nevcolleil:

I’m feeling this prompt SO hard… It makes me think of an AU where Barry and Len are the same age, and they were never together, but they each had this MASSIVE crush on the other back in high school. Barry loved Len’s quiet cleverness, and his funny puns, and how protective of his sister he always was. Len loved how kind Barry was to everyone, his cheerful personality, and how Barry had been through so much and come out of it all still so optimistic. Each thought that the other was way out of his league.

Years later, Len still thinks about Barry all the time. He’s still too quiet, still doesn’t trust easy, so his relationships have been brief and few, and what moments he shared with Barry way back then rank as some of Len’s favorite memories, romanticized by longing and time. Barry is third on his list of untouchables, never mind that if Len had ever lost enough of his mind to actually ask a pretty ray of sunshine like Barry out, he would only have gotten a kind but ultimately pitying rejection.

Meanwhile, Barry thinks of Len too – usually when he’s regretting never taking a chance with Len. Sure, the bad boy with the heart of the gold would have laughed his gorgeous ass off at being asked out by the scrawny weird kid who ran anytime a bully so much as looked at him wrong. But at least then Barry would *know*, and maybe be able to get over it. Sometimes Barry wonders where Len is, who he’s with, if they appreciate Len enough. In the back of Barry’s mind, he still compares each guy he dates to his high school crush, has Len in mind when he does things to better himself, make himself stronger, smarter, braver.

Cue that robbery, and maybe the cops grab one of the bad guys and Barry finds out about the list.

Now he wants to find Len – Len catches wind of his efforts, and thinks it’s because Barry works with the cops and is trying to take him down. He’s devastated, almost feels like turning himself in.

Only that’s not it at all.

Barry wants to find Len and take the chance he never did before. He wants to *woo* Len by proving he can keep up with him.

I WOULD READ THIS SO HARD!

@a-redharlequin @crimsondomingo @ameaoi