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“You’re leaving again, aren’t you?”
Dick turns to him with furrowed brows. “Sorry?”
“Patrol. You’re leaving again for patrol.”
Something about his tone—or lack thereof—must give away his intentions, because Dick is sighing as if he’s the most put upon being in the world. “Wally, we talked about this.”
“I’m well aware of what we talked about, Dick, but I’m more concerned about which one of us actually listened.”
Dick brings a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, lines of stress running jagged along his forehead. “We’re really doing this again?”
“You still have bandages wrapped around your leg from a bullet wound!” Wally feels a little shaky, heart racing because when he thinks back to Dick, on that hospital bed, he’s hard set on experiencing something like that as little as possible. “You can’t even wait till one mutilation goes away before chasing down another one?”
Something flickers in those azure eyes. “You make it sound like I try to get hurt.”
“You certainly don’t try to avoid it as much as you should.” This isn’t what Wally had intended to happen. Or maybe it was. He doesn’t really know anymore.
“You want me to drop the Nightwing mantle.”
“No,” Wally glowers, voice saturated with angered honesty. “What I want is to not have to worry about getting a call, telling me my boyfriend was found dead on the street.” A hollow, lifeless sound scratches its way out of his throat. “Actually, no, that wouldn’t happen. The only thing that would tell me you died was a news segment: ‘Blüdhaven’s masked vigilante defeated in rough and tumble with notorious villain Baine’.”
Dick has the decency to look away in what seems like shame. What he says next, though, contradicts that in its entirety. “Baine hasn’t been around for a long time.”
“Oh, you’re kidding me.” Why can’t you see I love you too much for this? “Dick—look, I can’t stop you. You can’t be stopped by anyone, that’s clear as day.” He stands from the bed, each movement of his muscles rickety and stiff. He feels like he’s a house one second form caving in. “But I need you to understand that when you’re out there, getting stabbed at and thrown into fires, you’re not the only one getting hurt.”
He wants Dick to say something, anything, because Wally can’t be the only one that’s hurting right now, can he? But then he turns around, to se if Dick, by some horrid miracle, just didn’t hear him.
He sees nothing but a closed window, and somehow, some way, that stings more than anything Dick could have said.
Wally stares at the wall for the next five hours. He’s fully aware of what absurd hour it is, and how it drags on his mental state to stay so still and bored when his body demands he go so fast, but—sleep is eluding him.
So, he waits.
Dick enters through the window soon after, freezing for but a second when he spots Wally on the bed.
“You’re awake,” he whispers. His voice sounds raw and tight—wrong for how loveable Dick Grayson truly is.
“Yup.”
Wally hears the familiar rustle of the Nightwing suit hitting the floor, clank of escrima sticks reverberating in his mind. His hand starts to fidget, lightly scraping at his leg in an attempt to distract himself from the silence; it’s more empty, now, when he knows that loving chatter and familiar banter could be filling it.
“What you said, before,” Dick whispers, “about not wanting me to stop… what I do. You know it’s dangerous, right?”
“Fully aware, Grayson.”
“So why’d you say it?” Dick sounds just as ragged as Wally feels, ready to snap at any given moment.
“Because I know what being Nightwing means to you.” Wally sits up to lock eyes with Dick, who has thankfully taken off his mask. “I would never ask you to give it up. But when you asked me out, and when I accepted, you committed yourself to me, too.” You’re supposed to care about me too…
Dick nods rigidly, placing himself at the foot of the bed as his eyes fixate on the spot just next to Wally. “When I was out there tonight, I… called Tim and Jason. Asked them to cover for me for the next two weeks.”
As rare of a feeling as it is for him, Wally’s brain is struggling to catch up with what’s happening in front of him. “Huh?”
“You’re right. You matter to me, Wally, so damn much.” A war of emotions goes by in Dick’s eyes in an instant, before something that Wally doesn’t like settles in there. “And I figure that you deserve someone so much b—”
“Dick Grayson, so help me, I will murder you if you finish that sentence.” Wally stands up on his knees to shuffle over to Dick. “Do you want this to end?”
“What? No!”
“Alright, then: do you love me?”
The hurt and overwhelming love that bores into Wally’s soul makes it so hard to breathe. “With every inch of my being.”
“And so do I. So, now that we’ve laid down the foundations for the continuity of this relationship, we need to… I don’t even know.”
“You worry about me,” Dick explains, as if it were some newfound piece of knowledge. “You worry about me because I don’t have powers like you do.”
“I—that’s… a part of it, yes.”
“And the other part?”
Wally feels like the expanse of his lungs isn’t enough to hold the air he needs, isn’t enough to mellow out the erratic pace of his heartbeat. “I’m worried that one day, if it comes down to it, you’ll choose hero-ing over me.”
And that isn’t what Wally meant to say, but it’s clearly what he felt in his heart of hearts, because tears are scorching the backs of his eyes like a raging flame.
“Oh, Wally…”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why would I say that? “I know, it’s ridiculous—”
“I’m not him, Walls. You know that.” He does, Wally supposes, but hearing Dick say it doesn’t hurt. “If the choice between doing what I do and the people that I love is ever presented to me, do you know what I’ll pick?”
The horrifying part of it is that he doesn’t. Wally knows, is so familiar with what Dick feels when he’s soaring through the skies of Bludhaven, on the way to save some poor bastard who took the wrong alley on the wrong night. It’s what he himself feels when he pushes himself to tap into the Speedforce; liberation, ecstasy. How could he expect Dick to make such a choice with anything but arduousness?
“You don’t…” Dick is quick to firmly grab Wally’s jaw in his hands—rough, but ever-so-gentle in their treatment of him. “Wally, believe me when I tell you, that when I am fighting for my life with some egoistical maniac, you’re the thing keeping me going.” Wally must let out some disbelieving noise, because Dick is putting more strength behind his hold to the point where Wally has no choice but to stare into his breathtaking eyes. “I’m serious. Being Nightwing means nothing if I don’t have the support of those I love behind me. And Wally, that includes you.”
He feels his chest constrict all over again, though this time a large fraction of it has to do with the love he has for the man in front of him. “I’m sorry, this isn’t me being very supportive.”
“You are, though. You never discourage me, Wally, you just voice your worry in a very Wally-esque way.”
“Shut up, dude.”
And it’s so magically them; Dick, twisted awkwardly and hands still locked onto the solid line of Wally’s jaw, while the redhead tries to minimize the force of his sobs, while calling his boyfriend and love of his life ‘dude’.
“I’m sorry, Dick. Really.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” Dick brushes off. “I mean it. If anyone here is apologizing, it’s me. You should never, ever forget how much you mean to me, and it’s my job to make sure you remember.” He kisses Wally with the utmost care, as if Wally were some sapling that would crumble under the full strength of Dick’s love.
With how hard the younger loves, though, it may just be true.
“Anything I can do to make it up to you?’
“Well,” Wally sings, “a new Chinese place opened downtown. I heard its twenty-four-seven.”
“You’re aware that it’s currently four in the morning, and that I just came back from rounding up thugs?’
“I mean, if you don’t want to repair the tatters of your boyfriends heart, I can’t force you.”
“I hate you.”
They’re both grinning and this, right here, is the man that makes Wally do stupid things. Agreeing to date a member of the Bat Clan being one of them, though right now, it’s heading down to a restaurant when even the roosters are napping.
“Well then feed me and I’ll get off your back.”
“Never.”
Before Wally can react properly—which says things about Dick Grayson and his own speed—he’s being pinned to the bed by the solid warmth of his boyfriend—and all is right with the world.
Wally is in love.