Chapter Text
“Is this a real thing or are you just fucking with us?” I hear Wally call out as he closes the door. I look at him from where I’m hanging over the open door to one mine and Kori’s bedroom.
No one was supposed to be home. Artemis is meeting her mother, Kori should be with the Titians and Wally is supposed to be working on his thesis.
“Is finishing your thesis are real thing or are is this an elaborate way to drop out?” I query, watching him from across the room. He pouts exaggeratedly, hair flopping.
“It pains me to know that someone as special as you has no faith in me,” Wally fakes a whine as he kicks off his shoes. We both ignore how he hesitated on the word ‘special’. “Anyway, I came back so I could knock out my word requirement in, like, a minute.”
“Super speed,” we both say at the same time. He smiles at me for a brief second before zooming off to his and Artemis’ room. Soon the sound of frantic typing fills the apartment.
I look forward and try to focus back on what originally stimulated me to hang from my bedroom door. But of course, Wally finishes before I can get any important rumination done.
“So is it?” Wally asks again, this time standing right in front of me. He was likely halfway through changing when he speed out of his room because he is currently shirtless with a different top gripped in his right hand.
“Is what?” I ask as I unhook myself and quietly hit the floor. Our downstairs neighbours have complained enough about noises.
“Your upside down business,” Wally clarifies, taking a couple steps back now as our closeness is more obvious with me standing up. “I know everyone jokes about it but do actually you think better that way? I would think all the blood rushing to your head would be counterproductive,”
"Better than other places" I think to myself, purposely biting my tongue.
“Well, both are slightly true,” I shrug casually, walking over to the couch, intentionally not looking as Wally throws on his shirt at regular speed this time. “You get used to the blood rushing feeling,”
“But why upside down?” Wally continues and then pointedly looks at me, “I know your bat-hood is just a metaphor, so you can’t fool me there.”
I hold back a laugh, “Ok,”.
“That was embarrassing,” Wally declares, “I’m still shocked you would do something like that to another person.” I hold my hands up in mock surrender.
“B found it funny,”
“After it destroyed any respect he had for me. Now I rank lower than Kori in his eyes,” Wally plops down into the couch, “Which is a feat considering the two take joy in hating each other,”
“Bruce likes you,” I state, unsure why I feel it necessary to make sure Wally knows that. He just smiles.
“Let’s not change the subject,” He pokes lightheartedly, “Why are you weird, get it off your chest.” I laugh and shrug.
“I don’t really know,” I answer, honestly. “It’s just a thing—side effect from growing up as I did I guess.”
I feel the urge to mystify myself to Wally less and less now. I no longer see such precautions as protections or intriguing aspects of myself. It initially started with Kori but it became painfully apparent when I found myself talking to Atremis about things I would have kept to myself years ago. And I have not too much pride to confess that I like it better this way—the world feels lighter, relationships come easier, my life in general is better.
Wally I think has noticed it too—I think all 4 of us has but no one has brought it up.
“Side effect from what particularly?”
“Well, it’s a mixture of things. Y’know growing up surrounding my acrobatics and stuff, you get comfortable with movement,” I explain, “ And Bruce had this training exercise we would do quite regularly, especially in the beginning. He would put clues all around the cave or we would go somewhere new and I would hang upside down. Sometimes he would ask me a questions or I would have to figure out the clues, others I would just have to find a way to un-hang myself.”
“That sounds pointless,”
“Well, it had its uses,” I say, leaning back into my seat slightly. I never really thought about it or some of the many other training exercises Bruce would have me do. I always thought all the weird exercises were just mini-test to prepare me for the unpredictability of vigilante life but now that I’m older their true value is slowly appearing. “ When you’re upside down, everything feels off despite nothing actually changing. It kick-starts your brain into actively making sense of the situation rather than just seeing and automatically agreeing with your subconscious perceptions of the world.” For a second, I wonder if Wally realising that he is not the only person acquiring a greater understanding of me right now. “I guess it just puts me in the right headspace,” I try to shrug off the seriousness.
“Does Bruce just sit up at night conniving elaborate ways to teach people different shit?” Wally jokes and I laugh, knowing he most likely did. “Anyway,” Wally continues,” What are you thinking about today.”
I shrug, to hide the dread that washes over me as the words I can’t say tumble through my mind.
I’m thinking of you—of how this morning when you made your way out of the shower I lingered to catch a glimpse of you naked.
I’m thinking of that wet dream I had of Artemis—the girlfriend I spent years helping you get with. I’m thinking of how I find myself looking at her in a way I never thought I would.
I’m thinking about how dirty and scared I feel when I lie beside Kori at night. I love her so much that I feel a part of me would die if I lost her yet I’m haunted by the ghost of your hands on my bicep and can’t banish the memories of Artemis’s body only millimetres away from mine.
(I never wanted this—I never expected this.
As I child I dreamed of the day I stood by your side as your best man yet, now a man, I am plagued with feelings that belong on the wrong other side of the alter.
I thought one day I’d have Artemis as my sister-in-law yet now I fear I want her in a way one would want a wife.
I feel wrong disgusting.)
I can’t make sense of all these foreign feelings whirling around inside me. I’ve tried every method I know short of compiling a file of evidence and going to Batman for help.
“Just another case,” I lie.
“Can’t have you livin’ like that.” Wally laughs, grabbing me by the arm to drag me off the couch, “This is where I come in. Let’s get pizza,”
(I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anyone about this. Not when I’m this close to everything I have ever wanted. I can feel it scrap across my fingertips—it lingers just out of my reach but there nonetheless.
I won’t lose this. The 4 of us together in communal contentment and mature intimacy. Watching each other, supporting each other, surviving adulthood and the ever enigmatic life that comes along with… not being “normal”. Together. )
“What’d I do without you huh?” I say, allowing myself to be dragged off the couch. It feels like the thoughts drag along behind me, fastened to some invisible rope around my neck.
“Oh, don’t give me too much credit,” Wally says as he speeds around for the takeaway pizza place’s menu. “Arty says she’ll be back soon instead of staying with my future mother-in-law for dinner—so this will satisfy my dinner rota obligations for tonight.”
“And I thought you were trying to do something nice for me?” I tease as I pick up my phone from the counter. “Maybe I need to check my ego?”
“That’s always a good idea with you bud,” Wally chuckles with a shrug as he stops next to me with the menu. I start to dial the number from the menu and he leans over me playfully. “But, to put a smile on your darling face, you can pick the desert.”
“Won’t your girlfriend miss that honour?” The beeping on my phone as I dial blares like warning alarms but Wally’s gaze stays on me and mine on him.
“We have an understanding,” his voice holds the usual humorous tone however something in his eyes—his eyes which I can’t look away from—is different.
A forgein silence settles between us as my phone rings. It’s only when I hear voice over the phone that I snap out of my trance and start on our usual order. Wally takes a couple steps—not nesscaily away from me but more like around me.
As I finish the regular order, a small knot forms on my tongue hesitantly.
“What, sir?” The person on the other end of the phone asks. I clear my front, shaking off my odd hesitancy.
“Those cookie dishes please,” I state and a small smile creeps across Wally’s lips—his beautiful lips.
“5” he mouths, “2 for me,”
“5 please,” I clarify and then bring out my card to pay.