There was an art to lapdances.
Felicity had laughed, the first time Barry had said it. But he’d laid it all out for her, fingers tapping across the table inside the DJ booth as she set up. It was about reading people. About knowing them, even if they didn’t know themselves.
You had your champagne room big spenders, the sugar daddies, the guys who wanted a dancer who was shy, who was meek. Who was putting on a show for them and them alone.
With them, it was about shy looks and lowered lashes. Playing at being nervous, like you were having to overcome your very nature just to put on a show for them.
Barry liked those guys. They were easy. They did all the talking. Telling him about how they were going to take him away from this life, buy him nice things.
(There was only one who ever caused a problem, and his restraining order on Thawne is good for another two years.)
They liked confidence. They liked to feel like the hottest guy in the room only had eyes for them. They wanted to be hunted, like Barry was going to devour them, if only it weren’t for the bouncer outside of the door.
The thing is…Len isn’t like either of those types. He’s not here looking for satisfaction, or release. And he’s seen Barry’s every dirty trick, he knows the difference between the act and the man behind it.
It’s Felicity who gives him the idea, although not in so many words. She smacks him with her rolled up setlist and calls him a dummy. You’re literally doing the opposite of what he finds attractive, Barry Allen.
This…this is one hundred percent not what Felicity meant, and between her and Harry, he’s going to get the ass chewing of a lifetime for this. But it’s a risk he’s willing to take. Just to see.
Len keeps finding excuses not to look in the VIP room. So Barry takes it out of the equation. It starts with a drink at the bar. With a tipsy girl to his right that he flirts with until she blushes, and a cop to his left, because Barry Allen does nothing halfway.
(Maybe he would have, if he’d known at the time that his restraining order was for Detective Eddie’s uncle.)
Two watered down drinks for Barry and he’s slipping between Dr. Snow’s knees, hands skating up the outside of her thighs as he moves to the music. She laughs, face in her hands and the guy behind her whooping with joy slips a ten into the space between Barry’s belt and where his shirt has ridden up.
That’s all it takes. He’s got an audience now as he moves, hips rolling. Barry peels his shirt up and off, tossing it behind the bar as he tugs his hat back down in place, an arm around Detective Eddie’s neck as Barry grinds back against him, back to the cop’s chest.
His expression says it all, even as his hand slides down the plane of his stomach, back arching.
