Chapter Text
Len didn’t leave his dad’s until late the next day. He’d felt too guilty, watching his father wander aimlessly around the house everytime he needed something, unable to remember where it was. Lisa started giving Len looks after lunchtime, pointedly angling her head at the door. She must’ve seen the way he’d pushed his food around his plate until nothing was touching.
So here he was, pulling up the driveway to his own house, the sun just a bit lower in the sky than when he’d left. He could see the lights on in the foyer through its glass walls, but he was greeted by silence as he hooked his keys on the rack. Flash’s leash wasn’t hanging beside it and Barry’s beloved but threadbare sneakers were missing from the shoe rack.
It gave him time to wash his hands, and then the counter after whatever cooking adventure Barry had gone on that morning. He washed his coffee mug, too, tracing the Central City University crest. There were two chips along the rim, but Barry refused to let him throw it out.
When he was done in the kitchen, Len checked their room to make sure the bed was made. It was, at least as well as Barry had ever managed, so he went to the living room to turn on the sports channel. Golf, probably his least favourite, but still he’d take it over whatever home renovations and teen dramas were playing on the other channels.
He was so focused on the frustratingly slow zoom-in the ball on its tee, he didn’t hear Barry come in until he had a lap full of excitable golden retriever. “Fuck, Flash,” Len laughed, trying to hold him still long enough to scratch his neck. As always, it was an impossible feat. “I missed you too.”
“He slept in front of the door,” Barry smiled, sitting down beside him. He brushed a hand down Len’s back, then followed his gaze back to the dog. “I tried to put him on the bed, but he wouldn’t stay with me.”
Len grinned, scruffing up all the extra skin around Flash’s neck and kissing his wet nose. “It’s because I’m his favourite. And because he knows he’s not supposed to be on the bed.”
Barry just shrugged, completely unapologetic. “If you’re not here, I reserve the right to fill your side of the bed however I like.”
Len raised an eyebrow at him. “That so?”
Barry slumped back into the couch, resting his hand on Flash’s wiggling butt with a smile. “Yeah. Dog, cat, your old jersey. Maybe some of the pots, so I’ll be reminded of your cooking every time I wake up rolling onto one. You have no idea how much I missed it this morning. I tried making eggs the way you do, but they looked more like something of Iris’s.”
They laughed together for a moment, until Flash started enthusiastically licking Len’s face. The wiggling little mess of golden fur nearly careened onto the floor when he tried to climb up on his shoulders, so Len pushed him off. His collar jangled all the way into the laundry room where his toys were.
They watched him go until the hairs at the end of his tail were out of sight, and then kept watching the empty doorway still. Len looked away first, down at his hands. He twisted his ring around his finger until it sat right. When it did, he reached for his boyfriend. Barry didn’t say a word. He curled his fingers into Len’s, loose with fingertips tracing the spaces between Len’s knuckles. He rested his other hand on Len’s shoulder, picking at the seam of the t-shirt he’d borrowed from his dad.
“It was nice,” Len offered, because he was sure Barry was waiting to hear it. “Everyone from their church showed up. You could barely see the coffin with all the flowers.”
Barry only hummed. For the first time, Len really looked at him. His hair was a bit of a mess, probably from the wind howling outside, and he was wearing one of the shirts he usually reserved for sleeping. He hadn’t gone to work, then, like he hadn’t the day before or the day before that or nearly every day since Len had gotten the call that his mother was in the hospital.
Len wanted to pretend he didn’t need it. That though he was touched, it was unnecessary. He knew how to cope with loss and he was well practiced in the art of grieving. But it’d been a long time since Len had pretended anything for Barry, and now would be the worst possible time to start.
He sighed, leaning his head on the backrest to look at the ceiling. “I’m tired,” he continued when it became clear that Barry wasn’t going to interject. “Lisa and I didn’t go to bed till like one and of course my Dad got up at five, so we had to too. Nothing changes. You know he used to wake us up with him even though school didn’t start until nine because he thought that was teaching us discipline or some shit? Or maybe he just knew I’d go pro and was trying to prepare me.”
Barry laughed. “ Athletes ,” he joked, smiling because he used to be one. Len snorted, but he stopped smiling when Barry did, watching trepidation cross his face. “Speaking of,” he broached cautiously. “What’s your plan? How much longer can you be off before you’re in trouble?”
Len swallowed. He let go of Barry’s hand, wiping down the rough fabric of his jeans. He leaned forward to fold his hands together between his knees. “I don’t know.” He hesitated, scratching his jaw. “Actually, I was thinking I’d go back to training tomorrow.”
As expected, Barry stilled in surprise. Len could feel him working out what to say and how to tell him he thought that was stupid without giving him cause to get defensive. They’d been working hard on that — communicating something negative without it coming off as an attack — and he could see him holding back from what he really wanted to say.
The hand that was still on his shoulder pulled away, and Barry turned to sit properly on the couch, the leg that was up on the cushions dropping to the floor. He stared at the glass coffee table instead of Len. “That’s… Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
Len glanced at him, worrying his lip between his teeth, then turned his gaze to the ground. Still, his voice was steady when he said, “I do.”
“Why?” Barry shook his head. “No one’s going to think any less of you if you don’t show up to training two days after you bury your mother.”
“I know that,” Len said, with an edge of heat. He reigned it in as soon as he heard it, taking the moment to drop Barry’s hand. He met his eyes. “I’m going. I want to. It’s the only thing I want to be doing right now.”
He watched Barry consider for a long minute. Finally, he conceded. “Okay. If that’s what you think is best.” It was clear from his tone that he didn’t think it was best, but Len didn’t fault him for it. It wasn’t as though Barry knew nothing of mourning. Len wasn’t the only one with parents he wasn’t born to.
It was different though, wasn’t it? That was what Len had been thinking everytime Barry had been there to comfort him the past few weeks. There was a certain peace that could only be found from knowing the one holding you knew what it was like to be breaking the same way you were, and Len was grateful for it. But there was a certain loneliness, too, from feeling that it wasn’t really the same and not being able to say that because it would hurt the man he loved, the man who had been nothing but there , always there , whatever he needed.
Barry’s mother died when he was eleven. When the grief was crushing and incomprehensible. Len remembered what that was like, when he was thirteen, sitting on the kitchen floor while his mother’s blood pooled into the cracks between the tiles. He’d felt angry and lost and betrayed, in a loosing fight against the rest of the world. Crushed, but he’d adapted. He’d grown up. He’d let go. He’d let his second mother love him just as fiercely as his first, no matter how vehemently he’d tried to reject it in the early days. That was the grief that came with having someone to blame and being young enough to blame them.
This was different. This grief wasn’t crushing. The anger came in rare, tiny spikes, then washed away. It was just… lonely. Just this piece of him that knew she should be there, and had to keep remembering she wasn’t. There was nothing to blame but her body, the only thing that had betrayed her.
The pain of it came from the guilt. The loneliness of it.
So, what? They’ll die never knowing?
That was two years ago, before they’d known about their mother’s illness. Lisa had folded her arms across her chest, squaring off against him from across his kitchen counter, while Barry looked between them like he’d discovered an exploded landmine and wasn’t sure whether to clean up the mess or step around it.
Barry’s fingers combing through his hair brought him back to the living room. “I made dinner. I can heat it up for you?”
Len grabbed those gentle fingers and kissed them. “That would be great.”
.
Coach pulled him aside at the end of practice. Clipboard clutched to his chest, one hand scrubbing at his face, it was clear he didn’t want to have to ask.
He did anyway. “Are you sure you’re okay to play?”
Len wiped the sweat from his brow. His jaw ached from being tackled into the endzone, and his legs burned from the strain of two hours of drills after a whole week off. “I’m good,” he insisted. “Nowhere I’d rather be.”
Coach looked at him dubiously, but let him go. Len wasn’t bothered — Barry hadn’t believed him, either. He’d woken with him this morning, as opposed to the usual two hours after Len left, and had spent the time trying to convince him not to go. He had never seen Barry look as worried as he had when Len had picked up the keys and kissed him goodbye.
But he really was fine, and this really was where he wanted to be. Where he needed to be. There was nothing that comforted him like being on the field with his team, and there was nothing that took his mind off things like trying to nail a new play. Picking up the ball was like oxygen after a long week of holding his breath.
“Hey, man,” one of the guys called out when he joined the rest of his team in the locker rooms. Someone else slapped his shoulder on their way to the showers.
He removed his gear methodically: gloves, jersey, shoulder pads, knee pads. Each went carefully into his bag, exchanged for plain clothes, but the zipper got stuck halfway up its track. He frowned. He yanked it twice, three times, then bent over to investigate where the teeth had warped.
“Here,” the new transfer whose name Len didn’t know said after he’d been trying to smooth it out with his fingernail for far too long. The guy grabbed the bag from him, contorted the track in some odd way, and then yanked the zipper shut.
Len accepted the bag back. “Thanks.”
He shrugged. “Happens to me all the time. Annoying as fuck. Though, when I get my Cougars bag that won’t be an issue for a while, I hope.”
Len glanced over at the locker two down from his, where the Star City Rockets duffel bag sat with half its contents spilled over the bench. They’d given him the jersey his first practice, probably, so he’d feel more like part of the team. Rory, 66. Same as it’d been on his last team.
“Right,” Len said, pulling his jacket on. “Welcome, by the way. Sorry I missed your first couple practices. Rory, is it?”
“Mick.” He shrugged again. “Don’t sweat it. You had more important things. Didn’t think I’d meet you for a while, actually.”
Len paused, frowning, then bent down to tug his shoes on and pick up his bag. He wondered how much the team had said about him, how much they’d talked while he was gone. Worse, he wondered what stories the news had run.
“Yeah, well.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he smiled and clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “See you tomorrow.”
He closed the locker room door on the rest of the team’s goodbyes. His phone lit up in his hand with a text, revealing two missed calls and too many texts for his screen to display. One call from Barry five minutes ago, and one from Lisa a few hours ago.
He sent Barry, Heading home, still in one piece. Practice was good, then tucked his phone back into his pocket without taking it off silent. If he felt guilty for ignoring his sister, it was buried deep enough beneath the dread and exhaustion that it didn’t register. He’d just about made it to his car when Rory, jogging a bit to catch up with him, called out his name.
“You wanna get a drink?” he asked.
Len considered — he could go home, take Flash out for a walk around the neighbourhood, get a head start on dinner and see that warm, touched smile Barry always gave him when he came home to something thoughtful. It would replace that worried look, even if just for a few hours. Or, if the walk with Flash didn’t take too much out of him, maybe Len could even surprise him and take him out for his lunch hour.
But he remembered his first month on the team, fresh out of college and hopeful but unsure if he really had what it took to play professionally. Feeling like an outsider without the guys he’d played with the last four years, surrounded by men who knew what they were doing and, even worse, knew each other. He hadn’t been nervous, but he’d walked into every locker room drumming up a strategy to build relationships here, and he hadn’t really settled in until he’d managed it.
“Yeah,” Len agreed, flipping his keys over in his hands. “Why not?”