just as much in return.

Abusive father that used to be a cop, the whispers said – they'd always known that, of course, but no one had put two and two together until Leonard Snart had been made a Captain and spent his first month on the job systematically destroying men's careers with an icy smile that never wavered.

Captain Cold, they called him – sneers and mockery at first, but as he took down one untouchable after another, men and women who were infamously corrupt but (it had been believed) unable to be removed, the term changed to one of fear and respect.

Mostly fear. Not a little bit of hatred, too, for the man who seemed to have nothing to hide and nothing to lose and whose entire existence, now, seemed wrapped around a vendetta aimed not at the criminals but at the CCPD who enabled them.

It's just as Len said: they know nothing.

Oh, it's all true, all of it, all the rumors, everything from his piece of shit of an ex-cop dad to his time undercover to his manipulation of the system to get the position and power he wanted. It's the details that matter most.

He hadn't just been shot when some asshole at the CCPD let slip who he was, leading eventually to someone telling the Families about him. He'd been kidnapped. Tortured.

Sentenced to a slow and painful death, all alone in the dark.

And he would have died, too, if Mick Rory hadn't come to save him.

Mick Rory, arsonist, pyromaniac, thief, muscle, thug.

Mick Rory, committed criminal.

Mick Rory, Leonard Snart's best and maybe only goddamn friend in the whole wide world, who Len had lied to from day one and kept lying to through thick and thin. Who Len had used. For his friendship, for his strength, for his credibility in the criminal community, and he’d given him back nothing but lies.

Despite all of that, Mick came for him.

Mick fought through the assholes guarding the door and he shot the assholes who were torturing Len and he got Len out.

Mick got Len away from the Families, carried him in his arms while he was bleeding and crying like a child. He got Len to the hospital, to safety, even though he knew Len was a cop now, a pig like all the others.

Then, when the police assigned to guard Len's room arrived and kicked him out, he went home.

And at home…

The Families fire-bombed his house that night, knowing that his pyromania would keep him from saving himself. They were right. He survived only due to a fluke, a part of the building falling fast enough to extinguish the fire faster than expected.

Mick Rory now lies in a hospital bed in a very high end burn clinic in Keystone City as the doctors try to salvage what they can, nearly two-thirds of his body burned.

Len never even had a chance to thank him.

Lewis Snart might've been the one that taught Len what a corrupt cop looked like, but it was what the cops did to Mick Rory that makes Len hate them.

"Can I help you?" Len says to Captain Singh, head of the midtown precinct, who seems to have lost the ability to speak since entering the room.

"I want to discuss the newest case you're working on," Singh finally says.

"Have you got intel for me?" Len asks, deliberately cruel. Cops hate a snitch as bad as any felon, and the suggestion that Singh's here to tell tales gets the flinch Len was looking for.

He doesn't actually have anything against Captain Singh personally – the guy's a good cop, believe it or not, with good detection skills and better management skills and unlike most of the lot of them, he's not completely in the Family pocket – but Singh's a believer in the blue line, cop solidarity über alles, and until he remembers that his loyalty should be to justice and truth before friendship, Len's not about to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That's why Singh's here, after all. He's not here to snitch.

He's here to ask Len to back off.

More fool he. Len never backs off.

(Len will admit, however, that he's a hypocrite: he's never had any problem valuing friends over laws – his first loyalties are to Lisa, tucked far away with her skates and the college he's paying for, and to Mick. But not at the expense of the corruption of the blue, the goddamn cops who are supposed to be protecting the helpless; that's not a crime against society, which Len could forgive, but a crime against his city, and Len will never forgive that.)

"No," Singh finally says. "Listen, I know this is a long shot –"

"Who?"

"I – what?"

"Who?" Len repeats. "Who do you want me to back off of?"

Singh looks suspicious; good for him. He's not an idiot: he knows a request to back off will only make Len more suspicious.

"I don't want you to back off, exactly," he says. "More – I don't want you wasting your time."

Len arches his eyebrows and waits.

Singh's an experienced cop, veteran of a thousand interrogations and interview rooms, and he knows how silence can be wielded as a weapon.

It's just that Len's better at it, that's all.

"Barry Allen," Singh says, giving up the name. "I don't know how he got on your list –"

"He's never here but his work always gets done," Len says dryly.

"He's efficient –"

"He's always arriving late, looking like he's been busy somewhere else."

"He's always had an issue with –"

"He disappears at odd times, say, around the same time something is going down."

"There's always something going down –"

"He knows more about crime scenes than he should upon first glance."

"So he's good at his job –"

"He talks about active cases with people outside the precinct."

"We all do to some degree –"

"Brand new set of friends."

"Not exactly a crime –"

"And all of that following nine months disappearance –"

"On medical leave!" Singh bursts out, a vein starting to pulse in his forehead. "He was in a coma!"

"Yes," Len drawls, stretching the word out. "He was, wasn't he? Then he got himself transferred out of the hospital into a private facility – a private facility run by Harrison Wells, aka the genius behind the Accelerator explosion that supposedly caused Allen's little 'accident' – and what do you know? Not only does that place not have proper records as far as I can tell, it appears that, both before and after the explosion, they have only ever had one patient."

Singh is gaping at him.

"Now, I don't know about you," Len says, tilting his head to the side in his most irritating, exaggerated thoughtful way. "But when you put all that together with the fact that a lot of these bad habits are newly developed following that so-called coma of his – except for the punctuality, of course, that's long-standing – you get a very interesting picture. One I intend to look at a bit more closely."

"Goddamnit, Cold, he was hit by lightning," Singh says through gritted teeth. "Some changes are to be expected. It's a miracle he even got that much of him back –"

"Yeah, about that," Len says and now his teeth are bared. "Funny how his job was still open after nine months."

Singh straightens up like he's just been shocked by lightning himself.

"Funny, too, how there weren't any concerns regarding his mental state after being hit by lightning," Len continues. "But you know what's the most funny of all?"

Singh is silent.

It's okay, Len wasn't asking that expecting an answer.

Len leans forward. "What I find the most funny, Captain Singh," he says, as conversationally as he can, "is that he says that he was in a coma for nine months, right? Nine months. It's been a little over nine months since the explosion. Nine months, and he's back to work in a week? No bedsores, no muscle atrophy, no deterioration, no physical therapy, no occupational therapy – oh, no, our Mr. Allen apparently leaped out of his hospital bed and went for a goddamn run around Central City, fresh as a daisy. And, in the process, either during the coma or during that run –"

Len flips open the folder on his desk, revealing two photographs. One is Allen before his mysterious nine-month absence; one is after. He's shirtless in both, because Len's contacts sometimes like to snag shirtless pics for him ever since they figured out he was pansexual – something that usually pisses him off, except he wouldn't have figured out the weirdest part of this whole Allen thing if they hadn't so he supposes he has to forgive them.

"– the man picks up a set of abs," Len concludes, his voice flat. "Now, Singh, I know you've given up ogling other people in your marriage vows, but tell me, in view of your past experience in this field, does one generally get that sort of body development lying in a hospital bed?!"

That last bit was said with a full on snarl.

Okay, so Len's a bit touchy on the whole hospital subject.

Singh's shoulders slump down, an acknowledgment that he doesn't have the answers Len's looking for and that there is no way that Len's dropping this investigation – either into Allen, or, if that pans out, into Singh for enabling him.

And because Len's investigations are typically confidential among the Captain rank at this early stage, if Allen hears so much as a whisper on the subject before Len's ready, Len will know exactly who to blame.

Len smiles at him. The smile has teeth.

"Good talk, Singh," he says encouragingly. "Have a nice day, why don't you?"

Singh's lips are pressed together until they're very nearly bloodless with rage, but he's smart enough not to say anything. He knows how dangerous Len is.

He walks out with his shoulders squared, much like someone who wants to punch someone and is very nearly there, but barely refraining.

Len dials a number on his desk before grabbing his crutch and limping heavily over to the door that Singh rather rudely left open, particularly given that he knows that Len prefers a closed door and has difficulty walking to close it.

"Chum in the water, sir?" his assistant asks dryly. Technically, Len ought to have a whole team, and he does, but he's spread the best of them out widely among the precincts of the sprawling Central City. This isn't really 'home base' for him, just an office he can use for the time being – and one at which he’s newly arrived, no less, after he was quietly encouraged to move until the looks of his fellow policemen became a touch less murderous – but that's fine. As long as he can do his job, he's fine. And he can do his job here with just him and his assistant.

(Why did he never consider investing in a personal assistant when he was a criminal? They're so useful. He would've saved himself so much angst. His current assistant, Danvers, is the best.)

"Not him," Len tells Danvers with a faint grin. "That was just a friendly chat. Come in and take some dictation, will you?"

"You make that sound so awful," she observes. "I should sue for sexual harassment."

"If you're getting sexually harassed, then I'm in a hostile work environment."

"Boss," Danvers says, suppressing a grin. "You are a hostile work environment."

"Kara Danvers," Len groans. "Just get your ass in here already."

She laughs and gets her ass in there with her speed-typing box – she used to be a court reporter before Len snagged her, and she's amazing – just in time for the open phone line Len dialed to start picking up things on the other side.

The other side being the desk immediately adjacent to one Detective Joe West's, who has the dubious honor of being Singh's confidant, Allen's mentor (possibly father?), and one of the poor souls on Len's list, given the remarkable speed by which the open investigation of his recent officer-involved shooting (West being the officer) got resolved.

Someone should really do something about the security in this place. Len plans on giving them a list before he leaves - but only after he's done exploiting it.

"- don't let Cold get to you, chief," West is saying. "He's got nothing on you."

"That isn't the issue," Singh replies with a sigh. "I don't want him here at all. Investigating my people -"

"When he could be doing something useful with his time," West agrees. "Goddamn parasite."

"Joe," Singh says, mildly censorious. "He's your superior officer."

West snorts. "By cutting in line - yeah, yeah, I'll back off. He did amazing work with the Families, not just here, but everywhere, I'll give him that much. But I don't have to appreciate the fact that the guy's working out his childhood trauma on us."

"Joe!" Singh exclaims. "That's uncalled for."

"Oh, come off it," West says with a laugh. "We all know the story - dad was a bad cop and a mean drunk that liked to knock his kids around. And now the - I mean, our very respectable visiting Captain Cold, he's got a vendetta against the boys in blue instead of the guys that really need to be taken off the streets."

"If a cop's done something wrong, they need to be taken off the streets too, Joe," Singh says. "That's what Internal Affairs does. You can't hold it against Cold - I mean, Snart - that he's good at his job."

"Even you call him Cold," West points out. "And that's saying something."

"No, Joe, it isn't," Singh replies, sighing. He sounds tired. If he was tired, he shouldn't have tried to go up against Len. "I'm pretty sure I just called him it to his face, and that's still not saying anything. The man really is good at his job, and he's utterly fearless. We need someone like him rooting out corruption, we really do. But sometimes he goes barking up the wrong damn tree -"

"Someone in our precinct?" West asks, his tone lighting up with interest.

"That's confidential," Singh snaps, clearly remembering himself. "Damnit, Joe, he'll have my job if you go around blabbing."

"My lips are sealed," West promises, but though he tries to raise the subject of Len a few more times, Singh is having none of it and firmly steers the conversation onto their current investigation.

After listening for a little longer, Len nods to himself and hangs up the line.

"...did he really call you Captain Cold to your face?" Danvers asks, her lips twitching with suppressed laughter.

"Cold, anyway," Len says, allowing himself to smirk as she starts giggling. "I think I made him angry."

"Boss," she says, lifting her glasses and wiping the tears of laughter out of her eyes. "You make everyone angry. It's practically your hobby."

Len grins. She’s not wrong.

But the grin slowly fades as he thinks about the task he’s set for himself.

He’s engineered a few meetings between himself and Allen – usually he sets up the first meet at one of the local Jitters, where he can ‘accidentally’ stumble with his (annoyingly still-necessary) crutch to get people’s attention, and Allen’s no different.

Well, he was a bit oblivious but it worked eventually. Len took the precaution of telling the barista that he was trying to get Allen’s attention, which definitely helped cover his ass stumbling so many times – Kendra thought he was hilarious and adorable and definitely hinted strongly to Allen to pay attention.

Since then, they’ve been sitting together whenever their coffee runs ‘coincidentally’ match up.

That’s probably how Singh realized that Len was onto Allen’s case, putting the seating and Len’s high-level sealed reports together.

The problem, though, is that Allen is…frustrating.

“Thinking about your newest boytoy again?” Danvers asks.

She only looks innocent.

“Target,” Len corrects. “Not boytoy.”

“You’re basically a cat, boss,” she says. “You play with your food and your toys and your targets all the same way.”

“Basically a cat,” Len says, rolling his eyes. “This is what I get, is it? I employ you, you know.”

It’d taken literally months to break Danvers of her annoying habit of being excessively deferential, so she knows he doesn’t mean it.

Her smirk makes that very clear.

“You didn’t answer the question,” she points out.

“Because you phrased it in a stupid way,” Len grumbles. “But yeah, I was thinking about Allen.”

“What’s the problem, then?”

“Well, to start off, he’s extremely shady,” Len says. “He’s got to have some secret way in and out of Jitters, because I have literally blinked and he’s slipped out somehow. He’s always whispering about stuff with those new scientist friends of his from STAR Labs, and they’re almost always talking about the latest disaster in town, and that’s usually followed immediately by Allen disappearing for a bit.”

“That doesn’t seem like a problem,” Danvers says. “That sounds like a good lead.”

Len makes a face.

“No?”

“He’s nice,” Len complains. “I see why everyone here likes him; he’s friendly and acts all well-meaning and he helped an old lady cross the road last week –”

“Oh, I see,” Danvers says, grinning. “You think he’s hot.”

“Of course he’s hot,” Len says. “Lots of people are hot; I’m pansexual. That doesn’t usually distract me from doing my job. Besides, he’s half my age.”

“You exaggerate,” she says. “But putting that aside, you are doing your job, because your job is figuring out if someone is up to something. If even you’re getting good vibes off Allen, then maybe, just maybe, this one time, a cigar is actually just a cigar.”

Len blinks at her.

“Maybe he’s clean,” she clarifies.

Len snorts. “He disappears for nine months, claims he was in a coma, and comes back in the best shape of his life,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “At the minimum that’s going to involve some sort of medical insurance fraud, or possibly unemployment fraud. Plus, by all accounts the guy seems to have a real knack for avoiding confrontation by being a compulsive liar.”

“But?”

“His lab work is good,” Len admits. “I haven’t seen any patterns of him altering evidence in favor of any given party, and the lab boys over at the Feds say the reports are basically done right, though they can’t quite get the centrifuge data to match up.”

“A real enigma, then,” Danvers says. “Your favorite.”

“Danvers.”

“Don’t you Danvers me,” she says, smirking at him. “You should go ask him out on a date.”

“I can’t date a target.”

“Go ask him out for a totally platonic dinner, then,” she says. “Do it when you know something’s about to go down – and don’t think I don’t know that just because you’ve been burned doesn’t mean your connections in the underworld are totally gone. That way you can eliminate each possible affiliation.”

“First off, that’s entrapment,” Len says. “Second, there are so many Families alone that we’d have to go on a date every day for a year for that to work. Third, he'd twig onto what I’m doing and deliberately not go to something he’s affiliated with to throw me off the scent. And fourth, even if it wasn’t a bad idea, it’s not working. There’s no pattern to any of his disappearances!”

Danvers is sniggering.

Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted how often he’s been meeting up with Allen.

He glares at her balefully.

“Give me your notes on his movements,” she orders, as if she was the boss. “I’ll get them cross-referenced with all the different types of city events I can find so you can do your pattern-spotting on the outside instead of the inside; if he’s going to some sort of dumb concert series or something, you wouldn’t want to waste your time. In the meantime, you have a date.”

“I’m not seeing Allen again until tomorrow,” Len objects automatically.

Danvers smirks at him like he’s admitted something. “Of course not,” she says. “But it’s an MR day.”

Len nods, glad that she reminded him. How hard it is to remember what day is which is one of the downsides of deliberately randomizing his visits to the clinic in Keystone where Mick is so that no one can track him when he goes there. He’d prefer to go on a regular schedule – Len’s always liked timing things – but it’s his duty to keep Mick safe. Or at least, it’s the very least he can do, after all Mick’s done for him.

If Len was a good man, he wouldn’t go at all. He’d leave Mick alone. He wouldn’t burden him with Len’s baggage and Len’s job and Len’s everything, not to mention the fact that Len’s enemies are even more numerous now than they were when he and Mick were partners.

The Families want Len’s head on a plate. Many of his old contacts in the underworld know he’s a cop now and hate him for it. The corrupt cops that fear him are gunning for him. Even the clean cops hate him for violating their precious boys-in-blue code.

Len would be better off being friends with no one at all, and if he was a good man, he would refrain.

But he’s not a good man.

“I’ll go catch a ride,” he says. “Is my pick-up here?”

Danvers wrinkles her nose. “Boss –”

“Oh, good, then Charlie is here.”

“I hate that guy,” she whines. “I don’t care if he’s good at losing people, he’s going to kidnap you and eat you one of these days.”

“You exaggerate,” Len says, shaking his head. “I’ve known Charlie for years –”

“He has priors for cannibalism and attempted cannibalism,” Danvers hisses. “Literal cannibalism.”

“Technically,” Len drawls, “he only has priors for defacing a corpse. Cannibalism isn’t a legal crime, and no one proved he was involved with any killing –”

“If you don’t ring me the second you get to the clinic, I’m going to hunt you down,” Danvers threatens. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Who exactly is the boss here?”

“You, sir,” she says. “Now go and do what I told you to do.”

Len rolls his eyes, but gets up, wincing. His leg and side are really pulling on him today. He uses Mick’s clinic to meet his physical and occupational therapist anyway, which is a good cover for going to visit Mick, but going to PT/OT with an already sore leg is going to suck.

“And when you’re done with that, we can talk about you dating a target,” Danvers adds just as he gets to the door. “It’s actually not against the rules until there’s an official inquiry open.”

“No, Danvers.”

“I’ll book you a table for two at a nice restaurant for Friday,” she says. “It’ll have a pre-paid deposit and you’ll have no choice but to ask him to go or you’ll waste the money.”

“A, you’re abusing your access to my credit card,” Len says. “B, I could always go with someone else, did you think of that?”

“Boss,” Danvers says pityingly. “Mick can’t go, your sister’s out of town, I’m busy that night, and you have no other friends.”

…damnit.

“Have fun!”

“Mick wouldn’t bitch me out like this,” Len grumbles.

“I’ve been keeping him up to date on your little investigation via secure-line VPN groupchat,” Danvers says cheerfully. “You wanna bet?”

Len flips her off and limps off towards the waiting car.

Mick would totally mock him over this whole Allen thing.

[bourbonboredom]

A Reason To Believe Chapter 2

Being an undercover officer is a dangerous job and Flip Zimmerman knows this far too well. He keeps his romantic life limited to one-night stands, never letting anyone get too close. That all starts to change when he meets a vivacious Jewish woman named Elle just as he’s about to take on a seriously dangerous  undercover job; infiltrating the KKK. Elle and his undercover work make him question things he’d never thought to before and challenge him to see the world, and himself, in a whole new light.

A Flip x OC Fic

Word Count: 3,941

Warnings: Violence, cursing

When I get restless, what can I do? When I need someone, I think about you I got to move on, not fade away I'm only just growin' a little each day

I got to quit this runnin' 'round Never gonna get rid of these blues I got to find somebody to love Slow me down, yeah Look out now

(x)

Flip was perpetually single by choice. The work he did as an undercover officer was dangerous and not always easy to explain. Dating anyone would just be too complicated. It was better to just have flings, no strings attached. Or at least that's what he told himself as he sat at the bar for the third time that week.

It's not like he was waiting for Eliana to walk in the door and pick up their conversation where they left off. He was just there to have a beer. He had one every night anyway to let some steam off from his job, granted it was usually at home. But why not get out a little bit? He could use the change of scenery. And if she happened to drop by, that was cool too.

The front door would open and his eyes would dart to the entrance, watching to see who was walking in. A man would come in, stumbling off his shift to find solace between work and home. A few women had walked in that night, laughing as they sat at a table near the front. His heart skipped a beat when he saw a head of brown hair. He is excitement was quickly settled when the woman turned her head and Elle's face wasn't there.

He would catch himself thinking about her from time to time at work. He'd remember her soft brown curls falling in her face. How her big brown eyes seemed to light up when she laughed. How talking to her was like talking to an old friend. But he could stop himself from thinking about her anytime he wanted, he was just indulging himself. He wasn't going to get caught up on a girl he didn’t even get into bed with.

But by the end of the night, he felt properly defeated. She wasn't gonna come back, it had just been wishful thinking. He finished his beer and flagged down the bartender to pay his tab.

"I was in here with a girl a couple days ago. She had brown hair and was wearing a white turtleneck?" He figured it wouldn't hurt to try to ask the bartender, a last ditch effort.

"Yeah I remember," the bartender said, taking Flip's money.

"Have you seen her around since?" He tried to play it cool. Not make it obvious that she's the reason he wasn't in his apartment drinking Coors and watching tv right now like any other self-respecting man on a Sunday night.

"Can't say I have, sorry bud,"

Flip nodded his thanks and put a good tip on the bar counter before heading out. It was a warm night outside, the street had a few people still wandering about. He walked to his car, a beat up Chevy pick up truck, and slid in the drivers seat. The engine rumbled to life and he began his slow drive home.

He tried not to think of her as he weaved through the streets of Colorado Springs. It had just been one night. One girl on one night, nothing special. There would be other girls, he told himself. He never had any trouble with that. He parked his car in the lot for his apartment and made his way upstairs.

His place was pretty small, and decidedly bachelor's pad. It was sparsely decorated, with just some mementos from his time in the military and a few family photos. It was a little messy, with casework papers strewn across his couch and coffee mugs lining his kitchen counter. He never had women over, so there wasn't much of a need to keep it tidy.

He'd always go to his hookup's place, it was easier that way. The next morning he could wake up and say he was late to work and rush out before any other plans could be made. Flip hadn't made it to a third date in the last year or so, ditching it before it could get too serious.

He stripped off his button down and slacks before collapsing into bed. He lay under the covers, listening to the city outside his window. It was dark aside from a few streetlights below illuminating the pavement. It felt lonely sometimes, coming home to nothing in particular. He'd catch himself thinking about coming home to a girl cooking dinner for the two of them, smiling as he came through the door. He never really had a particular girl in mind, it was more of a dream than anything.

But this night, that girl had brown hair and big brown eyes.

He shoved the thought from his head and went to sleep.

------------

The next morning him and his partner had to drive out to the hospital. He met up with Jimmy at the station before the two of them took his Chevy to the coffee shop. After they had their paper cups of coffee fisted in their freezing hands, they made their way to their objective: St. Francis Medical Center.

Flip's last undercover case had gone smoothly enough. Everyone was arrested and were heading to court for drug charges. There was just one exception. One of the dealers he'd been with had tried to grab a gun off an officer and run for it. In the process, he shot at a cop, missed, and jumped off a fire escape, seriously injuring himself. He was currently sitting in a private room at St. Francis, recovering before he could be taken to jail.

Miraculously, Flip's cover hadn't been blown in all the commotion. As far as the suspects knew, he'd escaped the cops and was laying low until it blew over. Chief Bridges wanted to take advantage of this, using his intact undercover status to possibly get more information out of the injured suspect while he was healing and get his medical records so they could show it was an accident.

The hospital was quiet that morning, his footsteps echoing against the floor as we walked to the nurse's desk. A young woman sat filing paperwork, she looked up as he approached.

"I'm looking for Jacob Kukowski," he said, flashing his badge before stuffing back in his front pocket.

He almost never dressed in uniform for his job, something he was thankful for. The detective branch had a casual dress code, with most of the guys opting for jeans over slacks. He was grateful he could wear a flannel and a pair of jeans instead of the scratchy polyester of the officers uniform. A wire was taped to his undershirt under the flannel, something his partner helped him with in the parking lot. The receiver sat in his pocket, with Jimmy holding the recorder under his arm.

"Room 311. Try not to rile him up too much officer, his blood pressure hasn't been great," the woman warned him, a well-manicured finger pointing his way.

He said his thanks and walked toward the room. Jimmy stayed at the desk to gather Kukowski's file from the nurse and to pick up anything he could on the wire Flip was currently wearing. Flip wasn’t allowed to lead him toward any sort of declaration, that could invalidate anything said to him. So he’d have to shoot the shit with this guy and he’d hopefully talk himself into a proper prison sentence.

He found the room at the end of the hall, no officer stationed outside. The injuries must have been intense enough that they didn’t think he was a flight risk. He peeked in to see only one bed filled, the other stripped clean and vacant. His perp was in bed, propped up with pillows and covered in plaster casts. His naked arm was handcuffed to the railing of the bed, not that he could really get anywhere.

"Kukowski," he said simply as he entered the room. The weary man looked at him, expression becoming more animated.

“Well look at you, you sonofabitch. How the fuck you’d get in here without a nurse stoppin’ you?" Jacob asked, straightening himself up to get a better look at Flip.

"Nice to see you too. And there’s no one out there. How the hell did you get caught?"

"Some fuckin’ snitch ratted me out,” he groaned

“Fuck man, I’m sorry, that blows,” Flip tried to sound as sympathetic as possible.

“Listen Matt, I want you to get rid of the rest of my stuff. I got a special batch hidden away, it was meant to go to a new client. None of these small-time junkies,” Kukowski said in a hushed tone, calling Flip by the alias he’d been using. He clearly didn’t want to waste any time, he got right down to business.

“What makes it special? Who am I getting it to?” Flip asked. He figured Kukowski was planning on partnering with him at some point, but after he was already arrested? This guy was dumber than he originally thought.

Kukowski beckoned him closer with his cuffed hand.

“Now, I don’t know if I should say who the buyer is. But the horse? It’s beautiful,” Kukowski’s eyes were bloodshot, but shining with excitement.

“This buyer wanted me to come up with something new. The stuff I usually deal is cut with Asprin, which doesn’t do much to a person. If anything, I’m keepin’ my customers healthy,” He continued.

“Yeah, sure,” Flip was pretty sure that heroin had the opposite effect, despite what else you put in it, but he wasn’t about to argue.

“This new stuff, is the exact opposite. It’s meant to look harmless, it tastes just like the real shit. Basically undetectable unless you’re gonna test it in a lab. But it could kill a man in minutes,” Kukowski was smiling way too enthusiastically while talking, Flip’s skin crawled under his collar, but he let him continue to incriminate himself.

 “The secret? it’s cut with a fuckload of caffeine powder. Makes it look like the poor guy died of a heart attack instead of an overdose,”

“But why do that? Seems bad for business to me,” Flip said, motioning to his pack of cigarettes to ask if his target wanted one. He shook his head and Flip tapped the pack to knock a cig into his hand.

“Let’s just say this buyer’s business is a little...different from ours. They don’t like repeat clients,”

“That’s fuckin’ strange, what kinds operation are they runnin’?” He lit his cigarette, taking a long draw of smoke into his lungs and holding it there for a moment.

“A Wise One, if you catch my drift,” Kukowski winked at his supposed friend.

Oh. Oh, this was too good.

Flip let the smoke out of his lungs, choosing his words carefully as he spoke again.

“Are you tellin’ me you’re sellin’ to the mob, Kukowski?” He said quietly, just loud enough for Jimmy to pick up through the wire.

“A small-time contact. But if this works out we could be very rich men very soon,”

“Well, whats this contact’s name? Where’s the stuff? We gotta set this up and get you some bail money,” Flip said, taking another drag.

“Johnny Bianchi, he’s up in Denver. My supplies is in that storage unit I was tellin’ you about, along with some cash I’ve already got tucked away. That’s the bail money, the rest is for us my friend!”

Flip could barely believe it. This guy had not only solidified he was a dealer, but that he was producing and selling a deadlier version of his drugs to the Mafia with the intent to kill. He wondered if the office was going to make him buy another round that night. Does it count when its still technically the same case?

“Well that’s a swell plan Kukowski, I gotta tell ya,” Flip said, getting off the hospital bed. The smoke from his cigarette trailed behind him as he moved to the windows at the far end of the room. “What do you think Jimmy? Will it work out for him?”

Kukowski’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. His body tensed up as much as it could being covered in plaster.

“I think it’s got some holes to it, but we can always take another listen later in court,” Jimmy’s voice came from the hallway followed by a loud shush from the nurse behind the desk.

Kukowski’s face went from confusion to realization to rage in just a few moments. Flip almost wished he could’ve taken a picture.

"You set me up!" He struggled against his restraints, his casts making it difficult for him to make much progress.

"Hey, you should give yourself more credit, you did most of the heavy lifting in that conversation. I think our friends up at the Denver PD will be thankful for the tip off,”

“I’ll fuckin’ kill you!” He was practically frothing at the mouth.

“You were already read your rights once, but I’ll say them again seeing as you clearly weren’t listening the first time. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney, one can be appointed to you to represent- " was as far as Flip made it before he was cut off by a deafening scream.

Kukowski thrashed wildly in his bed, incomprehensible threats sputtering from his mouth. Flip watched as the IV glass began to sway from the force, threatening to tip over and break.

"Nurse!" He called over the screaming of his suspect. He knew he couldn't get close enough to subdue him without getting injured himself.

Two nurses ran into the room at top speed, rushing to steady the equipment and the man. He continued to thrash despite the hold the women had on him. Flip stood out of the way, backed up against the far wall. Maybe this wasn’t the best way for him to drop his cover.

"We need a sedative!" One of the women called out into the hallway.

A few moments later, another nurse rushed to the room holding a small jar and a needle.

"How much?" She asked hurriedly, looking from the distressed patient to the distressed nurse.

“1 milligram!" The other nurse shouted back, trying to hold his cast down to prevent any further injury. “There’s no time to inject into the fluid, we need it intravenous!”

“Well shit, Carol! He’s covered in plaster that’s gonna take a second!” 

“Don’t curse! Just find an area, quick!”

"I'll fucking kill you!" Kukowski continued to shout, choking on his own spit, voice becoming more garbled. "I'll fucking kill you you god damn pig! You fuckin’-"

His voice died out and his eye rolled back into his head. Slowly he slumped back into the mattress. The woman had stuck him with the syringe, pulling it gently out of his neck once empty. The women sighed a breath of relief, backing away from the patient to get a better idea of what just happened.

"What the fuck?" The nurse holding the syringe looked to her coworkers, pushing a lock of hair back into her cap. "Why the fuck was he screaming about pigs?"

"This man over here, who needs to vacate the room immediately, by the way. I believe I specifically asked him not to raise the patient's blood pressure," the nurse who had been at the desk said in a clipped tone, staring down Flip.

The other two nurses turned to look at the source of their strife, noticing the man who’d been standing against the wall with a lit cigarette and a shocked expression. He made his way over to Kukowski’s bed once more, stubbing out his cig on an ashtray. The nurse who was holding the syringe made direct eye contact with him, her big brown eyes widening upon seeing him.

“You’re the pig?” She blurted out.

Realization clicked in his brain as he focused on her. This couldn't be happening right now.

"Eliana?"

He hadn’t recognized her. Her long curly hair was held back in a tight roll and covered by a nurse’s cap. Her uniform matched with the others in the room, a stark white dress that stepped above the knee with a matching apron.

"You know this guy?" The other nurse asked.

"Barely. You guys make sure the patient is okay, I’ll take care of him,” she said, grabbing him by the arm and shepherding him out of the room.

He was too shocked to stop her as they went down the corridor, passing his partner on the way.

"What the fuck just happened in there? It sounded like a fuckin’ murder spree,” He hissed.

"I'll explain later," he ripped his wire off himself and threw it toward his partner.

"Where are you going?" He asked as Elle dragged Flip further down the hall.

“I said later!" He yelled back as she pushed him into a spare room.

She was surprisingly strong, her shove causing him to stumble a little as he entered the vacant room. Beds were set up to house two patients but both remained empty. She closed the door behind them and turned to look at him. Even though he was half a foot taller than her, she straightened her spine and rested her hands on her hips as she spoke.

"Are you stalking me?" She questioned him.

"What?" He spat out.

"You're at my job. I didn't tell you where I work but here you are, were you stalking me?"

"No! Of course not! I'm a cop, hence the yelling about pigs. I’m here with my partner for work, that guy I was talking to was a suspect in a drug ring. And as of five minutes ago, wanted for working with the mob,"

"Do you usually rile up mobsters like that? That seemed pretty fucking stupid,"

"Christ, you've got a mouth on you,"

"And after you work him into a frenzy, why not send in the nurses? Have you ever tried to sedate a man actively trying to kill someone? Do you know how hard it is to jab someone with a needle full of a very specific amount of sedative into a very specific area?" She continued her interrogation, choosing to ignore his comment. The hand holding the syringe pointed toward him accusingly.

"Can you please put the needle down when you're talking?"

She slammed it down on a bedside table.

"Can you please not fuck with my patients?"

"Well sorry, it wasn't intentional. I was just trying to do my job,"

"Yeah? Well try harder next time," she spat out, looking annoyed.

He was quiet for a moment, taking in her new appearance. She looked much different than she had at the bar. Her turtleneck and pants had been replaced with a tidy nurse uniform. Her heels were replaced with sensible loafers, shaving a few inches off her height. Even standing straight, she only came to his collarbone. Her fiery spirit remained the same though, if not a little more intimidating as she stood by the needle.

"I didn't know you were a nurse," he said quietly.

"Didn't know you were a cop," she responded, her expression softening just a fraction.

"Is that a problem?" He asked, half-expecting her to be angry with him.

"Only if you keep getting in the way of my job," she responded. "He might be a criminal but he can't go to jail if you give him a heart attack and he dies,"

"Noted," he gave a small smile.

She returned it.

"Haven't seen you around the bar," he said.

"So you were looking? You sure you aren't stalking me?" She raised an eyebrow.

"No, I just-" he didn't want to look like he'd spent the last couple of nights intentionally looking out for her.

"It's okay, I'm just messing with you. I've had double shifts the last couple of days so I've been too tired to do anything when I get off work,"

"That's understandable," he knew what those nights were like, he's had quite a few of them himself.

He felt a little better about not seeing her around knowing it had been because of work and not him. He wanted to ensure this wouldn't happen again, he wanted to get to know her better. He was going to ask for her number, maybe take her out on a date. It had been a while since he went on a real date, the idea made him a little nervous.

Suddenly, she stepped closer to him, hand traveling up to his neck. He was startled by the sudden contact, but let her continue. His top buttons came loose as he ripped off his wire, revealing his necklace.

"ir've eydish?" she asked, holding the Star of David between her delicate fingers.

"What?" He didn't catch what she had said.

"You're Jewish?" she seemed to already know the answer judging by her smile.

She removed her hands from his neck to go to her own. She pointed to the delicate chain peeking out of the collar of her uniform, holding a small Star of David pendant.

"There don't seem to be too many of us around here,"

"Yeah, it's a pretty small number," he mused, fixing his shirt and tucking his necklace away.

"Do you have family in town?"

"No, I grew up in Nebraska, but my family moved further south a few years ago,” he wasn't sure where she was going with that question.

"The next day I have off is for Rosh Hashanah. I'm having one of my coworkers over and her boyfriend, it's nothing big. But it's nice to have people around for the holidays, you should come by,"

"I'm uh...my parents, we never really celebrated anything so I’m not really sure how that would go. I wouldn't want to impose," he stuttered out. He grew up in a secular family, the only time they celebrated was if they went to visit family elsewhere.

"That's okay, there's a first for everything," she said. She reached for a pen and paper from the clipboard by the bed. "I'm writing down my address and my number, swing by before sundown on Friday, maybe seven-ish?“

"Should I bring anything?" He asked, taking the paper and shoving it in his wallet for safekeeping.

"You could buy me that drink maybe?" She winked at him, opening the door and starting to walk out. "I'm partial to red wine,"

She put the clipboard back and picked up the syringe.

"I have to get back to work, gotta make sure you didn't mess up my patient's recovery," she explained, heading for the door. "I'll see you Friday?"

She stopped in the door frame, looking back at him, waiting for his answer.

"Friday, before sundown, red wine," he recited back to her. She smiled and disappeared from view, the sound of her footsteps echoing down the hall.

He left a moment later, as she was turning into Kukowski's room at the other end of the hall. She looked so composed, her uniform pressed and her hair rolled into submission. She was still smiling as she disappeared into the room.

"Earth to Zimmerman," A finger snapped in his face, waking him from a trance he didn't know he was in.

Jimmy was standing in front of him, looking annoyed. The recorder was under his arm and the wires were sticking out of his front pocket.

"What the fuck just happened in there? The nurse marched you into the room looking like she was ready for murder and came out smiling,"

"I think I just got a date," he responded, feeling awestruck.

---------------------

Did you know Emergency Medicine is a pretty recent creation? I was originally going to make Eliana an ER nurse but turns out that wasn't really a thing in the 70′s! It was just starting to become a specialization at the time but most hospitals only had a room or two set aside for emergency cases. Want to learn more? Here’s a cool article!

“ir’ve eydish?” is my best attempt at Yiddish in English letters. Eliana is asking Flip if he’s Jewish.

People do actually cut heroin with caffeine, be careful with your drugs people! 

[robininthelabyrinth]

prompt from Litra#2(/2) ColdFlash Instead of becoming a thief, Len became a cop. He's in internal affairs and determined to never let another cop get away with the things his dad did. Then Barry gets his powers and starts disappearing at strange times. Talking to people outside the precinct about active cases. ect. Clearly Len has to find the truth, and if all's well, then at least he'll have an excuse to spend time with the hot lab tech.

For the Coldflash week day 1: Role Reversal

Fic: An Internal Affair (Ao3 link)

Fandom: The FlashPairing: Barry Allen/Leonard Snart

Summary: Leonard Snart, Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you’re on his list, you’re in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who’s developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

—————————————————————————————————-

“Forgive me if I don’t get up to say hello,” Len drawls as Captain Singh walks into his office. He leans back in his office chair and gestures vaguely towards one of the seats, because if he doesn’t Singh will take one anyway.

Singh smiles tightly. He’s trying to be nice, but it’s hard for him. He takes a seat and makes an effort to make the smile more sincere in preparation for the nice, friendly chat that they’re not actually going to have. “Of course not,” he said, nodding at Len’s injured side like he knew something.

He knows nothing.

Oh, it was common knowledge by now that Leonard Snart, one of the CCPD’s finest undercover agents, recruited into the joint task force with the FBI and tasked with helping slowly take apart the unrestrained control the Families had over Central City, was grounded at last when information about his identity slipped out to such a degree that his (now former) colleagues in the criminal underworld turned on him with the hatred they reserved only for cops and traitors.

Everyone knew, also, that before he’d gotten out and back to the safety of police custody, Leonard Snart took a bullet to the gut and a bullet to the thigh.

Everyone knew that Leonard Snart was still healing from them, but that he’d refused time off and insisted on coming back to work - even accepting a position that was largely a desk job in order to do so.

Everyone knew, last but certainly not least, that Leonard Snart was a hell of a lot smarter than he seemed, because his humble acceptance of a desk job (to keep busy, he’d said, with a straight face and a bowed head) that was designed to keep him out of trouble was in fact just another stratagem, because it got Leonard Snart the job he’d been angling to get for who knew how long.

Internal Affairs.

Head of Internal Affairs.

It was a fairly impressive promotion, yes, although he had been moving up steadily in rank in absentia. But in view of his immense sacrifice, the vast amount of time Leonard Snart had spent underground - over a decade at least, and possibly two, the reports on the matter differed - gathering invaluable information on the criminal world, it was agreed that he would be rewarded with a particularly large promotion in order to compensate him for being assigned to a position that most cops reviled.

His superiors had been particularly happy to give him the position, because it satisfied their desire to reward him without letting him get too much in the way of their existing operations.

After all, no good cop actually wanted to be placed in Internal Affairs, where you investigated your friends and coworkers instead of the bad guys.

A job where you were hated by other cops.

That wasn’t an issue for Leonard Snart, as the department soon discovered, because he hated most cops just as much in return.

Abusive father that used to be a cop, the whispers said - they’d always known that, of course, but no one had put two and two together until Leonard Snart had been made a Captain and spent his first few months on the job systematically destroying men’s careers with an icy smile that never wavered.

Captain Cold, they called him - sneers and mockery at first, but as he took down one untouchable after another, men and women who were infamously corrupt but (it had been believed) were too valuable and good at their jobs to be removed, the term changed to one of fear and respect.

Mostly fear. Not a little bit of hatred, too, for the man who seemed to have nothing to hide and nothing to lose and whose entire existence, now, seemed wrapped around a vendetta aimed not at the criminals but at the members of the CCPD who enabled them.

That’s what was said about him.

It’s just as Len said: they know nothing.

Oh, it’s all true, all of it, all the rumors, everything from his piece of shit of an ex-cop dad to his time undercover to his manipulation of the system to get the position and power he wanted. They got all the big picture stuff right; they just messed up on the details.

It’s the details that matter most.

First off, some asshole at the CCPD let slip who Len was to someone who eventually told the Families about him. Len doesn’t yet know who it was, but he intends to find out, given what that little slip had cost him.

After all, Len didn’t just get shot when the Families discovered his betrayal.

He’d been kidnapped.

Tortured.

Sentenced to a slow and painful death, all alone in the dark.

And he would have died that death, too, if Mick Rory hadn’t come to save him.

Mick Rory, arsonist, pyromaniac, thief, muscle, thug.

Mick Rory, committed criminal.

Mick Rory, Leonard Snart’s best and maybe only goddamn friend in the whole wide world, who Len had lied to from day one and kept lying to through thick and thin. Who Len had used for his friendship, for his strength, for his credibility in the criminal community, and given him back nothing in return but lies.

Despite all of that, Mick came for him.

Mick fought through the assholes guarding the door and he shot the assholes who were torturing Len and he got Len out of there.

Mick got Len away from the Families, carried him in his arms while Len was bleeding like a stuck pig and scarcely aware of what was happening, crying like a child.

He got Len to the hospital, to safety, even though he knew Len was a cop now, a pig like all the others.

Then, when the police assigned to guard Len’s room arrived, they kicked him out.

They kicked him out.

After all, why would a good cop want a criminal hanging around?

Without anywhere else to go, Mick went home.

And at home…

The Families fire-bombed his house that very same night, knowing that his pyromania would keep him from saving himself.

They were right. He survived only due to a fluke, a part of the building falling fast enough to extinguish the fire faster than expected.

Mick Rory now lies in a hospital bed with in a very high end burn clinic in Keystone City, nearly two-thirds of his body burned, as the best paid doctors in the region tried to salvage what they can.

Len never even had a chance to thank him.

Lewis Snart might’ve been the one that taught Len what a corrupt cop looked like, but it was what the cops did to Mick Rory that makes Len truly hate them.

“Can I help you?” Len says to Captain Singh, head of the midtown precinct, who seems to have lost the ability to speak since entering the room.

“I want to discuss the newest case you’re working on,” Singh finally says.

“Have you got intel for me, then?” Len asks, deliberately cruel. Cops hate a snitch as bad as any felon, and the suggestion that Singh’s here to snitch gets the flinch Len was looking for.

He doesn’t actually have anything against Captain Singh personally - the guy’s a good cop, believe it or not, with good detection skills and better management skills and unlike most of the lot of them, he’s not completely in a Family pocket - but Singh’s a believer in the blue line, the idea of cop solidarity über alles, and until he remembers that his loyalty should come to justice and truth before friendship and comradery, the instinct to paper over the crimes of the cops on his team simply because he feels he can’t spare them, Len’s not about to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That’s why Singh’s here, after all. He’s not here to snitch.

He’s here to ask Len to back off.

More fool he. Len never backs off.

(Len will admit, however, that he’s a hypocrite: he’s never had any problem valuing friends over laws - his first loyalties are to Lisa, tucked far away with her skates and the college he’s paying for, and to Mick. But not at the expense of the corruption of the blue, the same goddamn people who are supposed to be protecting the helpless; that’s not a crime against society, which Len could forgive, but a crime against his city, and Len will never forgive that.)

“No,” Singh finally says. “Listen, I know this is a long shot -”

“Who?”

“I - what?”

“Who?” Len repeats. “Who do you want me to back off of?”

Singh looks suspicious; good for him. He’s not an idiot: he knows a request to back off will only make Len more suspicious.

“I don’t want you to back off, exactly,” he says. “More - I don’t want you wasting your time.”

Len arches his eyebrows and waits.

Singh’s an experienced cop, veteran of a thousand interrogations and interview rooms, and he knows how silence can be wielded as a weapon.

It’s just that Len’s better at it, that’s all.

“Barry Allen,” Singh says, giving up the name. “I don’t know how he got on your list -”

“He’s never here but his work always gets done,” Len says dryly.

“He’s efficient -”

“He’s always arriving late, looking like he’s been busy somewhere else.”

“He’s always had an issue with -”

“He disappears at odd times, say, around the same time something is going down.”

“There’s always something going down -”

“He knows more about crime scenes than he should upon first glance.”

“So he’s good at his job -”

“He talks about active cases with people outside the precinct.”

“We all do to some degree -”

“Brand new set of friends.”

“Not exactly a crime -”

“And all of that following nine months disappearance -”

“On medical leave!” Singh bursts out, a vein starting to pulse in his forehead. “He was in a coma!”

“Yes,” Len drawls, stretching the word out. “He was, wasn’t he? Then he got himself transferred out of the hospital into a private facility - a private facility run by Harrison Wells, aka the genius behind the Accelerator explosion that supposedly caused Allen’s little ‘accident’ - and what do you know? Not only does that place not have proper records as far as I can tell, it appears that, both before and after the explosion, they have only ever had the one patient.”

Singh is gaping at him.

“Now, I don’t know about you,” Len says, tilting his head to the side in his most irritating, exaggerating thoughtful way. “But when you put all that together with the fact that a lot of these bad habits are newly developed following that so-called coma of his - except for the punctuality, of course, that’s long-standing - you get a very interesting picture. One I intend to look at a bit more closely, until I find out what he’s hiding behind it.”

“Goddamnit, Cold, he was hit by lightning,” Singh says through gritted teeth. “Some changes are to be expected. It’s a miracle he even got that much of him back -”

“Yeah, about that,” Len says and now his teeth are bared. “Funny how his job was still open after nine months.”

Singh straightens up like he’s just been shocked by lightning himself.

“Funny, too, how there weren’t any concerns regarding his mental state after being hit by lightning,” Len continues. “But you know what’s the most funny of all?”

Singh is silent.

It’s okay, Len wasn’t asking that expecting an answer.

Len leans forward. “What I find the most funny, Captain Singh,” he says, as conversationally as he can, “is that he says that he was in a coma for nine months, right? Nine months. It’s been a little over nine months since the explosion. Nine months, and he’s back to work in a week? No bedsores, no muscle atrophy, no deterioration, no physical therapy, no occupational therapy - oh, no, our Mr. Allen apparently leaped out of his hospital bed and went for a goddamn run around Central City, fresh as a daisy. And, in the process, either during the coma or during that run -”

Len flips open the folder on his desk, revealing two photographs. One is Allen before his mysterious nine-month absence; one is after. He’s shirtless in both, because Len’s contacts sometimes like to snag shirtless pics for him ever since they figured out he was pansexual - something that usually pisses him off, except he wouldn’t have figured out the weirdest part of this whole Allen thing if they hadn’t so he supposes he has to forgive them.

“- the man picks up a set of abs,” Len concludes, his voice flat. “Now, Singh, I know you’ve given up ogling other people in your marriage vows, but tell me, in view of your past experience in this field, does one generally get that sort of body development lying in a hospital bed?!”

That last bit was said with a full on snarl.

Okay, so Len’s a bit touchy on the whole hospital bed/coma subject.

Singh’s shoulders slump down, a recognition that he doesn’t have the answers Len’s looking for and that there is no way that Len’s dropping this investigation - either into Allen, or into Singh for enabling him.

And because Len’s investigations are typically confidential among the Captain rank at this early stage, if Allen hears so much as a whisper on the subject before Len’s ready, Len will know exactly who to blame.

Len smiles at him. The smile has teeth.

“Good talk, Singh,” he says encouragingly. “Have a nice day, why don’t you?”

Singh’s lips are pressed together until they’re very nearly bloodless with rage, but he’s smart enough not to say anything. He knows how dangerous Len is.

He walks out with his shoulders squared, much like someone who wants to punch someone and is very nearly there, but barely refraining.

Len dials a number on the phone at his desk before grabbing his crutch and limping heavily over to the door that Singh had rather rudely left open, particularly given that he knows that Len prefers a closed door and has difficulty walking to close it.

“Chum in the water, sir?” his assistant asks dryly. Technically, Len ought to have a whole team, and he does, but he’s spread the best of them out widely among the precincts of the sprawling Central City. This isn’t really 'home base’ for him, just an office he can use for the time being, but that’s fine. As long as he can do his job, he’s fine. And he can do his job here with just him and his assistant.

(Why did he never consider investing in a personal assistant when he was a criminal? They’re so useful. He would’ve saved himself so much angst. For example, his current assistant, Danvers, is an avenging angel in disguise - he doesn’t know what he’d do without her.)

“Not him,” Len tells Danvers with a faint grin. “That was just a friendly chat. Come in and take some dictation, will you?”

“You make that sound so awful,” she observes. “I should sue for sexual harassment.”

“If you’re getting sexually harassed, then I’m in a hostile work environment.”

“Boss,” Danvers says, suppressing a grin. “You are a hostile work environment.”

“Kara,” Len says. “Just get your ass in here.”

She laughs and gets her ass in there with her speed-typing box - she used to be a court reporter before Len snagged her, and she’s amazing - just in time for the open phone line Len dialed to start picking up things on the other side.

The other side being the desk immediately adjacent to one Detective Joe West’s, who had the dubious honor of being Singh’s confidant, Allen’s mentor (possibly father?), and one of the poor souls lower down on Len’s list, given the remarkable speed by which the open investigation of his officer-involved shooting (West being the officer) got resolved.

Someone should really do something about the security in this place. Len plans on giving them a list before he leaves - but only after he’s done exploiting it.

“- don’t let Cold get to you, chief,” West is saying. “He’s got nothing on you.”

“That isn’t the issue,” Singh replies with a sigh. “I don’t want him here at all. Investigating my people -”

“When he could be doing something useful with his time,” West agrees. “Goddamn parasite.”

“Joe,” Singh says, mildly censoring. “He’s your superior officer.”

West snorts. “By cutting in line - yeah, yeah, I’ll back off. He did amazing work with the Families, not just here, but everywhere, I’ll give him that much. But I don’t have to appreciate the fact that the guy’s working out his childhood trauma on us.”

“Joe!” Singh exclaims. “That’s uncalled for.”

“Oh, come off it,” West says with a laugh. “We all know the story - dad was a bad cop and a mean drunk that liked to knock his kids around. And now the - I mean, our very respectable visiting Captain Cold, he’s got a vendetta against the boys in blue instead of the guys that really need to be taken off the streets.”

“If a cop’s done something wrong, they need to be taken off the streets too, Joe,” Singh says. “That’s what Internal Affairs does. You can’t hold it against Cold - I mean, Snart - that he’s good at his job.”

“Even you call him Cold,” West points out. “And that’s saying something.”

“No, Joe, it isn’t,” Singh replies, sighing. He sounds tired. If he was tired, he shouldn’t have tried to go up against Len. “I’m pretty sure I just called him it to his face, and that’s still not saying anything. The man really is good at his job, and he’s utterly fearless. We need someone like him rooting out corruption, we really do. But sometimes he goes barking up the wrong damn tree -”

“Someone in our precinct?” West asks, his tone lighting up with interest.

“That’s confidential,” Singh snaps, clearly remembering himself. “Damnit, Joe, he’ll have my job if you go around blabbing.”

“My lips are sealed,” West promises, and though he tries to raise the subject of Len a few more times, Singh is having none of it and firmly steers the conversation onto their current investigation.

After listening for a little longer, Len nods to himself and hangs up the line.

“…did he really call you Captain Cold to your face?” Danvers asks, her lips twitching with suppressed laughter.

“Cold, anyway,” Len says, allowing himself to smirk as she starts giggling. “I think I made him angry.”

“Boss,” she says, lifting her glasses and wiping the tears of laughter out of her eyes. “You make everyone angry. It’s practically your hobby.”

Len grins. She’s not wrong.

But the grin slowly fades as he thinks about the task he’s set for himself.

He’s engineered a few meetings between himself and Allen – usually he sets up the first meet and one of the local Jitters, where he can ‘accidentally’ stumble with his (annoyingly still-necessary) crutch to get people’s attention, and Allen’s no different.

Well, he was a bit oblivious but eventually it worked eventually. Len took the precaution of telling the barista that he was trying to get Allen’s attention, which definitely helped cover his ass stumbling so many times – Kendra thought he was hilarious and adorable and definitely hinted strongly to Allen to pay attention.

Since then, they’ve been sitting together whenever their coffee runs ‘coincidentally’ match up.

That’s probably how Singh realized that Len was onto Allen’s case, putting the seating and Len’s high-level sealed reports together.

The problem is, though, is that Allen is…frustrating.

“Thinking about your newest boytoy again?” Danvers asks.

She only looks innocent.

“Target,” Len corrects. “Not boytoy.”

“You’re basically a cat, boss,” she says. “You play with your food and your toys and your targets all the same way.”

“Basically a cat,” Len says, rolling his eyes. “This is what I get, is it? I employ you, you know.”

It’d taken weeks to break Danvers of her annoying habit of being excessively deferential, so she knows he doesn’t mean it.

Her smirk makes that very clear.

“You didn’t answer the question,” she points out.

“Because you phrased it in a stupid way,” Len grumbles. “But yeah, I was thinking about Allen.”

“What’s the problem, then?”

“Well, to start off, he’s extremely shady,” Len says. “He’s got to have some secret way in and out of Jitters, because I have literally blinked and he’s slipped out somehow. He’s always whispering about stuff with those new scientist friends of his from STAR Labs, and they’re almost always talking about the latest disaster in town, and that’s usually followed immediately by Allen disappearing for a bit.”

“That doesn’t seem like a problem,” Danvers says. “That sounds like a good lead.”

Len makes a face.

“No?”

“He’s nice,” Len complains. “Like, legitimately nice. I see why everyone here likes him; he’s friendly and acts all well-meaning and he helped an old lady cross the road last week –”

“Oh, I see the problem,” Danvers says, grinning. “You think he’s hot.”

“Of course he’s hot,” Len snaps. “Lots of people are hot; I’m pansexual. That doesn’t usually distract me from doing my job. Besides, he’s half my age.”

“You exaggerate,” she says. “But putting that aside, you are doing your job, because your job is figuring out if someone is up to something. If even you’re getting good vibes off Allen, then maybe, just maybe, this one time, a cigar is actually just a cigar.”

Len blinks at her.

“Maybe he’s clean,” she clarifies.

Len snorts. “He disappears for nine months, claims he was in a coma, and comes back in the best shape of his life,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “At the minimum that’s going to involve some sort of medical insurance fraud, or possibly unemployment fraud. Plus, the guy’s a pathological liar, at least when it comes to avoiding confrontation. He lies about everything.”

“But?”

“His lab work is good,” Len admits. “I haven’t seen any patterns of him altering evidence in favor of any given party, and the lab boys over at the Feds say the reports are basically done right, though they can’t quite get the centrifuge data to match up quite right.”

“A real enigma, then,” Danvers says. “Your favorite.”

“Danvers.”

“Don’t you Danvers me,” she says. “It is your favorite. You should go ask him out on a date.”

“I can’t date a target.”

“Go ask him out for a totally platonic dinner, then,” she says. “Do it when you know something’s about to go down – and don’t think I don’t know that just because you’ve been burned doesn’t mean your connections in the underworld are totally gone. That way you can eliminate each possible affiliation.”

“First off, that’s entrapment,” Len says. “Second, there are so many Families alone that we’d have to go on a date every day for a year for that to work. Third, he twig onto what I’m doing and deliberately not go to something he’s affiliated with to throw me off the scent. And fourth, even if it wasn’t a bad idea, it’s not working. There’s no Family-associated pattern to any of his disappearances!”

Danvers is sniggering.

Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted how often he’s been meeting up with Allen.

He glares at her balefully.

“Give me your notes on his movements,” she orders, as if she was the boss. “I’ll get them cross-referenced with all the different types of city events I can fine so you can do your pattern-spotting on the outside instead of the inside; if he’s going to some sort of dumb concert series or something, you wouldn’t want to waste your time. In the meantime, you have a date.”

“I’m not seeing Allen again until tomorrow,” Len objects automatically.

Danvers smirks at him like he’s admitted something. “Of course not,” she says. “But it’s an MR day.”

Len nods, glad that she reminded him. How hard it is to remember what day is which is one of the downsides of deliberately randomizing his visits to the clinic in Keystone where Mick is so that no one can track him when he goes there. He’d prefer to go on a regular schedule – Len’s always liked timing things – but it’s his duty to keep Mick safe. Or at least, it’s the very least he could do, after all Mick’s done for him.

If Len was a good man, he wouldn’t go at all. He’d leave Mick alone. He wouldn’t burden him with Len’s baggage and Len’s job and Len’s everything, not to mention the fact that Len’s enemies are even more numerous now than they were when he and Mick were partners.

The Families want Len’s head on a plate. Many of his old contacts in the underworld know he’s a cop now and hate him for it. The corrupt cops that fear him are gunning for him. Even the clean cops hate him for violating their precious boys-in-blue code.

Len would be better off being friends with no one at all, and if he was a good man, he would refrain.

But he’s not a good man.

“I’ll go catch a ride,” he says. “Is my pick-up here?”

Danvers wrinkles her nose. “Boss –”

“Oh, good, then Charlie is here.”

“I hate that guy,” she whines. “I don’t care if he’s good at losing people, he’s going to kidnap you and eat you one of these days.”

“You exaggerate,” Len says, shaking his head. “I’ve known Charlie for years –”

“He has priors for cannibalism and attempted cannibalism,” Danvers hisses. “Literal cannibalism.”

“Technically,” Len drawls. “He only has priors for defacing a corpse. Cannibalism isn’t technically a legal crime, and no one proved he was involved with any killing –”

“If you don’t ring me the second you get to the clinic, I’m going to hunt you down,” Danvers threatens. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Who exactly is the boss here?”

“You, sir,” she says. “Now go and do what I told you to do.”

Len rolls his eyes, but gets up, wincing. His leg and side are really pulling on him today. He uses Mick’s clinic to meet his physical and occupational therapist anyway, which is a good cover for going to visit Mick’s bedside, but going to PT/OT with an already sore leg is going to suck.

“And when you’re done with that, we can talk about you dating a target,” Danvers adds just as he gets to the door. “It’s actually not against the rules until there’s an official inquiry open.”

“No, Danvers.”

“I’ll book you a table for two at a nice restaurant for Friday,” she says. “It’ll have a pre-paid deposit and you’ll have no choice but to ask him to go or you’ll waste the money.”

“A, you’re abusing your access to my credit card,” Len says. “B, I could always go with someone else, did you think of that?”

“Boss,” Danvers says pityingly. “Mick can’t go, your sister’s out of town, I’m busy that night, and you have no other friends.”

…damnit.

“Have fun!”

“Mick wouldn’t bitch me out like this,” Len grumbles.

“I’ve been writing up all the details of your little investigations on a secure-line VPN groupchat for him to look at,” Danvers says cheerfully. “You wanna bet?”

Len flips her off and limps off towards the waiting car.

Mick would totally mock him over this whole Allen thing.

————————————————————————————————–

A/N: …this was meant to be a ficlet but is running away from me. It’s still in progress, so please feel free to throw suggestions as to things you might want to see this incorporate as it continues.