Chapter Text
Dick Grayson learned early how to live in motion.
From trapezes to tightropes, from Gotham’s shadows to Blüdhaven’s rooftops, movement had always been his language. Stillness was foreign. Dangerous, even. Stillness meant thinking too much.
Which was why he hated how easily Wally West made him stop.
The first time it happened, Dick didn’t notice right away.
They were mid-mission—standard Young Justice cleanup. A tech smuggling ring, a half-dozen metas who thought Central City was an easy mark, and a mess of collateral damage waiting to happen. Dick—Nightwing, currently—was coordinating from the ground while Wally streaked through the streets in red lightning arcs, disarming, evacuating, joking the entire time.
“Hey, Nightwing,” Wally crackled over comms, breathless but cheerful. “You owe me lunch after this. I saved a school bus and didn’t make a single pun.”
“That’s not something to brag about,” Dick replied automatically, vaulting over a broken lamppost. “Focus.”
“Ouch. Cold.”
Dick smiled despite himself.
Then it happened—one small, insignificant moment. Dick landed on a rooftop, scanning for hostiles, and Wally skidded to a stop beside him, momentum bleeding off in a rush of displaced air.
For half a second, the world felt… quieter.
Not literally—sirens still wailed below, comms still buzzed—but Dick’s attention narrowed, sharpened. Wally stood close, closer than necessary, mask slightly askew, chest rising and falling fast. There was heat there, kinetic energy radiating off him, like standing too close to an exposed wire.
Dick didn’t move.
Wally noticed. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Dick said, too quickly. “Just thinking.”
Wally tilted his head, studying him in that way he had—like he saw too much and didn’t even realize it. Then he grinned and zipped away again, leaving ozone and red light behind.
The mission ended ten minutes later.
The feeling didn’t.
They didn’t talk about it afterward. They never did.
That was the thing about Dick and Wally—years of history layered with unspoken rules. Best friends. Teammates. Family-adjacent. They had survived sidekickhood, Titans drama, near-deaths, actual deaths, rebirths, reboots of their lives that should have broken them.
They didn’t complicate what worked.
So Dick told himself the stillness was just exhaustion. Or nostalgia. Or the strange aftershocks of adrenaline.
Anything but what it actually was.
Blüdhaven wasn’t Central City.
It didn’t glow. It didn’t hum with hope and neon optimism. It crouched instead—dark, heavy, always on the verge of swallowing itself whole. Dick loved it anyway, in the way you loved a place you fought every day just to keep breathing.
Wally, predictably, loved it less.
“I don’t get it,” Wally said, jogging backward along the rooftop edge while Dick walked forward. “Your city looks like it actively hates happiness.”
“Rude,” Dick replied. “It’s brooding. There’s a difference.”
“Sure. Gotham Lite.”
Dick shot him a look. “You’re welcome to leave.”
Wally stopped dead. “Wow. Harsh.”
He didn’t leave, though. He never did.
They patrolled together that night, an unplanned overlap that somehow kept happening more often lately. Wally claimed it was coincidence. Dick knew better than to press.
They moved well together—always had. Dick’s precision paired with Wally’s speed, strategy balancing impulse. Wally took risks Dick couldn’t afford to; Dick caught the details Wally blew past.
At one point, Wally reappeared at Dick’s side with a soft thump, hands on hips.
“You’re tense,” he said.
“You say that every time.”
“And I’m always right.”
Dick exhaled, rolling his shoulders. “It’s been a long week.”
“Then take a break.”
Dick laughed. “From crime?”
“From pretending you’re fine,” Wally said lightly, but his eyes were sharp.
Dick didn’t answer.
Wally watched him for a moment, then nudged his arm with a knuckle. “C’mon. Five minutes. Rooftop chili dog run. My treat.”
“You hate Blüdhaven food.”
“I hate Blüdhaven vibes,” Wally corrected. “Food’s decent.”
Dick hesitated—then nodded. “Five minutes.”
Wally’s grin was instant and blinding. “Knew it.”
He vanished, and Dick followed at a human pace, leaping afterimages of red light.
They sat on the edge of a warehouse roof, legs dangling, city stretching endlessly below. Wally passed him a chili dog wrapped in foil, careful not to touch his fingers—too careful, Dick noticed.
“So,” Wally said, staring out at the skyline. “You ever think about slowing down?”
Dick snorted. “You’re asking me that?”
“Hey, I slow down,” Wally protested. “Sometimes. For important stuff.”
“Like food.”
“Like people.”
Dick glanced at him.
Wally didn’t look back.
The silence that followed was heavier than before, charged with something Dick didn’t want to name. He focused on the chili dog, the taste grounding him.
“I don’t know how to stop,” Dick admitted finally. “If I slow down, everything catches up.”
Wally hummed softly. “Yeah. I know that feeling.”
That surprised him.
Wally West didn’t slow down. He burned through life at impossible speeds, grief and joy blurring together until only motion remained. Dick had always assumed Wally was immune to the weight of it all.
Apparently not.
“You don’t have to stop,” Wally said. “Just… let someone match your pace.”
Dick’s chest tightened.
He laughed it off, because that’s what he did. “Good luck with that.”
Wally smiled—but it was smaller now, more uncertain. “Yeah. Guess so.”
Later, lying awake in his apartment, Dick replayed the night in fragments.
Wally’s voice. The way he’d hovered just close enough to matter. The heat, the stillness, the almosts.
He told himself it was nothing.
But the city outside his window kept moving—and for the first time, Dick wondered what it would feel like to let himself be caught.