chosenbylightning | You've gotta know when to hold 'em..

Barry Allen's life hadn't exactly been on track since his mother's murder. After pleading with the police, social workers and anyone else who would listen to him for more than five minutes that his father was innocent, he realized it was a lost cause. Nobody believed him, and they sure as hell didn't believe his father.

So Henry went to prison and Barry went into the foster system.

He'd been out hustling cards the say the particle accelerator exploded, a bolt of lightning sending him into a coma for nearly a damn year.

Once he recovered, Barry fled Central City, fled the group of scientists that wanted to study him like some kind of lab rat. His speed took him to Starling and to Verdant, the best club in the city, owned by the Queen family.

Barry was damn good with cards, even before the lightning, he could make a decent living at Verdant and the job meant he wouldn't have to dodge the cops. It's boring work, but it keeps him in a decent apartment and plenty of beer.

He also keeps his eyes to himself which isn't easy considering the new manager is ridiculously attractive.

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"Okay, we're done here." Barry shoves the last of his things into a bag, pausing to take a well worn paperback from the bed and tuck it into his pocket. "I don't blindly say yes to anything." Not anymore.

He shoulders past her, taking a picture from the kitchen. "Be sure to lock up. Or don't. Nobody will notice anyway."

"You've got to be kidding me." She watched him dubiously. He hadn't really taken her seriously, had he? "That was a joke in case you hadn't already figured it out. But I guess you don't have a sense of humor." She grabbed his arm. Now it had turned from interest into a matter of principle.

"Have I asked you to sign on any dotted line, yet? Am I threatening to blackmail you over what I know? Calling the cops? Or maybe you think the Arrow's a better choice. By all rights, I should have had you thrown out of the place as soon as I noticed you were skimming off the top. But you were the one who ran. I'm not suggesting you do something nefarious. It's not like I'm trying to abduct you so I can dissect you or something. I didn't even know what you could do before an hour ago."

She shrugged. "I still don't know how. And I'll admit I'm curious, but who wouldn't be? You want to know what I was offering? A permanent position instead of a pay-as-you-go kind of thing. If you want to be specific, I was thinking of something with security. Who better to weed out the con mans than a con man?"

She let go of his arm. "But if you want to keep running for the rest of your life..."

She's right. But Barry has spent most of his life on the run, even before the lightning and before losing nine months of his life to a coma. "Look. I've been in and out of the system since I was eleven, when my Dad was taken away for killing my Mom. I'm used to people calling the cops or finding other ways to get rid of me rather than deal with the problem."

A full time paying job. Something stable.
Barry can't remember the last time he'd been offered something like that.

He holds up his hand, vibrating it fast enough that it becomes a blur before her eyes. "It happened about a year ago. After the particle accelerator in Central blew."

Thea almost automatically reached out to touch the hand but pulled back at the last minute. It almost looked like she'd be able to put her hand through his when he did that and she wasn't sure she wanted to know what that felt like. She imagined it'd be like what movies said ghosts felt like: cold.

"I know a little something about losing a parent," she reminded him gently. Spoiled and rich she might have been, but her life wasn't free of its share of tragedy. Probably better that she didn't remind him of the other part of her parentage or let him in on the hidden part. The part she didn't admit to polite society because polite society thought him dead.

"Look, let's start again. All I thought when I noticed that stacks of chips were going missing was that you were conning me. And that I could use that talent against other people who tried to do that at my table." Her lips twisted into a wry grin. "I thought that talent was up here." She tapped her temple.

"I didn't guess about the..." She wiggled her fingers. "But can you really blame me for wanting to kill two birds with one stone? Stop losing money from your antics and stop losing money from other people doing what I thought was the same thing." Surely there weren't two people who could do...whatever he was doing.

Barry pulls his hand back when Thea's hand moves towards his and the vibrations stop. That sort of touching is dangerous as hell and while they didn't get off on the right foot, the last thing he wants to do is hurt her (or anyone) with his speed.

A shrug. "It's both," he defends. "I've been running cards since I got out of juvie."

A decent job. No more gaming the tables. "So, what, you'd want me to be a pit boss? Watch the tables?"

"You know more about what to look for than I do." Not quite true. She'd caught on that there was something about him that was off, after all, but there was catching one person once on mostly luck and knowing the ins and outs of the system and being able to sense general trends and what to watch out for. She didn't want to have to be stuck behind a monitor or even out on the floor. She had the rest of the club to run, after all, and it wouldn't look good if she spent all her time at the tables.

Especially since she was reasonably sure that Ollie hadn't caught on to what was going on in his back rooms.

The corner of her mouth lifted. "You sound like you got into as much trouble as I did." And her mother had always paid to get her out of it, just like she had when Ollie had gotten into trouble back in the day.

You've gotta know when to hold 'em..

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