Chapter Text
Dick used to want to be batman. He remembered as a kid trying to match Bruce, but he could never give up that softness. The jokester and circus brat inside him, it was something his parents had given him. When he was young Bruce had seen this as a weakness and so Dick too had seen this as a weakness. He wanted to be like Bruce because that's what he thought a hero was, cold, emotionally closed off, alone. As much as those things scared him if that's what it took to be a hero that's what he wanted.
When Dick met Wally he was ten and this was the first time he ever questioned what a hero was. The flashes were different, not cold or emotionally closed off. But loud, wearing bright colours and smiling. The first time DIck met wally the idiot had tripped on a ledge and tumbled into him pinning them both to the ground. For some reason, that level of clumsy borderline-recklessness was appealing to Dick. Before they had even managed to get up from where they had crashed to the ground Dick knew that he wanted to be best friends with the kid flash.
That never changed, through the years it remained the same. Dick needed Wally, he always needed him. Maybe wally needed him, maybe not but it was wally that had Dick deciding maybe he didn't want to be the cold emotionless man that Bruce was. And in the failsafe simulation when Dick "died" he wasn't by Wally's side and once he woke up to realize it was all a dream. He was certain for the first time in his life he didn't want to be Batman. He wanted to be safe and familiar, he wanted to love Wally. And he did, he always did, he always had.
He needed wally, the loudness, the brightness, the bad jokes and worse flirting. Dick needed all that excessive bright energy to ward away the cold stagnant energyless blandness that was Gotham and the Bat. For Dick, wally had always been like a streetlamp in the middle of the night, pushing back the darkness and the coldness so that Dick could bask in his light. It wasn't till they were older than Dick realized that wally needed him too. When they were younger Dick had always felt like he was leaching off of Wally and offering nothing in return. Then he learned about the abuse in Wally's home and realized that wally needed him just as much as he needed Wally. Puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together. The joy that Dick had lost when his parents died was filled by Wally's awful humour and desire to always do anything in his power to make Dick laugh, the stability that Wally didn't have at home was filled by Dicks willingness to always be there, wherever there may be.
That's not to say they never had their differences, but its to say they always worked them out. It's to say that nothing that got between them would ever be too much for them to handle. It's to say that their need for each other was great enough that nothing could keep them apart because they belonged together. They brought out the best in each other and without even meaning to they taught each other how to be whole even when they were both missing pieced of themselves. Pieces they could never get back.
Dick used to want to be batman. Wally supported that. And then Dick didn't want to be batman and wally followed him down into that emotional pit where he fell and offered him a hand back out of it. Kept him from falling too far into the blackness, making sure he didn't get lost while he tried to find himself again. Neither of them knew who they were. Both one part tragedy, one part too mature too fast, and one part a shadow of someone else's name. But together they were greater than the sum of their parts, together they were forever.
Dick used to want to be batman. his parents died and he didn't want to love, he didn't want to heal, he didn't want friends, he didn't care. He wanted to be consumed by the darkness, let it sink into his soul and fester into a creation of hate and bitterness. He wanted to be everything batman was. Wally wanted to be happy, he wanted to shine bright, he wanted to be loved when all he knew was anger and hate, he wanted to be everything the flash was. Somehow neither of them quite turned out how they wanted and they only had each other to blame. Or thank, really neither of them are what they imagined when they were young and maybe that was for the better. Who's to say how they would have turned out if they never met.
And even now as Adults, Dick sitting there watching wally stuff his face with sugar. He can't help but thinks this is exactly where he was supposed to be. That meeting wally had changed the entire course of his existence. Everything he is today was because all that time ago some silly twelve-year-old with super speed wasn't paying attention and tripped knocking them both to the ground. And for that he loved him.