Who: Leonard Snart coldest & Isabelle Lightwood whip_cracker What: Failed Surprise Visit at Work When: Friday, May 10, before opening hours at Verdant Where: Verdant Rating: Reader Discretion is Advised Warnings: Spoilers for Legends of Tomorrow. Leonard is snarky, sometimes crude, and believes flirting with anything with a pulse is acceptable behavior. Low likelihood of anything worse than discussion of criminal behavior and bad relationship advice. Status: Closed/Complete Match-Up
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Relationships were hard work. Snart thought it was relatively irrelevant he and Sara had not actually mapped out a relationship so much as they were working toward it. He hoped their coming together was inevitable. The sun rose in the east, set in the west, and Leonard Snart and Sara Lance were being given a second chance at a first chance for romance.
"Hello? Anyone home?"
Snart hadn't factored in how hard it was to arrange a surprise lunch with someone in a city which was trapped under a dome. Seriously? How was it he had managed to miss her on a weekday, during the hours when she normally prepared to open Verdant, at Verdant---which was her place of work?
"Unbelievable. Sara?"
Rolling his eyes, Snart went to the bar to take a seat. There was no reason he couldn't wait on her. She literally managed the place. Eventually she would have to come to work, right? It made no difference to him if he had a wait to sit through because he had nowhere more important to be. Sara had been trying to convince him to get a legitimate job, but, to date, he'd avoided such a horrible fate through sheer force of will. Having no legitimate job allowed him complete control of his own time.
Snart intended to use that time to wait out the woman he hoped to get to try out more than a passing acquaintance with, reaching over the bar to gather himself a clean glass with the intention of helping himself to a draft beer.
Izzy was in earlier than usual as she’d offered to help get the club ready for the evening, it was generally Sara who did it but as Izzy was still getting back into the swing of things she figured it wouldn’t hurt to help out. And it gave her even more of a break too, which she appreciated. She adored her son but getting back to work made Izzy realize she needed grown ups around her. There was only so much kid time you could do before you went mad. Plus it let Johnny spend some time with Max too.
Heading back to the main floor she noticed the guy at the bar immediately, “You better be lost and not actually thinking about helping yourself to that” she said as she approached him with an eyebrow raised.
"I'm never lost. I have, however, lost before which is what it feels as if I'm doing now. Did you know your boss has some annoying tendencies?"
Leonard ignored the woman in favor of filling his glass. He managed it without letting it spill over by giving up on it before the glass was completely full. There was no way he was getting beer foam everywhere on top of being inadvertently stood up by the woman he wasn't quite dating.
Rolling his eyes at himself, Leonard sighed, "Leonard Snart. Sara and I are---complicated. I expected her to be here. She's not. Trust me: she owes me a beer. Besides. I don't consider anything a robbery if there's not at least six figures involved. What part do you play in the Verdant dinner show?"
Izzy watched him with a frown, her whip sliding into her hand ready to wrap around his glass until he mentioned Sara which made her hesitate. She’d assumed he was just a random drunk after another drink until he spoke about her boss.
“Leonard... that sounds vaguely familiar” Izzy thought, though it could be she was remembering wrong. “She’s coming in a little later today, I offered to sort things out. I’m part of the security team” she added, expecting the usual disbelief she got from most guys when they took in her look and the heels she was wearing.
"Security sounds about right for the level of interest you're taking in me. Cool. Lucky for you, I like cool. I do not, however, like whips unless we're much better acquainted. Down, girl. I'm not in the mood."
Fighting really wasn't high on Leonard's list of pastimes. He was easily bored, easily amused, and easily swayed to action to rectify the first or seek the second. The idea of some woman on Sara's security detail hitting him with a whip made his blood boil and he hated the sensation enough to drink half the serving of cold beer he'd appropriated for himself. Beer was also not high on his list of amusements.
"I always forget beer is never as comforting as I want. My father was a drunk. I am not. I think it would be easier if I was since drunks? They're generally incapable of higher brain functions. I'm sure you've run into plenty of examples to prove the point working here in your position. Do you have a name or would you like me to keep calling you, Security?"
Izzy rolled her eyes but let the whip return to, what most mundanes would assume was, a bracelet around her wrist. He seemed harmless enough, nothing she couldn’t deal with should he start trouble. Though she doubted he would, not if he was involved with Sara.
“Drink makes idiots of most people, I see it a lot” Izzy replied, she’d never been one to drink that much, not to the point where she lost control and acted stupid anyway. “Izzy” she told him, “I take it Sara didn’t actually know you were meeting her today?”
"Izzy," Leonard acknowledged, toasting her with his glass before finishing the contents, "I was trying to be spontaneous and romantic. I'm told women appreciate these sort of things. Romantic is evidently much harder than a bank job. I'm regretting the idiocy already."
Emotions were weakness. Sara had promised him nothing; Leonard had promised nothing to Sara in return. All they had here in Madison Valley was a flicker of flame between them which they were assuming would be passion yet could just as easily be impending disaster. Everything could blow up in their faces if they weren't vigilant.
Leaning back on the bar, Leonard sighed, "I've never done spontaneous or romantic. Not with any serious intention to do either. I've played as if I'm doing both before. Playtime is over. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of a lot of things, Izzy. Since I have no bartender to continue spilling my guts to, how about you join me for a drink and we trade possibly disastrous advice?"
“Well A for effort at least” Izzy said with a smile, before nodding and moving to take a seat at the bar too. She had plenty of time to get things ready, “I feel my advice should come with a warning so as long as we’re clear on that”
It wasn’t like her romantic history was steller, at home she had bounced from relationships in an effort to distract her parents from her brother and here she and Johnny hadn’t planned on anything serious and now they had a kid and were getting married. It really was a strange life to be living but she couldn’t say she was unhappy with it.
“You shouldn’t let this put you off being spontaneously romantic you know, and now if you try again you can always check with me if she’s going to be around. It’ll still be a surprise for her”
Kindness was a nearly foreign expression in Leonard Snart's life. People who believed in 'the kindness of strangers' were idiots or dreamers in his eyes; both were destructive in the way they allowed a person to rely on possibilities rather than their reality. Reality was the only person anyone could count on was themselves---or family.
Leonard was willing to do anything for his sister and he knew she'd vow the same.
"Are you offering to help me, a veritable stranger, in my attempt to become an actual part of a relationship? This will be my first attempt at that, too. You could say I've always been a bit cool when it came to romantic entanglements in the past."
People generally didn't do something for nothing. Leonard wondered why Izzy would offer.
"Are you a natural giver or a closet romantic? Something else entirely? Why help me? What's in it for you?"
“I can relate there. Before I came here I was pretty similar” Izzy said, “Hmm I’m maybe a bit of a romantic” she grinned, “But you know happy boss means happy employees so it’ll work in my favour too” Though that wasn’t why Izzy was offering to help, Sara was her friend and if Leonard could make her happy then Izzy wanted to help them get together.
“Also, admittedly I’m pretty damn happy in my relationship at the moment so seeing everybody happy in theirs would be great. I’m like that annoying person who wants everybody to be as happy as they are” she winked.
"I actually wouldn't know about keeping the boss happy. I've always been the boss."
Leonard managed to make the statement without any of his usual arrogance or bravado bleeding through. It was easy to hold back feelings which were not applicable to the facts in evidence. He had always been the boss on his misadventures. Traveling with Rip Hunter had been a team sport; Leonard had still managed to tackle every mission on his own terms with his own agenda in place.
There'd been no one handing out the orders when he'd chosen to cut his own cord at The Oculus.
Honesty had felt good the night of Beltane, but Leonard had not harbored any inclination to try 'nothing but the truth' out as his general way of life. The only reason he could come up with to explain the desire to tell Izzy the truth was the feeling she cared about Sara. It was possible they were friends more than employer and employee. Sara was good with lovely ladies and Izzy wasn't hard on the eyes.
"You're her friend, aren't you? It's one thing to be happy to the point you want to make the whole world cheery and bright. It's another when you want the same for those you care about. The first I'll never understand while the second? I think even criminals like me know how that feels. I want to make her happy. She makes me happy. So how about we exchange contacts? I'll try to make sure your boss comes to work with a smile and you can listen along as I go."
Izzy had mostly worked as part of a team, but she wasn’t averse to taking orders - as long as they were sensible ones. She enjoyed her work here, even though handling drunks unruly people was different to chaos causing demons. It was a different but not terrible way of life here.
Sara was definitely a friend as well as a boss and Izzy did care about her a lot, she’d been a great support when Izzy had found out she was pregnant and Izzy wanted to do something good in return.
Izzy gave a small chuckle, “True, she is my friend and I want to see her happy. So you have yourself a deal Leonard” she added before they did indeed swap contact details. Work was going to be very interesting, Izzy thought to herself.