Chapter Text
There's this phrase in running called “hitting the wall”. Wally remembered his mom talking about it when he was a kid. His grandma was diagnosed with cancer, and his mom started running in those charity marathons to raise money and awareness and all that. This was long before his Kid Flash days, but the memory of watching her plop down at the kitchen table after training stayed with him. She'd been wearing shorts and a damp tshirt, with her hair pushed back in a headband, and smelled kinda like sweat and mowed grass. He had been sitting at the table, struggling to focus on his homework when all he had wanted to do was go outside and play in the streets with his friends. It'd been the middle of Spring. Wally remembered just about everything about that crisp afternoon.
After watching her guzzle down a water bottle, he'd asked how her run went. She had told him that it went fine until she hit the wall. When he had only looked at her in confusion, she had laughed, out of breath, and explained.
Hitting the wall is a stage in running when the body's glycogen levels, the carbohydrate stored in muscle fibers and the liver, are completely depleted. The exhaustion starts to get to you, and you feel like you physically can't go on. It's a physiological thing, like your brain is literally starting to shut down, trying to stop you from going any further. The thing is, it's not true. Glycogen is just one form of energy, and the body isn't actually as exhausted as the runner thinks it is. So, you hit the wall, and you struggle to keep going until you hit a second wave.
But hitting the wall fucking sucks, and you don't always make it past it.
Wally gritted his teeth as he started to feel the bone deep exhaustion settle in. His legs were getting heavier with every step, his entire body trembling with residual energy that he couldn't quite contain. The pain was electric, lashing out from within his core – like he was running around that chrysalis in the middle of the Arctic all over again. It was too much.
As Wally slowed down, the whir of colours and shapes seeming to spin around him still and cleared into the stadium sized race track within Star Labs' facilities. He skidded to a stop, stumbling on his feet until he finally crashed down onto his hands and knees in a panting heap. There was hitting the wall, and then there was hitting the wall at a few MPH shy of the speed of sound.
Copper red hair plastered to his forehead, dripping with sweat in his eyes, Wally stared down at his hands on the rubbery asphalt and clenched them into fists. He'd been running these tests with Star ever since he had returned from the Speed Force, about once a month. It'd been eight months. He'd even started doing smaller tests once he started his internship with the lab. They were still no closer to figuring out how the Speed Force had changed him.
A solid hand came to rest on his back. Someone knelt down beside him, and a water bottle was suddenly being pushed in front of him. Wally sat back and looked up to find Dick staring at him from behind his Nightwing mask.
“You good?” he asked as he insistently put the water bottle in Wally's hand.
Wally twisted the cap off and downed half the bottle in one go, water dribbling down his chin. When he finally felt like his throat was on fire, he pulled the bottle away with a gasp. He took a moment to catch his breath before nodding at his partner. He couldn't quite will his voice to work just yet.
Dick nodded in return, taking his silent gratitude with a private smile. Giving Wally a quick pat on the back, Dick pushed up to his feet and looked down at the stop watch in his other hand. He frowned down at the device.
Across the room, a group of men and women in pristine white lab coats convened around a table full of monitors and hard drives. An array of other instruments, ranging from cameras to what looked like a modified satellite dish were scattered around the table. Finally, an older man with a well groomed beard and graying hair looked back at the two young men and waved them over.
Dick looked back down at Wally and offered his hand. Wally, although less than enthusiastic about getting up, took Dick's hand and hauled himself to his feet. He stumbled and swayed, legs feeling a little closer to jello than actual bone. Dick reached out with a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
“Easy,” Dick cautioned as Wally righted himself.
Taking another swing from the water bottle, Wally wiped his mouth with his forearm and shot his partner a grin. “I'm golden,” he attempted a grin. “C'mon.”
Once certain that Wally wasn't going to go horizontal any time soon, the two of them made their way over to the table. Wally had been given a suit to run in, a similar material to his old Kid Flash uniform, off white with blue bands around his joints to help the cameras and sensors track his movements. Kinda reminded him of the solar suit that Conner had been wearing when they found him. Fitting, he supposed, considering he was starting to feel more and more like a science project.
“Well, Docs,” Wally began, “what's the verdict?”
Dr. Ramsay gave Wally a long-suffering look under a low brow. The young man, in his eyes, was a brilliant mind, and a dedicated intern, but his attitude was generally unprofessional. Wally only shrugged at the look. Dr. Ramsay sighed. He turned the central monitor around so they could see. “So far as we can tell, the cellular degeneration that caused your powers to wane and corrupt has ceased,” he said.
Wally groaned. “Yeah, I know. We figured that out last month- ow!” he winced, and glared at his partner, who'd pointedly elbowed him in the side.
“That's good news,” Dick said, peeling his own glare away from his partner's, “but his time today was worse than the last few sessions.” Dick handed the scientist the stop watch. “Why is he not lasting as long if the cellular degeneration has stopped?”
“Well, that's the big question, isn't it?” Dr. Lee, the head scientist at this Star Lab location, stepped up. She was almost comically short in comparison to Dick and Wally. Tucking her touch pad under her arm, she crossed to the other side of the table to point out a few pieces of data flying across the screen. “Not only has Wally's cellular degeneration haulted, it's begun to reverse the damage done to his body pre-Speed Force,” she explained.
On the monitor, three videos played side by side. One the left was a video taken years ago, when Wally had first become Kid Flash. He couldn't have been more than 13 at the time, grinning in the video as he ran. The high speed cameras had pasted together millions of frames into one cohesive loop of him running in place. Next to it, was the footage taken before Wally had retired, when he'd been going to Star to figure out what was wrong with him. It was slower in comparison, Wally's face set in determination even as he struggled to keep up. Finally the video on the right was the footage taken today. The statistics flashing beneath each video showed evidence of what the scientists had been talking about. All of the damage shown in the middle video had stabilized and reversed, nearly reaching the same levels in the first loop of footage.
The unsettling part, though, was the fact that Wally was clearly in pain. His run time was short today, and he hadn't been able to do as many laps as he could in the past. Things weren't adding up.
Wally's brows pulled together as he scanned over the footage and absorbed all of the data. He glanced beside him to find Dick staring at the screen as well, looking like he was just trying to make sense of even one number. Dick was a techie, not a physicist, but he'd been trying to pick up on as much as he could ever since these tests started.
“This is a good thing, obviously,” Dr. Lee explained. “Something within the Speed Force caused your powers to stabilize. However, we cannot account for why you are still not up to your previous speeds, and more importantly, why you are still being attacked by your own powers. We still understand very little about the Speed Force itself, even with Barry's contributions to our research.”
Wally sighed. Standing up straight again, he pushed his fingers back through his hair. “So, this means...” he trailed off, hoping to get a definitive answer to all of this. When he was met with only Dr. Lee's arched brow, he deflated. “More tests. Got it.”
Dr. Lee patted the intern on the shoulder. “We'll schedule the next test when you come in on Monday. You're finished your last lab report?”
Wally cringed. “Absolutely?”
Dr. Lee shook her head. “By Monday, Wally,” she said as she looked to Dick. “Keep him out of trouble, will you?”
Dick smiled warmly at the woman. “I can try,” he laughed.
Finally dismissed for the day, Dick and Wally made their way out of the stadium and into the sterile white halls leading deeper into the facilities of Star Labs. Wally stretched his arms behind his back, trying to shaking off the bone deep weariness he still felt after that disaster of a test run. Finishing off the last of his water, he tossed the bottle into a nearby recycling bin. He threw his arms up in victory when he landed it inside. Dick only chuckled and rolled his eyes.
Wally grinned over at him. “I'm thinking Krispy Kreme on the way home. Grab some coffee and a couple dozen donuts. What say you?”
The corner of Dick's mouth tugged up in a bare smirk. “Or, y'know, we could go to a real cafe and get donuts that weren't made on a conveyor belt.”
Wally made an honestly shocked by the very notion. “Yeah, but Krispy Kreme.”
Dick nudged him with his shoulder. “You make a convincing argument. Can't top perfection,” he shrugged. “We've got the whole day off. It's been a while since I kicked your ass in Mario Kart. I think donuts would fit in pretty well.”
Wally arched a brow. “You know, we've been eating junk food and playing video games for over ten years,” debatable, whether they included Wally's absence but he didn't need to bring that up. “You think it's time we got a new hobby?”
“Like I said,” Dick said as he stopped Wally in the middle of the hall with a hand on his bicep. He leaned in for a sweet kiss, smiling against his lips. “Can't top perfection.”
Wally laughed into Dick's mouth as his arm circled the vigilante's waist. “You make a convincing argument, Boy Wonder.”
Footsteps coming up the hall way forced them to, regrettably, part. Dr. Ramsay didn't make eye contact as he passed the young men, but he did scoff when Wally shot him a two fingered salute. The moment he disappeared around the corner, the redhead dissolved into laughter. “I think the old stiff is warming up to me.”
Dick pushed away, messing his fingers through Wally's hair. “You're going to force the man into an early retirement,” he laughed, despite his best efforts to stay quiet. "Oh, before I forget, Raquel's inviting everyone over to her place in Chicago Monday night for drinks and board games. I figured we could go after we get off work, take the Zeta Tu-"
"Can't," Wally replied quickly. "I can't. I'm gonna be working late Monday night. You go ahead, though."
Although he didn't seem entirely convinced, Dick let it go. "Alright," he shrugged. With one more peck on the lips for good measure, Dick nudged Wally further down the hall. “Hit the showers, Flash Boy,” he teased as he guided him toward the locker room.
Giving Dick the same two fingered salute just to get on his nerves, Wally nonetheless obeyed and headed into the locker room to clean off. Gratefully, too. He felt closer to a walking grease soaked sponge than a human being at the moment, and the cool stream of water from the shower was numbing the lingering ache left in his muscles.
He didn't take Dr. Ramsay's dismissal of him too seriously. It wasn't anything to do with him and Dick making out in the middle of his laboratory (it would be pretty awkward to explain to the man's husband). Wally was just the overly enthusiastic intern. Ramsay had been working with Star for over a decade, had even worked with Barry at the lab's sister location in Central. The handful of scientists working with him on his speed problem knew of his identity, even knew Dick's. They could be trusted. Didn't mean they were all overly fond of him though.
Wally finished up his shower, dried off, and got changed into a pair of jeans, a white tee, and a grey button down shirt. He came out of the locker room with a dufflebag strung over his shoulder, and his hair still damp. Dick was waiting in the hall, leaning against the wall by the door, distracted by something on his holocomp.
Wally grinned and draped his arm around the vigilante's shoulder. “Hey hot stuff, come here often?”
Dick took a moment to even noticed that Wally was there, looking up in surprise when he felt the arm on his shoulder. His eyes shot up to his partner's. “Oh- sorry, babe.”
Wally frowned. “That line's always a guaranteed eye roll. What's up?”
Dick's attention flitted back down to the holographic screen projected from his glove. “Some monster was just spotted heading toward San Diego. Kaldur's requesting back up,” he sighed as the holograph flickered out. He dropped his hand and turned to face Wally. “I'm sorry, I'm gonna need a rain check.”
Wally's frown only deepened. Letting the dufflebag slip off his arm, he reached out to hold Dick's shoulders. “Dick, you just got off patrol,” he stressed. Dick had been out all night, and came to Star to meet Wally for the tests early this morning. The day before, he'd worked a full shift at the Police Station. “You're running on fumes already, are you sure you should be out on the field?”
Dick rested his hands on Wally's forearms. “Walls, I'm fine. Long days are nothing new to me, I can handle it,” he insisted. Dick did have a handle on the whole erratic sleeping schedule thing at this point. “If I wasn't sure I'm at 100%, I wouldn't even think about going out. I'll sleep when I get back, alright?”
Wally didn't like it. Then again, he never did. The struggle between maintaining their personal lives and Dick's hero duties had been an issue for them ever since Wally retired. It had been the subject of many heated arguments. Since Wally had returned, there had been fewer arguments, but Wally found it even harder to see Dick go off into battle. He tensed his jaw, dropping his head with a sigh, before dropping his hands. “Alright,” he murmured as he pulled Dick in for a strong hug. “Be safe and kick ass.”
Dick returned the embrace with a tight squeeze, tilting his head back enough to catch one more kiss. “Always.”
Letting go was always the hard part. Wally didn't want to, would give anything to keep Dick in his arms a second longer, but Dick was stepping away and jogging down the hall before he had the chance to pull him back. Standing alone in the hallway once the footsteps of his boyfriend faded off down the corridor, drowned out by the white noise of air vents and lab equipment, Wally found himself a little at a loss. He strung the dufflebag over his shoulder, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and headed toward the exit.
It was barely light outside when he stepped out into the street. The sky above Bludhaven was a deep grey-blue, with the first lilac hints of dawn rising up over the bay. The air was thin, warm with the promise of heat later in the afternoon. Wally took in a deep breath for the sake of calming his nerves. He spotted the Krispy Kreme across the street and started walking the other way.
Wally's morning was largely uneventful after that. He stopped for a coffee on his way back to the apartment, still a little bitter that he couldn't share it with Dick. Once home, he dumped his dufflebag by the front door, flopping onto the couch and succeeding in spilling a bit of coffee on his shirt. He had an entire Saturday off, with nothing to sufficiently occupy him. He hated it, but he almost missed having hours of coursework to do. Ever since graduating, he had a lot more free time. That wasn't always a good thing.
So, he made himself busy. He finished that report he'd been putting off, for fear of Dr. Lee coming for his neck. He cleaned the apartment at a human speed just to kill time. He did his laundry. He did Dick's laundry. He washed all their bedding. Finally he stopped cleaning just because he was certain he'd give Dick a heart attack when he got home. By early afternoon, he'd exhausted all other options, and finally resigned himself to his fate as a couch potato for the rest of the day.
Returning to the sofa, Wally stretched himself across the cushions and pulled his phone out of his pocket. As he scrolled mindlessly through notifications and social media, he opened the Twitter app to see if there was anything new or even vaguely interesting. No such luck -or so he thought. Wally had been just about to close the app and open YouTube when a list of trending hashtags caught his attention.
#SanDiego
82k tweets
#SpaghettiMonster
80k tweets
#JusticeLeague
78k tweets
Wally pushed himself upright. The feeds for each hashtag were littered with articles, live streams of news stations broadcasting the event, and assorted shitposting. Setting his phone down, Wally dug around in the couch cushions until he found the remote, wedged between the seat and the armrest. He fumbled with the buttons before managing to turn the TV on. It was already set on a national news station. Leaning forward, Wally rested his elbows on his knees, clutching the remote in his hands as he watched the broadcast.
A middle-aged man in a clean cut suit sat at a desk, speaking directly into the camera. “...where a giant reptilian creature has been terrorizing the downtown core. We now go live to Sonia Greene from our chopper. What are we looking at, Sonia?”
The footage changed to a camera hovering above San Diego, probably attached to the bottom of the helicopter. A woman's voice played over the live-feed, edited with the station's watermark and other news bites scrolling through a red banner on the bottom. In the centre focus was the beast that had been set lose through San Diego. Wally couldn't really compare it to anything he'd ever seen, besides other alien or genetically modified creatures. It stood at about the height of a five story building, covered in thick green scales, with at the very least ten, long tail-like apendages smashing into the nearby buildings.
“Thank you, Lewis,” the woman said after a delay, “As of right now, we still have no clear confirmation of what this creature is, or where it came from. Eye witness reports have been flooding in all morning. Apparently, the monster was seen coming down from the mountains early this morning and headed straight toward the city. Response from the former sidekicks of the Justice League was swift, but damage has been reported widespread through out the city...”
She continued on, but to be honest, Wally could care less about what she was saying (though he did feel that residual bitterness at the word “sidekicks”). His attention narrowed to the live feed, trying to keep up with what was happening. The helicopter was high up over the city, well out of danger, and so it was difficult to pick out anyone he knew, but he managed. So far, he could see M'gann telekinetically lifting an empty semi-truck trailer to hurl at the monster's head. She just barely managed to fly out of the way of a tail lashing out at her.
Something exploded at the monster's right side. Wally looked closer, spotting Artemis riding the S-cycle over the city as she fired arrows at the beast. The explosion succeeded in distracting it long enough for her to shoot a polyurethane arrow at its feet. The high density foam slowed it down for a moment, but with a roar, the creature freed itself and tried to swat her out of the sky. It would have, had Conner leapt at the tail from the roof of a high building, grabbing onto it with a roar and dragging it to the ground. He landed on the ground, making a crater in his wake. When he dust cleared, Wally watched as he tried to hold the creature down. He was rewarded for his efforts by getting flung through the glass window of a department store.
Wally's grip on the remote turned his knuckles white. He still couldn't see Dick. His foot began to tap nervously on the floor.
The fight continued. For how long, Wally wasn't entirely sure, but his eyes never left the screen. He spotted Kaldur, summoning a tidal wave from the ocean to rise up over the city, only to form into massive bands that curled around the beast. It worked to restrain the creature for a few minutes before it broke free, the water bursting out and flooding down into the streets. Kaldur managed to summon the water back under his control before it could do any more damage.
Out of the corner of the screen, Wally watched as a spec thrown by the monster grew larger and larger as it flew through the air toward the helicopter – the camera shook. Wally's stomach dropped as he watched the ground rush up to meet the camera, the screams of the reporter and the helicopter crew dissonant in the background. Before it could crash, the falling haulted. Wally just barely caught sight of M'gann lifting the helicopter to safety before the video cut back to the news room.
“For you folks watching at home, from what we can tell, a piece of debris got caught in our chopper's blades. Our team was rescued by Miss Martian. We cannot make contact at the moment but we will update you once we can be certain that they are safe. For the time being we will be tuning in to our correspondent Ward Phillips, along with Cryptozoology Expert Dr. Humphrey Littlewit-”
Wally gritted his teeth and changed the channel. Flicking through various stations of football, home development shows, and sitcoms, he finally found another news station reporting on the attack in San Diego. They were already in the middle of a stream, which Wally was absently grateful for. He didn't know if his nerves could sit through more droning voices describing exactly what he was already looking at. The remote returned to his white knuckled grip, and his foot-tapping picked up speed.
This station's camera seemed to be set up on the rooftop of a building just a block down the main street from the chaos. The camera crew had probably set it up and then got the hell out as fast as they could. Besides a few more damaged cars, nothing seemed to have changed much in the past minute. Wally watched with his breath caught in his throat.
He hated this – in case that wasn't obvious already. Wally had gotten used to watching from the sidelines since he left the life. It'd never been easy, but his early retirement had been out of his hands. It had been what he needed at the time. No matter how much time had passed though, Wally couldn't stand sitting here and watching as his friends risked everything to save innocent lives. He hated not being able to do anything.
And, as much as he loathed to say... he missed the rush of it. He missed the exhilaration, the adrenaline, that warmth in his chest telling him he did something truly worthwhile.
His thoughts came to a screeching hault. A dark silhouette swung down from a nearby building, flipping forward into a landing beside Kaldur'ahm. Wally leaned forward, watching as Dick exchanged a few words with the Atlanean, pointing toward the creature. They both nodded, and looked up at M'gann hovering above them. She nodded in return, and lifted her hands to her temples. Establishing the psychic link, probably.
Dick shot his grappling hook at a telephone pole, and launched himself in the air. A tail shot out toward him. He let go, flipping forward and landing on top of it before he could be hit. Dick ran up the appendage, leaping over where it crossed with another tail, jumping back when the creature tried to swipe him off, only to be thrown off when the tail was jerked out from under his feet. He went flying, slamming his side straight against a mailbox.
Wally's super-sonic foot-tapping cracked the hardwood floor. He cringed, lifting his foot to see pieces of wood broken and scattered around the whole he'd made. Still, he couldn't find it in himself to care. He'd just fix it before the landlord saw. His attention instantly shot back up to the screen. Dick was on his stomach, braced on his forearms as he caught his breath for a moment and slowly pushed himself back up. He took all of a minute to shake it off before he was back in action again.
This time, he apparently changed his course. He shot his grappling hoot higher, and swung around the back of the creature while he was distracted by Artemis and Conner. Landing on it back, Dick grabbed onto the spikes protruding from its spine, and climbed up to the back of its neck. There, after struggling to maintain his balance when the creature finally noticed that he was there, Dick plunged something from his utility belt into the thick skin at the base of its skull. With a deafening roar, the beast collapsed onto the street. When the dust cleared, Dick was already walking down its arm and onto the pavement to reconvene with the rest of the original team.
Wally couldn't help feeling, as he watched the five of them gather together, that there was someone missing there. Finally letting the tension drain from him, Wally sighed and flopped back onto the couch. The remote dropped from his hands, bouncing on a few of its buttons. The channel changed to a gardening show.
Wally found himself in a bit of an odd place at that moment. It was, by all means, a gorgeous day outside, warm without being oppressively hot. He had the windows open, with a soft afternoon breeze rolling in and playing with the curtains. The apartment smelled like lemon scented pledge, and all together the atmosphere was fresh and light. And there Wally was, inside feeling useless and just – separated from it at all. His head lulled to the side on the back of the couch. Out the window, Bludhaven churned on blissfully unaware.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
When Dick got home about four hours later, Wally was stretched out on the sofa reading. In his defense, he hadn't been on the couch all day- after the disaster in San Diego had concluded, he sulked for another twenty minutes before deciding to take a walk around the block to clear his head. It had helped- a bit anyway. He'd still returned feeling a little tense and at a loss for what to do with his day. In reality, there was probably a lot he could have been doing – he just didn't.
Looking up from his book on Dimension Theory, he saw Dick kicking his shoes off at the door. He didn't even get the chance to say hello before the vigilante was walking into the living room, setting four take out containers of Pad Thai on the coffee table with a litre of pink Crush, and promptly flopping right on top of Wally.
With a light “oof” as Dick threw his weight on top of him, Wally laughed under his breath and wound an arm around his partner. Dick had showered at the Watchtower and changed into civvies before coming back. Wally pressed a kiss to Dick's temple before reaching around him to flip the page of his book. “Come here often, hot stuff?” he mumbled against his head.
Wally couldn't see Dick roll his eyes, but the accompanying groan was telling enough. “You need better lines,” Dick said as he shifted to rest his head on Wally's shoulder. The two of them barely fit on the couch at the same time, but a lot of practice had perfected their ability to Tetris themselves together.
“Hmm,” Wally hummed, “and yet they still work. Besides, needed to give that one a second go today. Restore my pride. So, do you?”
“Do I what?”
Wally grinned. “Come here often?”
Dick laughed despite himself. “As it just so happens, I live here,” he said. God, he sounded completely exhausted. It pulled on Wally's heartstrings.
“Ain't that a weird coincidence?” Wally teased. Dick only laughed more, pressing his forehead into Wally's neck as he held onto him tighter. Figuring he wasn't going to get any more reading done anyway. Wally dogeared the page he was on, close the book, and set it on the coffee table. As his arm came back, he settled his palm on Dick's hip, slowly slipping it up under his shirt. He felt along his side, over his bullet wound scar, feeling the hot skin where he was already starting to bruise along his ribs “Mailboxes aren't very good for breaking falls, huh?”
Dick raised a brow in confusion before the pieces clicked. “You watched it on the news?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Wally replied as he gently rubbed his hand over the bruise with a feather light touch. After a moment, his hand slipped over, kneading the muscles at the small of his back.
Duck hummed in appreciation under his breath. “It came from literally out of nowhere,” he said. “We can't find any trail on satellite, no traces of where it had come from or how it got to San Diego. Once we got it subdued we were able to call in the Lanterns to air lift it out. We're keeping it in a base in...” Dick trailed off, seeming to realize that he was rambling. He shook his head. “Sorry, babe.”
Wally used to hate when Dick would go on about what was happening with the team, or any vigilante work. It had been a sore spot. When Wally retired, he'd tried to leave all of that behind him, to focus on his life as a normal human, or as normal as he could possibly get. Obviously, he and Dick had to learn the hard way may times that it wasn't that easy. They'd established a “no hero talk” rule to keep the peace, but still, sometimes Dick slipped. “No, it's fine,” Wally answered quickly. “I... I don't mind.”
Dick tilted his head. “You sure?” he asked.
Wally was sure, and that was the weird thing. That lingering bitterness had melted away into an honest curiosity, and he couldn't smother it now if he tried. “Go ahead.”
“Alright...” Dick said slowly, still not entirely certain about Wally's conviction. “Well, we've got it on ice at a private base in Arizona. We can't tell if it's extraterrestrial or a genetically modified Earth creature. My bet was on a komodo dragon jacked up on steroids. They were about to start testing when I left, but from what I got, there might have been some crude form of mind control involved. That's what M'gann said anyway. She said she could feel it struggling in its own mind, but she couldn't get through to it telepathically. That's all we know so far, though.”
Wally nodded, moving his hand up to massage between Dick's shoulder blades. “Dunno,” he said after a quiet moment, “it looked more like the love child of and iguana and Cthulhu to me.”
Dick snorted, prompting Wally to kiss his forehead just because he couldn't help himself. “I think that might be more accurate” he laughed. “Lovecraftian Horror Monster. We'll get it a collar and a name tag.”
“I'd reconsider getting too attached. He didn't look very cuddly on TV.”
“No, he really wasn't.”
Wally smiled down at Dick as he felt his partner's lips ghost over his jaw. He turned his head down, catching his mouth in a soft kiss. Dick responded, but he was slow. “Tired?” Wally murmured. Dick only hummed in response. Wally dragged his fingers down Dick's spine and back up again, kissing his forehead as he used his free arm to pull a blanket down from over the back of the couch.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Dick woke up, and he was alone. Twilight was glowing rose and pale blue outside. The curtains swayed softly in the breeze from the open window. The apartment was quiet, and Wally was nowhere to be seen. Pushing himself up, the blanket that had been draped over him slid off and pooled on the floor – right next to a whole in the hardwood, but that was an issue of later. Rubbing his neck as he turned it side to side to get a kink out, Dick fought off the groggy vestiges of sleep.
“Wally?” he called out. No answer. Getting off the couch, he carefully minded the chips of wood below, and stood. Three out of four of the Pad Thai containers had been consumed, the forth missing from the coffee table. Following his hunch, Dick checked the kitchen fridge to find that it had been put away to keep until he ate it later. So, Wally had been up for a while after Dick fell asleep. He obviously wasn't in the kitchen, so he check the bedroom, and still, no sign of him. All of the lights were still off, but Wally's apartment key was still sitting on the table by the front door.
Dick found himself standing in the middle of the living room again, attention trailing to the open window. It was only then that he noticed that it had been opened wider since he'd come home. That left only one option, and honestly, Dick was a little surprised he hadn't made the connection first.
Crawling out the window and onto the fire escape, Dick looked up to find Wally sitting on the roof, his legs dangling off the side. He climbed barefoot up the series of zig-zagging metal ladders, hauling himself over the top. Wally finally noticed him then, acknowledging him from over his shoulder before turning his focus back out onto the sunset and the twinkling lights of the city beyond.
Dick dropped himself down beside his partner, mimicking his position and letting his legs dangle over the nineteen story drop. “Hey,” he said once he was seated. He clapped his hand onto Wally's shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Wally replied easily. “Just... had to do some thinking.”
“About what?” Dick asked.
Wally didn't reply at first. He watched in vague interest as his feet hung over the city, as if he could take one step and stand snug between the buildings lining the street – or as if it was enough to make him feel larger than life. Hint, it wasn't. Wally sighed, raising his head to look straight on toward the sunset. “I want back in,” he said.
Dick frowned, not quite making the connection at first. As it dawned on him, he let his hand slip off Wally's shoulder, and followed his gaze toward the horizon. “Okay,” he breathed. “Okay, but- Wally, you have to be sure this is what you want,” he stressed as he turned his gaze toward his partner. The copper tones of Wally hair were glowing gold in the fading light. Dick swallowed hard. “You have to be in 100%.”
Wally finally tore his gaze away from the sunset, looking Dick directly, deeply, in the eyes. “I want this, Dick.”
“Wally, if this is about today-”
“It's not,” Wally insisted before Dick could finish. “I've been thinking about this for a while, Babe. This isn't me just making up my mind on the spot. But today I realized just how much it meant to me to be able to get back on the field. I'm in, all the way.”
Dick exhaled slowly. Reaching between them, he took Wally's hand and laced their fingers together with a tight squeeze. “Alright. Then I'm with you. All the way.”