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"Come on," Dick says, wrapping his fingers loosely around Wally's and tugging his hand to encourage him to move forward. His fingers are cold from the evening air and Wally has to resist the urge to pull tighter, to warm them up. "You said I could pick where we went for dinner and I picked."
"Yeah." Wally remains rooted on the sidewalk, letting out a huff of air. It spirals visibly in front of them and he makes a mental note to bring gloves next time, for him and for Dick. "I said that because I thought you'd pick somewhere good, not IHOP."
"I wanted pancakes." Dick turns fully towards him, the bright light spilling from the restaurant and casting half his face in shadow. His lips are slightly chapped and Wally adds chapstick to his mental list because Dick apparently has no idea how to look after himself without Wally's input.
"There are other places that sell pancakes."
"We're already here, Walls."
Dick pulls at his hand again and Wally relents with a heavy sigh, taking a step towards the door as it opens and lets a group of chattering women out onto the street, pulling jackets closed and scarves tight around their necks. "Fine," Wally says, ignoring the women in favour of slipping his hand from Dick's and dropping it around his shoulder instead. It brings him closer to Dick's face, which is practically radiating cold. "But next time I pick."
"Wally West?"
They both turn towards the voice, one of the women from the IHOP looking at them inquisitively as she pulls a pair of gloves from a pocket. She probably has chapstick too, Wally thinks, before he realises she addressed him by name and he has no idea who she is.
"And Dick Grayson?" she continues.
"Yeah." Wally says cautiously. His brow furrows as he tries to work out if he's ever seen her before.
She smiles sheepishly. "It's Elizabeth, Elizabeth Harris. I sat behind you two in chemistry."
"Oh," Dick says. Wally is trying to recall anything from their high school chemistry class that doesn't involve himself and Dick messing around with fire and getting detention. Their teacher had separated them for a week before getting even more frustrated by Wally balling up notes and tossing them across the classroom. He does not remember an Elizabeth. Dick apparently does. "You were blonde."
The woman - Elizabeth - smiles a little wider. Wally still doesn't remember her, even when he attempts to replace her dark brown hair with an image of blonde. "Yeah," she says, "Not sure it was a good look." She looks between the two of them. "It's nice to see you two are still together. I know people make fun of high school sweethearts but it really makes me believe in love, you know?"
Wally has no idea. He's blinking at Elizabeth as he tries to come up with a response. His brain is still trying to work through all of that as Dick laughs, shoulders shaking where they're caught underneath Wally's arm. The sound is like warm sunshine and Wally has always basked in it. "Thanks?" Dick says, question clear in his tone.
"Sorry. That's probably a weird thing to say." She looks over her shoulder, at the rest of the women further down the street and then back to Dick and Wally. "I should get after them. And leave you to your date."
She waves one gloved hand, jogging away to catch up with her friends before Wally has a chance to respond. His mouth feels dry.
"I… still have no idea who that was," Wally says.
Dick snorts with laughter. "Elizabeth, she sat behind us in chemistry."
Wally turns his head so he can level an unimpressed stare at his best friend. Dick meets his gaze, blue eyes shining with the reflection of the IHOP sign and laughs again. He ducks out from under Wally's arm to open the door and pauses to looks back from the entry way.
"Come on, babe. We've got a date to get on with," he says.
"Uh huh." Wally follows, shaking his head as they step in to the warmth and noise of the restaurant. He's trying to figure out whether it means anything that Dick is so casual about the whole situation. "I notice you didn't feel the need to correct her on that." He slips his arm around Dick's waist. "Should I be concerned you're trying something here?"
Dick shoves a hand in his face, although he leans into Wally's arm around his waist at the same time. It probably wouldn't come off as mixed signals if Wally was wiser, or less completely enamoured. "Did you not hear her? Our relationship makes her believe in love. It's my duty, as someone who loves love, to let her think whatever she likes."
"Sure it is," Wally mutters as Dick steps forward, breaking away from him, and asks the waiter for a table.
They're led to a window seat, the view of the dark city blocked out by the condensation building on the glass and the over-bright lights reflecting from the surface. Dick slips his jacket off before he picks up the discussion again. "You also could have corrected her."
Wally takes his seat, leans back, and stretches his legs out, one brushing against Dick's as they settle under his chair. "I'm considering it a compliment that she doesn't think I'm punching." He keeps his eyes on the menu and not Dick's face, slightly flushed from the temperature change, although he steals more than one glance to gauge his friend's reaction.
"To be fair," Dick says, smirking, "I don't think she was under the impression I'm dating you for your looks."
Wally kicks him without any real malice. "I'm breaking up with you."
"But I didn't get to tell you all the pros of dating you."
"Trust me, I've heard them." Dick arches an eyebrow and Wally sighs, setting the menu down on the table in front of him. "I think every one of my break ups has started with: you're a good guy, you're nice, you're funny. Just once I would like someone to go with you're smoking hot but…"
Dick leans forward, resting his arms on the table. "Wally. You're smoking hot, but I just don't think it's going to work between us." The sincerity in Dick's tone is enough to fluster Wally a little bit, and he covers with a laugh.
"Do you think we can still be friends?"
"Always." Dick's smile is wide and brilliant and Wally can't help but smile back.
"And you're still paying for dinner, right?"
Dick laughs and Wally basks in it like sunshine and tries not to think about Elizabeth from chemistry and her assumptions. It would be easier if Wally could keep his mind off of what ifs and every question he really wishes he could ask his best friend.
It's probably too early, or too late - considering that Dick hasn't slept yet, despite it approaching seven am - to be going out for pancakes. Really, all Dick wants is to bury himself in his duvet and sleep, but Wally had insisted this café served the best pancakes in the city and that Dick deserved to try them and… well, sleep could wait an hour.
He ducks into the kitschy café, grateful for the shelter from the biting wind, and flexes his hands as he pulls them from his pockets, trying to stimulate some blood flow. Wally would likely scold him for not wearing gloves, had gifted Dick a pair for Christmas to avoid exactly this, but gloves hadn't been a priority when he'd left for work the previous evening.
His eyes wander across the mismatched furnishings of wooden tables and soft chairs, no two alike, and settle on a familiar head of red hair and Wally's grinning face as he waves to Dick in the doorway.
Dick weaves through the café to the low table Wally's at, unwinding his scarf from around his neck as feeling returns to his fingers, and dropping down next to Wally in the plush cushions of the love seat.
"Hey," Wally says, as Dick leans close and buries his cold nose against the warmth of his shoulder. "You look half asleep, sorry for dragging you out."
"I'd need to have slept for you to drag me out. You're just keeping me from sleep." He takes a deep breath, a lungful of warm air and the subtle scent of Wally's cologne, and responds to Wally's questioning noise by adding, "Night shift."
"We could have rescheduled," Wally says. He shifts so he can wrap an arm around Dick without dislodging him too badly and Dick tries not to sink too far into the warmth of the hug, knowing he could fall asleep easily within it.
He pulls back slightly instead, blinks heavy eyes. "You should be feeling pretty special right now, then," he jokes.
"Nah, I know you're just here for the pancakes."
"And the coffee."
Wally laughs, giving his arm a squeeze before pulling away, taking his warmth with him as he stands up. "I'll get right on that then," he says.
It takes conscious effort from Dick to not slump down across the lingering heat of Wally's seat and take a nap; the low murmur of the crowd in the café little more than white noise. He focuses instead on the decorations lining the walls, shelves of oddities and knick-knacks almost buried beneath garlands of snowflakes and strings of twinkling lights; remainders from Christmas despite being two weeks into the New Year.
Dick wonders if they'll only be taken down in time to be replaced with ostentatious pink hearts.
A mug slides into his line of vision, Wally leaning over the back of the seat holding out the patterned ceramic in offering. "Coffee, as promised," he says, close enough that the words ruffle across Dick's hair. Dick wraps still cold fingers around the mug and breathes in the steam, savouring the scent of strong coffee and a hint of vanilla. Wally rounds the loveseat to drop next to Dick once more, a mug in his own hand.
"They'll bring the pancakes over," Wally says, "But the caffeine seemed too important to wait."
Dick hums as he takes a mouthful of the drink, more soothing than rousing in the moment. "I think it's bringing feeling back to my extremities."
Wally nudges him with an elbow. "Well maybe if you had your Christmas present you wouldn't have lost feeling in the first place."
Dick curls his fingers a little tighter around the coffee mug. "Sorry," he says, "Night shift."
"Somehow leaving you even more scatter brained than normal?"
Dick elbows him in response. "I don't have to be here, you know. My bed is calling."
"Sure," Wally says, shifting his coffee into one hand so he can wrap the other around Dick's shoulders, engulfing him in warmth and comfort once more. "But you should at least wait for the pancakes."
He doesn't have to wait long, a server bustling past them and depositing a stack of fluffy pancakes on the table as she passes, the food erupting sweet steam and shining with picture perfect syrup. Whoever had plated it had topped it off with a whipped cream heart and strawberries cut in perfect cordate.
"Well, that's cute," Dick says, picking up a fork and sinking it into a section of pancake. They're light and fluffy and beautifully warm. Next to him Wally takes his own mouthful.
"See," he says, swiping a spot of whipped cream from the corner of his mouth, "Better than IHOP, right?"
Dick shrugs, even as he takes another bite of pancake. "I don't know what your problem is with IHOP." He spears one of the heart shaped strawberries and pops it in his mouth. "At least they don't feel the need to remind me of how single I am." His next forkful tears a section of the whipped cream heart, disrupting, marring.
Wally pauses, fork halfway to his mouth, and Dick watches a drop of syrup slide from it and splatter against his jeans before he says, "You're… not seeing anyone?"
His voice echoes the uncertainty in his actions and Dick frowns as he tries to work out why: why Wally would think otherwise, who he thinks Dick would be seeing. "No," he says, the word coming slowly. "I barely have enough hours in the day to get a decent night's sleep, where would I find time to date someone?"
Wally shakes his head, stabs his fork into the pancake stack with a little more vigour than necessary and lets out a shaky laugh. "It's nothing," he says.
It's entirely unbelievable.
"Wally?"
Wally sighs. There's a clatter as he sets his fork down on the plate and turns to face Dick. "It's just… there's nothing romantic here? To you?" He gestures vaguely in the air between them.
Dick stares. "Between us?" He feels lost. He can see how other people would put an expectation on this relationship; has heard assumptions, has argued that they're close but it's strictly platonic. He didn't think he would need to qualify that with to me. "I… it's just breakfast, Wally."
Wally laughs but the sound is dry and harsh. "Right. Just breakfast and also sometimes it's dinner and going back to your place and putting on a movie and…" He looks away. "I guess I read too much into all those evening we fell asleep wrapped up together, huh?"
Dick feels the flush rise in his cheeks, caught between guilt and indignation, because they've always been close, physically and emotionally, and he hadn't thought twice about cuddling up with Wally on his couch or in his bed. "You never said anything." Even to his own ears the words sound accusatory.
"Right." Wally stands, grabs his coat from the arm of the chair and Dick feels like he can't miss that warmth so immediately when it clearly means something different to Wally to give it. "I can't…" He shakes his head, but doesn't finish the sentence, pulling on his coat without even looking at Dick. "I'll see you around," he says before he leaves.
There's still more than half of their pancakes sat on the table, two cups of coffee too full, but Dick can't bear to sit there anymore. He tries to ignore the glances from the people sat close by, because the conversation he'd just had was hardly private and he needs more space than the café provides. He pulls his coat and scarf tight around himself and faces the cold again.
When Wally was fourteen Dick had spent half of summer break in Eastern Europe. He often cited it as the worst four and a half weeks of his life because his best friend was halfway across the world and completely out of reach, leaving Wally with no way of contacting him no matter how many postcards Dick had sent.
At least he had known where he stood, then; had known that once those weeks were up he would have his best friend back. Now he doesn't have that same certainty. He thinks of calling a hundred times as the days roll into weeks, but he has no idea of what to say and is terrified he can't fix things.
It's less than four and a half weeks when Dick turns up at his door, hair sparkling with the same snowflakes that drift slowly against the windows of Wally's apartment.
"It started snowing and I didn't bring a hat," Dick says, as though it explains his presence on Wally's doorstep. He smiles a little and lifts his hand, a carrier bag shining with snowmelt set in gloved fingers. "I brought pancakes."
The moment is so achingly familiar that Wally almost laughs, because of course he did, every word and action so predictable Wally isn't sure why he didn't see it coming. "Dick," he says, instead, and he can hear the amazement in his own voice.
Dick's smile falters and his hand drops. "I miss you like crazy, Walls," he says, his eyes burning into Wally's own. "Can we talk? Please?"
"Yeah," Wally says, because he doesn't think he could have said no, "Of course."
It's strange to have Dick in his apartment again, in his kitchen, finding plates for take-out pancakes. "I know you don't love IHOP," Dick says, as he dishes the pancakes out. They're a little flat, and cracked from the journey and when Wally accepts his plate they're growing cold.
"I think you're the only person who does," Wally says.
Dick bumps an elbow against his arm. "Last time I do something nice."
"Dick, I-" Wally starts, but he's cut off by Dick shaking his head vigorously.
"No. I need to apologise first, okay?"
"Why?" Wally tears of a chunk of pancake, but doesn't go to eat it, doesn't know where to find the appetite in the face of this. "You were right; I should have said something."
"And I should have maybe taken a second to think about what was happening between us. Because it wasn't nothing, Wally. Maybe it didn't mean to me what it meant to you but everything between us has never been nothing."
Wally doesn't dare to hope. He chews on a mouthful of slightly cold, slightly hard pancake to give himself time to think of something to say. "I think I'm in love with you," he says, when his brain fails to supply anything else. He nearly chokes on a handful of crumbs because he hadn't meant to say it, had barely let himself think it. "Sorry, that's probably a lot to drop on you."
Dick is smiling though, pushing a pancake around his plate. A peace offering Wally thinks he never had any intention of actually eating. "I, uh, I don't mind. Besides, you're my best friend, you're supposed to tell me when you fall in love."
Wally wants to kiss him. It's dangerous, probably, to go from no contact for weeks to this little slice of warmth and domesticity. He's still on uncertain ground and it could fissure as easily as a pancake in the cold winter air.
"You're also supposed to tell me when someone breaks your heart over breakfast." Dick's smile turns to something sad and Wally reaches out without thinking, his brain having checked out the second he saw Dick in his doorway.
"It's not his fault," Wally says, one hand closing over Dick's and hoping he's not being too forward by doing so. "It was a misunderstanding about the nature of our relationship. I don't think he meant to."
Dick looks sideways at him, so soft Wally's heart races. "He didn't." Dick turns his hand so he can wrap his fingers around Wally's, uses that gentle grip to pull him even closer, across the inches between them. "He would never do it deliberately."
"What are we doing here, Dick?" Wally says, leaving the barely touched pancakes in favour of wrapping an arm around Dick's waist in a loose hug.
Dick shakes his head. "Something dumb, probably. I…" He tilts a little closer and Wally hadn't been aware he was leaning in as well until his nose brushes against the tip of Dick's. "I still don't have time for dating, not really," Dick says, the words rushing warm against Wally's lips. "And I don't know if I can be what you deserve."
There's still flecks of snow clinging to the curling edges of Dick's hair, stubbornly frozen against the warmth of the kitchen, starlight against black where they catch under the bright lights. "Maybe," Wally says, slowly, quietly, "I get to decide what I deserve."
He closes the last breath of space, bringing his lips to Dick's. They're chapped, of course, because Wally hasn't been there for close to a month to remind him to use chapstick, and he finds himself smiling at the thought of it because for all Dick's hesitance this feels fated.
Then Dick buries his free hand in the material of Wally's shirt and licks into Wally's mouth and his smile slides away, along with any thought outside of this moment: the soft noise Dick makes in the back of his throat, the sweetness of syrup sat on his tongue when it runs along Wally's, the scent of cold damp snow still clinging to his skin.
Dick wakes up when the cold seeps through the layers of blankets despite the approach of spring banishing some of the chill. He frowns a little because he's become used to the warmth of Wally next to him more nights than not and it takes him a second to realise the cold is mostly due to his absence. There's a pale glow of daylight around the edge of the blinds and Dick stretches out in it, pushes himself upright, only shivering a little as it exposes more of his body to the morning chill of his apartment.
He finds a worn sweater, the logo faded to almost nothing. It's from their old high school, but he's not sure if it's his or Wally's, or if there's much differentiation anymore when it comes to things like this. He's rubbing bleariness from his eyes as he leaves the bedroom in search of his missing warmth.
Wally stands in the kitchen in a t-shirt, seemingly unbothered by the colder temperatures. Dick supposes it makes sense given how much warmth he always gives that he keeps some of it to himself. He's humming something, off key and out of time and Dick can barely identify the melody of some pop song underlying it. It's less important than the hiss of oil and batter.
Dick slides into the kitchen without Wally noticing and wraps two arms around his waist. The rush of warmth is instant, even as Dick presses slightly cold fingertips to the hem of the shirt and underneath it, trying to pull heat from the skin. He buries his face against Wally's shoulder and breathes deep.
"Morning, babe," Wally says, laughter in his tone.
Dick hums in response, pulling his face out of the wrinkles of Wally's t-shirt to peer over his shoulder. "Are you making pancakes?"
"It's no IHOP, but…" Wally shrugs gently, cautious to not dislodge Dick too much.
"I love you."
One of Wally's hands curls over Dick's where it rests against his stomach. The other is still wielding a spatula, carefully turning pancakes on the stovetop. "Say that again," he whispers, head turned sideways so he can just about catch Dick's eye line.
Dick blushes, ducks his head so he can avoid that gaze. He hadn't made a conscious decision to say anything in the first place. Hadn't been thinking of anything except how wonderful Wally was. "Shut up," he complains against Wally's shoulder when it starts shaking with silent laughter.
There's a scrape of the pan being moved off the heat and then Wally's turning around, one hand lifting Dick's chin so he can't look anywhere but that face, split wide with a smile. "I refuse to ever shut up again," Wally says, darting forward to press a kiss against Dick's lips, "Dick Grayson is in love with me."
He doesn't retreat far, every breath a puff of warmth against Dick's face, and his eyes shining with something so deep Dick wonders how he ever managed to miss it. "Yeah," he says quietly, committed, because Wally can't be the only one so obvious and so smitten, "I am."
The admission nets him another kiss; Wally taking his time, sliding the hand resting against Dick's chin up along his cheek, into his hair. Dick pulls him closer in response, parts his lips just as slow and shivers at the first touch of Wally's tongue against his own. It's achingly soft, and full of love.
He pulls back with a shaky breath, has to wet his lips to get words past them. "We should eat those pancakes before they get cold," he says.
Wally snorts, the exhale fanning across Dick's face. "Starting to think you were talking to the pancakes earlier."
Dick grins, leans forward to kiss Wally one more time. "I can love two things."
"Sure." Wally doesn't let him go. "But if you could only pick one?"
"Are you fishing for compliments right now?"
"Are you hesitating?"
Dick shakes his head, squeezes Wally into a hug. "No." He doesn't know if he's ever been this sure in his life, not since he was a child and everything in his future had held a certainty that only comes from naivety. "I'm always going to pick you."
"Always?"
"Yeah."
He's driven back against the kitchen counter, Wally kissing him with such intensity that it drives all thoughts of breakfast from his mind. Everything else burned away by the blazing path Wally's hands map out, under his sweater and across his skin, drowned out under the weight of Wally's whispered I love yous against his lips and jaw. Dick closes his eyes and surrenders to it without regret.