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Dick pulls open the back doors of his campervan, letting the late evening sunlight—barely cascading around the edges of the clouds creeping across the horizon—wash in over the collection of pillows and sheets and blankets that make up his bed. He brushes a thumb against a rough patch in the dandelion-yellow paintwork of the doors and makes a mental note as he clambers in that he should apply a new coat over the old scratch when he gets the chance. He swings around so his feet hang down past the van's exhaust, closing his eyes and leaning back on his elbows to let those same intrepid rays wash over as much of him as possible.
The little off-road, dust-bowl of a lot he'd pulled up in—somewhere close to middle-of-nowhere, Louisiana—is so far out of the way there's no sound but a few birds and the breeze rustling through the pines and grasses. And the low, staticky buzz and hum of a radio spilling through the window of the only other occupant of the lot: an off-white van decked out with enough antennas that the owner is probably searching for aliens. Dick is content to let it be, has no interest in poking that den of bears and conspiracy theories, at least until a shadow falls across him, stirring a chill where there'd been warm sun against his closed eyelids a moment earlier.
He cracks an eye open to find a stranger at his door, a man with brilliant red hair aflame like a halo in the sun he's now blocking and constellations of freckles across his sunburnt cheeks. "Can I help you?" Dick asks.
"Actually, I, uh, I noticed you're from out of state." The man points just below Dick's feet, above the dust clinging to his own, at the Gotham City license plate on the back of Dick's campervan. "Figured I'd give you some friendly advice. This area's kind of a hotspot for storms, and between the chance of flash floods and forest fires it's better to be prepared, right?"
Dick looks at the stranger. There's no tin-foil hat, no wide-eyed mania, just a nervousness given away by the way he kicks his feet against the ground stirring up more dust and the way he itches at a long-healed-over scar on his forearm. And an open helpfulness. "You reckon there'll be a storm tonight?"
"Well, I hope so." There's a flash of a grin, there and gone again in a blink.
Dick's eyes flicker over to the other van once more—the antennas lining the roof, the glint of equipment through the open side door, a sharp contrast to the home comforts Dick has squeezed into his own campervan, soft and warm and lived in—and, combined with the man's response, comes to a conclusion. "You're a storm chaser," he says, barely refraining from rolling his eyes.
He looks back over to the redhead when he lets out a huff. "I'm an atmospheric chemist," he says, drawing himself upright—shoulders back, chest puffed up, fingers falling still from his itching.
Dick shrugs. "To-may-to, to-mah-to."
The man huffs again. "I have a PhD."
They stare at each other for a long moment as the clouds surge further across the skyline, enveloping the sun entirely and leaving a bite to the breeze as it rustles between the pine needles and across the lot. "I'm not new to storms," Dick says finally. There'd been one six months after he left Gotham that had lashed rain against the roof of the van, and then hail, and with a crack the passenger side window had shattered in an explosion of glass that almost sent him scurrying back to the manor. There'd been one when he was five, a distant memory now of thunder that shook his parent's caravan with terrifying force. There'd been one a year ago that had brought a tree down a few feet from his parking spot and a mudslide down over his only road out.
The man—the storm chaser, the chemist—holds his hands up. "Like I said, just friendly advice. You're free to ignore it. And me."
It shakes Dick from his memories. "You want a beer, Doc?"
"What?"
"A beer." Dick leans forward with a grin. "Alcoholic drink, made from hops, widely popular."
"I know what beer is."
Dick scrambles up fully into the back of the campervan, over his makeshift bed—ignoring the dusty boot prints he scatters across the blanket in the process—so he can open the cooler stashed on the backseat. The ice packs are little more than tepid water, and the container is only a fraction cooler than the air outside. Dick looks over his shoulder to find the redhead looking at the patch of rough paintwork on the back door, and determinedly not looking at the way Dick's jeans cling to him. Or maybe he's just projecting his own interests. "So," Dick says. "Beer? They're a little warm, but it's not like there's room to be picky out here."
"Oh, I, uh... I shouldn't." The man is back to itching at his scar. "I'll probably be up half the night working and..."
Dick grabs two beers from the cooler, scrambling back over the blankets to drop himself on the back step and in the storm chaser's space. "Come on, Doc. One beer won't even put you over the limit."
"Wally."
Dick opens one bottle by knocking the cap off against the door lock, catching it as it skims down the frame. "Hmm?"
"My name," Wally says. "Wally West."
"Well then, Doctor West..." Dick holds the second beer bottle over the lock, trying to figure out if Wally's face looks redder than it had earlier—if there's a blush under the sunburn, or if it's just the lower light in the approaching storm colouring his cheeks darker. "Stick around for a drink?"
🗲
There's a grainy film settled across most of Dick's body: an itching combination of sweat and sand and body glitter scratched across every exposed stretch of tan skin and slipping beneath the Lycra of his outfit, following paths of sweat beneath the low v of his collar and seeping through every seam of the old costume. The stitching holding grain and grit in spots where it rubs his skin raw, too loose around the shoulders, too tight around the thighs; an ill-fitting reminder that he's using his dad's old gear because he never got his own.
At least, he thinks as heads back to his campervan—parked a little further back from the shoreline and the piers where he'd spent the day busking—he'd made enough to spend the night in a motel, to use an actual shower, maybe even to order a pizza as he decides where to head next. Seaside tourists almost make the sand worth it.
He's tossing up between zigging further inland and away from the beaches or zagging further along the south coast in an attempt to pad his pockets when he makes it back to the broken up concrete of today's parking lot and draws short at the sight of an off-white van he remembers from before, and a pair of sneakered feet propped out of the side door.
"Well, hey there, Doc," he says, leaning against the door frame of Wally's van and trying not to grimace when the pressure of it grinds sand and glitter against his skin again.
Wally looks up sharply from a can of beer and a textbook page filled with incomprehensible formulae. "Oh." Dick thinks he might be even more sunburnt than when they last met. "Hi, handsome stranger who never told me his name."
"Dick."
Wally's mouth drops open, a frown pulling at his brow. "I... I didn't," he stammers, "I don't..."
Dick manages to keep a straight face for a few seconds as Wally stumbles over his words. "As in, short for Richard."
Wally blinks, mouth snapping shut again. "Dick?" he repeats, far too incredulous for a man named Wally. His frown evens out. "You did that deliberately," he accuses.
"I only get to introduce myself once, and beat someone to making a joke." Dick shrugs, pulling away from the door frame when it rubs fabric and grit against his arm. "Dick Grayson," he adds, dipping forward into a flourishing bow that had been polished and sharp when he was performing for tourists and now takes on a careless, sluggish edge.
"Well, Dick Grayson..." Wally slams the textbook shut and Dick has just enough time to pick out a title about cloud formations before it's dropped into the shadows of the van behind Wally and a six-pack of beers—already two down—is pulled forward in place. "I believe it's my round."
Dick thinks about the motel he'd seen on the drive in, of a warm shower that would probably drop in pressure every time someone hit a light switch and an outdated CRT television that would probably only show the local news channel. He drops the duffel bag slung over one shoulder to the floor, ignoring the rattle and crack of his clubs knocking against each other as they hit the concrete. "No storms tonight then, egret?"
"Egret?" Wally asks as he works another beer can from the rings.
"Old sailor's superstition? Because they make a lot of noise when a storm's coming? And it's not necessarily helpful?"
"Funny."
"Well, I thought so." Dick grins, dropping to the open spot of van floor between Wally and a few scattered textbooks and accepting the beer can. Their knees brush together—blue Lycra above Dick's boots in contrast to the pale skin beneath the hem of Wally's shorts. He catches a brief look at a thick laptop displaying a half-empty page of text and a series of complex-looking diagrams until Wally nudges the lid shut with a half muttered excuse. "Your research?" Dick asks.
"My grand postdoctoral thesis." Wally sighs—gaze fixed on the horizon and the few clouds floating out past the shoreline—and takes a long drink. "Three years and half a paper later and I'm thinking I might be better off trying to pawn all the borrowed equipment in this van and go on the run."
Dick leans forward, sipping at his own beer. It's cheap and weak, and tastes awful, but it's cold enough that condensation has formed against the aluminium, and that at least is refreshing against Dick's skin. "It's not so bad, you know," he says. "Starting over with nothing."
"Hmm." Wally breaks his gaze to drain the rest of his beer, glancing over at Dick as he reaches for another one. "Don't think we're not going to talk about your get up, by the way. Just because I'm on the brink of an existential crisis doesn't mean I haven't noticed the outfit."
"What, this old thing?" Dick leans back again, spreading an arm to show off the full effect and pulling the material tighter across his chest in the process. He thinks he sees Wally's eye flicker downwards, but he doesn't say anything, even to tease. "The tourists like authenticity," he says.
"You're a street performer, then?"
Dick mock gasps. "I'm an aerial artist." He laughs at his own joke, although it tastes sour. He hasn't been on a trapeze in years, hasn't even walked a tightrope. He's almost forgotten what it was to fly. "Or a street performer." He drains a mouthful of cheap, foul-tasting beer and then sets the can on the floor of the van as he hops up again, stooping to pull his clubs from the duffel bag.
"You know, there's a long tradition of paying your performers with a drink," he says, straightening up again, tossing one club between his hands a few times as he loosens up, trying to ignore the discomfort built up from a day of hard work, refusing to allow it to seep into this performance. "Even if you are a cheap patron."
He sets into cascading the clubs easily, nothing more than a few flourishes and reversals, a little too tired and out of focus to pull out all the stops. Not that it matters. He finds Wally's eyes—transfixed—beer forgotten in his hand as he traces the lazy arcs of the clubs, each spinning and sending the late afternoon sun flashing from their glittering surface. And then he catches them: one, two, a final steady arc and three falls perfectly between them, handle catching against heads.
"Holy shit," Wally whispers, setting down his beer in favour of a standing ovation. Dick grins, the rush that sings through his blood at a captive audience is as familiar as his name. It might be his birthright. He bows. "That was amazing!" Wally says. "How do you even learn something like that?"
Dick shrugs, his grin taking on a wild edge at the praise. "On a tightrope," he says.
"That answers none of my questions, thanks."
He shrugs again, packing his clubs back into the duffel bag. "You know that saying about magicians and secrets?"
"Oh, so you're a magician too?" Dick raises an eyebrow and Wally laughs lightly. "I'm pretty sure there should be another saying; about scientists and unanswered questions."
"Curiosity killed the atmospheric chemist?" Dick hefts the bag up, leaving the half-drunk can of beer on Wally's floor and taking steps back towards his own campervan and his own promise of a motel. "Guess we'll have to wait and see."
🗲
If anyone asked, Dick would deny—repeatedly, vehemently—that he was making any attempt to run into Wally again. His journey had always been an erratic thing, a wandering path following half-remembered maps and almost-forgotten routes he'd traced out on his mother's knee. He would claim that tuning in to local weather broadcasts was good sense, that summer storms are wild and unpredictable and that it's better to be prepared. He would—of course—be lying, putting all good sense to rest and turning into the storms' paths instead of away, but there's no one within a thousand miles who knows him well enough to call him out.
He finds himself pulling from the road into the parking lot of a dimly lit dive bar; a half dozen cars and a familiar off-white van laden with a variety of antennas, a faded rainbow flag in the window almost covered by even more faded fliers for local bands, music filtering around the cracks of the door before Dick pushes it open.
Wally's ordering a beer from the bartender when Dick approaches; red hair curling and still slightly damp from the storm that had rolled over earlier and probably drawn him to the area. "Make that two," Dick says, leaning against the bar and nudging Wally with an elbow. "If I'm keeping track it's my round."
Wally throws him a lop-sided grin. "Well, look who finally caught up."
"Finally?" Dick says, as he fetches out some cash for their drinks. "Why, Doc, were you waiting for me?"
There's a moment where Wally looks away, a blush creeping around the gaps in the patchy sunburn across his cheeks. "Would it, uh, would it be so bad if I was?"
Dick looks away in turn. He can admit he enjoys Wally's company, trading beers and flirtatious comments, and he can admit—at least to himself—that he's been keeping an eye on the horizon in the hopes of more of both, but whatever it is between them—companionship, friendship, attraction—is a nebulous thing. Dick can't pin it down, doesn't really want to pin it down for fear of pinning himself right alongside it. As free as they both are right now Wally will finish his postdoc at some point, whether in triumph or defeat, and he'll find his way to a city, to a university or a research facility or a life. And Dick won't. His eyes flicker over a pool table tucked along the back wall of the room. "You got any quarters?" he asks.
"What?"
He grabs one of the beers and tips it in the direction of the table. "They've got one of those coin-operated pool tables." He pushes away from the bar. "If you fancied a game."
Wally frowns, but shifts so he can pull his wallet from his pocket anyway. "Yeah, alright. But if I win I'm expecting at least one straight answer out of you."
"Can't promise it'll be entirely straight," Dick says with a grin.
Wally snorts. "I guess I'll take that into consideration," he says, bumping his shoulder against Dick's as he passes, weaving deftly between half-empty tables of quiet patrons and over-spilling booths of loud groups. There's a jukebox at the end of the bar, turning over to a track Dick thinks he remembers hearing on the radio in Haly's caravan—back when the old man taught him how to play rummy and blackjack on quiet nights.
"You know..." Wally says as they take up opposite sides of the pool table, fishing out quarters to start feeding into the dispenser. "Pool is all about angles. It's math, really. So unless you want to come forward and confess you spent a summer as a professional pool player and are trying to hustle me you might want to admit defeat."
"Pretty arrogant for someone who hasn't even started playing yet."
There's a series of clacks as the balls release, Wally setting them on the table one by one but pausing to flash Dick a charming grin, all sharp teeth in the low lights of the bar, a bright streak like lightning in the sunburnt-pink of his face. "Just giving you a fair chance to back out," he says.
"Yeah, well, I grew up in a house with a billiard room."
Wally's grin drops into a suspicious squint as he starts setting up the table. "You're lying." When Dick doesn't respond the suspicion gives way to something closer to confusion. "You are lying, right?"
Dick grabs a pair of pool cues, handing one across the table to Wally. "Win and maybe I'll tell you."
"Like I'm wasting my one question on that."
"Tell you what, if you win I'll give you three." It's likely a foolish bet. As much time as Dick spent playing pool at Wayne Manor he was always a little too quick and instinctual and never patient enough to listen to Barbara's calculating advice. Even years ago she had him beat almost every time, and it's not as though he's had many occasions to brush up on his skills in the years since he left. "I'll even let you break," he says—still quick and instinctual.
Dick thinks he might regret it when Wally pots three stripes one after the other before a fourth bounces against the cushion just shy of the corner and he leans against the edge of the table, only dropping his confident grin long enough to drink a mouthful of beer and say, "Your shot, Mr Grayson."
"I'd say Mr Grayson was my father, but even he wasn't that stuffy." Dick loops around the table, bends with the excuse of eyeing a couple of potential shots and finds his confidence—a little diminished by how behind he already is—in the way Wally's gaze crawls over him.
"Well," Wally says after another mouthful of beer, "I figure you're the one who keeps calling me Doc."
"I just assumed you wouldn't put all that time and money into getting a doctorate if you weren't looking to boast about it. At least a little. In the first conversation we ever had." Dick narrowly misses his shot and lets out a huff. "Just math, huh?"
Wally chuckles and sets his beer down on the edge of the table before circling it, head tilted and eyes narrowed in over-exaggerated calculation. "That and an abundance of free time between my undergrad, masters, and doctorate spent in bars." Wally sinks another ball easily and throws a wink at Dick.
"What was it you said earlier about hustling?"
Wally laughs fully, loud and free, and then proceeds to beat Dick handily—three solid balls still left on the felt when he pots the black. They slide into a booth— tucked away, closer to the jukebox still playing songs twenty years past being considered oldies—and Wally buys another round.
"So..." he says, pushing a beer across the table to Dick. "Three questions, right?"
"Three questions," Dick says with a smirk. "And I won't even count that as your first one."
"How generous." Wally sips at his own beer, leaning back against the seat of the booth as he looks at Dick. "Alright, I'll bite," he says. "Did you really grow up in a house with a billiard room?"
"Yes."
The music fills the silence between them, overlaid with the chatter of other patrons, the clink of glasses, the clatter of another group at one of the pool tables. Dick is still smirking, Wally watching him with narrowed eyes.
Wally finally breaks the silence stretched between them. "You're not going to elaborate, are you?" he says, and then holds up a hand before Dick can answer. "That wasn't actually a question, before you say anything and use up one of my three wishes."
"I feel like I should point out I'm not a genie."
"And here I was saving my final wish to set you free." Wally smiles, and then shakes his head. "Okay, I can figure this out, it's like a riddle."
Dick laughs. "Is it?"
"Yes." Wally leans back, swallowing a mouthful of beer before he asks, "How do you go from living in a house like that to living in a campervan?"
"I..." Dick's laughter falls away as his eyes drop to the beer bottle in front of him, fingers picking at the label as he turns over possible ways he can answer that. He knows enough clever ways to dodge the question, it's been a long time since he's been open about his past with anyone—a long time since he's been open about anything.
"Sorry." Dick looks up again sharply to find Wally's face scrunched up in consideration, fingers scratching at the scar on his forearm—his own nervous tell. "You don't have to answer. I... well, I guess it might not be a happy story."
"No," Dick says. And then, "Or, well, it has its ups and downs." He leans back against the cushions of the booth—barely padded and threadbare in patches—and meets Wally's eyes across the table. "It wasn't my house, not really. Or, it was but it was also my foster home and... I guess it sounds kind of stupid to say the mansion felt small by the time I left."
"Compared to the open road? I think most things would feel small."
Dick waits for Wally to push further, to ask why he was in foster care to begin with, or where, or who, or... He clears his throat. "You still have one more question."
Wally hums. "What's your favourite pizza topping?"
Dick blinks at him. "That's— Really?"
"Really."
"Pepperoni."
Wally scoffs. "Pepperoni? That's so boring. You know, there are thousands of toppings to choose from these days."
"It's a classic for a reason!" Dick says, smiling without even thinking about it, the lingering melancholy dissipating in the face of Wally's brilliant smile.
"I'm going to expand your pizza based horizons."
Dick snorts with laughter. "You seem pretty confident you'll get the opportunity."
"Oh, I'm very confident. Although I don't think it would hurt my odds if you gave me your number." Wally winks, and Dick doesn't have the heart to refuse that smile.
🗲
Rain catches them right behind the rising humidity as they head east; sitting side by side in the back of Dick's campervan with their legs out the back door and all the windows open in a desperate attempt to entice a breeze into the stifling warmth. The first droplets splash against Dick's shins and crawl down towards his ankles. He frowns and holds a hand out to confirm it wasn't just his imagination. More drops catch in his palm.
"I think you might have to work this evening," Dick says.
Wally groans against the beer can pressed to his face even though it can't be cool any longer. He's sprawled backwards in the bed of the campervan, eyes closed, long given up on pretending to drink the beer he'd stolen from Dick's cooler. "Does it look like there'll be lightning?" he asks without opening his eyes.
Dick ducks his head outside as the odd raindrops turn into something more consistent, the occasional plinks against the roof of the van more frequent, the splashes against his knees a steady shower clinging to his hair. "It looks cloudy," he says. Wally stares, incredulous, until he shrugs. "What? I'm not the cloud expert here."
"Oh, fine." Wally pushes himself upright as Dick ducks back inside, shaking raindrops from his head and turning his attention to getting the windows closed before his bedroom floods. Wally's attention is on the sky for a few more moments before he sighs and drags himself out of the back of the campervan. "I think you might be right," he says as the rain quickly soaks his t-shirt—turning it from a faded red to a deep maroon in seconds. "Are you coming?"
Dick arches a brow, half laid over the back seat to clip one of the windows shut. "Are you paying me?" he asks.
"Come on." Wally's voice takes a whiny note, sounding every bit the drowned puppy he looks as he pouts.
"I'm mostly dry," Dick says. "Plus, I have the beer. What are you offering?"
"My delightful company?" Wally swipes wet hair away from his forehead, mournful pout replaced by a dashing grin. "Or... a contributing author credit on my paper?"
Dick snorts. "That would give me something to rub in the face of my sophomore science teacher. She thought I was too disruptive to get a passing grade."
"Were you performing magic tricks in the lab?" Wally asks. "Scientists tend to get crabby about fire of unknown origins."
"I only started a fire once," Dick says, feigning offence for about two seconds before cracking into a grin. He watches for a moment as Wally stands at his door slowly getting soaked in the rain. "Alright, I'll come. But I'm bringing the beer."
Wally lets out a cheer, throwing his fists in the air before dashing across the short distance between their vans, sneakers splashing the rapidly forming puddles up around his ankles. Dick makes sure the rest of his windows are shut before following, grabbing the cooler and slamming the back door of his camper shut behind him.
They crowd into the back of Wally's instead, all clinical plastic and metal and linoleum floors that were definitely cleaner the first time Dick saw them, and are definitely even worse now they've tracked a new set of muddy footsteps across the surface. Wally bustles back and forth with gestures too large for the small space, and Dick finds a clear spot of countertop between a slightly batter laptop and a stack of wrinkled papers—wetted and dried out so many times there are permanent streaks in the ink—to perch between, the cooler a makeshift footrest he knows won't take any actual weight.
There's a gentle rumble of thunder in the distance; still too far off for any accompanying lightning, but close enough that it brings a smile to Wally's face—a little wild at the edges and a reminder that his passion is found at the centre of a storm. Dick isn't as concerned as he should be.
"So," Dick says as Wally sets to turning on a variety of devices that set a low electric hum through the van, "is this the point where you tell me what exactly you do?"
Wally falters, hands stilling where they'd been tapping rapidly at the laptop keyboard, and blinks across at Dick. "I haven't told you what I'm studying?" he asks.
"No," Dick says, then, "Storms. But if I'm putting my name to a paper I think I should know the specifics. Or at least the title."
Wally hums, and starts moving again. "Well, it's generally considered bad practice to name your paper before you've drawn any conclusions." Dick glances at the laptop screen to see a series of windows, each window containing a little graph he can't begin to comprehend, and a little line ticking along each graph. Live data from all those antennas, probably. "But for a working title—or at least the title of the proposal I wrote—a study of the effects of cloud composition on lightning formation." He announces it the same way Haly used to announce The Flying Graysons: a headline act, a name hung up in lights.
It certainly sounds more interesting than the lengthy titles of Barbara's half a dozen published papers, but it was possibly just the inclusion of lightning, or the exclusion of the brand of mathematical theory and quantum computing that required at least three degrees to understand. Dick briefly contemplates forwarding the next one to Wally. He might get a kick out of it. "I know science wasn't my strong suit," Dick says, folding in half so he can fish a new beer can out from around his feet, "but I seem to recall clouds being composed of water. Hence rain."
"Well, yeah, for the most part." Wally sticks his head out of the still-open door of the van, gaze focused on the storm clouds rolling closer, and seemingly indifferent to the way the rain bounces in, soaking every surface within arm's reach of the door. He draws back and pushes thoroughly wet hair out of his eyes and nods to the can in Dick's hands. "For the most part so is beer."
"If it starts raining beer I'm going to become far more interested in meteorology."
Wally laughs. "I'm just saying, there's a lot of not-water things in things that are still mostly water. Hence mineral water, or acid rain."
"Or beer."
"Or beer." Wally leans against the counter next to Dick, close enough that the scent of warm, fresh rainfall seems to double. It's a scent that he's increasingly associating with Wally. "And even the pure water isn't all equal. Sometimes clouds are formed from suspended water droplets, sometimes it's ice, and here—" Wally taps a finger against one of the ticking graphs on his laptop screen. "You can use spectroscopy to... and now I'm boring you."
"Was it the blank look?" Dick sighs, scratching against the design on the beer can, pulling paint away beneath his thumbnail. "It's not boring, and it's not you. I've just never been any good with the smart stuff. So..." He gestures a hand sweeping over the top of his head.
Wally taps his fingers against the countertop, a building rhythm that matches the building storm outside, the rumbling thunder closer now, and a spark of lightning in the closing clouds. It crashes out in a flurry of words. "No offence, Dick, but I call bullshit." His eyes are focused on the laptop screen but Dick doubts the frown pulling at his features is because of anything he sees there. "You're a quick thinker, you're a brilliant performer, you're witty as hell—"
"None of that means—"
"—and take it from someone who almost dropped out of high school because his ADHD made sitting through lessons torture, all those grades and teachers and exams are a pretty shit measure of smart." Wally finally looks across at him. "Some days I think I got a PhD just to rub it in the face of all my old teachers, but I think I mostly got it to rub it in my own face. Because I thought I was way less smart than I was for way longer than I should have."
Dick stares, and Wally stares right back. "You should try having ADHD, on top of being an orphan, on top of being fostered by someone in a whole different social class to you who enrols you in private school," he says, setting his beer can on the stack of papers and hoping it doesn't tip over and ruin them further. "Or maybe not. School was hell."
"I bet," Wally says. He doesn't look away, doesn't pull back; not when Dick leans in closer, nor when Dick skates a hand up the bare skin of his arm to settle against his collar, not even when Dick crosses the last space between them and drags him into a fierce kiss. Instead, he responds in kind, a hand settling at Dick's waist and then squeezing tighter as a groan slips between his lips.
Dick draws back, breathless and dizzy with it, breathing in the scent of rain, listening to it beat a pattern against the roof of the van far more steady than his racing heart. The air is heavy with the approaching storm—the thunder less of a rumble and more of a crash—and with the possibilities between them.
"Have you ever considered taking a night off?" Dick asks, still so close that he can feel the warmth of his own words reflected back at him, and the burn of Wally's blush. "Maybe this night?"
"I take plenty of nights off," Wally says. His tongue darts out against a rough spot on his lip. It's probably sunburn. "But I think I could be persuaded to take one more."
Dick drags him forward again, far from graceful in the cramped space, but it doesn't matter when he grazes his teeth along that chapped spot on Wally's lip, and then his tongue, and as he slides his hand into the thick hair curling from the rain at the back of Wally's head—aglow with the first flashes of lightning—he thinks he might be falling in love with storms.