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Dick slips back into bed with Wally, and he can’t help but pause for a moment, hand by Wally’s head, propping him up as he looks down. He can barely see him in the dark. Pale eyes, the suggestion of a mouth, vague smudges for eyebrows. His throat works as he swallows. He lets Dick ghost the back of his other hand along his jaw, the stubble scratching at his knuckles. His hand pauses on Wally’s cheek and chin, near to the corner of his lips.
Sometimes he feels things he can’t bear to think. Can’t say. Can’t put a name to. Can’t want. His heart hits hard against his ribs. He can feel it all the way in his fingertips, rumbling loud in his ears. Wally’s still looking up at him. Dick can’t make out his expression in the gloom. Something is blooming in his stomach. It could be easy. He wants it.
He leans down and kisses Wally, chaste, not even half on the mouth. Doesn’t think about it. Wally sucks in a sharp breath, grabs his wet hair with both hands, fingertips sliding along his scalp, pulling him back in.
This time it lands properly. Kisses him again, again. Throws his weight on top of Wally, who takes him with a grunt but doesn’t let up. Grazes his teeth along Dick’s lower lip. Dick puts both elbows on either side of his head, their noses press together, breathing out of sync. Wally makes a little gutpunch of a noise low in his throat, one hand running firmly down his ribs, to his hip, possessive pressure that makes Dick push against him, sigh into the presses of their lips. Wally’s knee comes up between his legs, Dick reflexively grinds down on his thigh, grabs a hold of Wally’s hair, tight, both of them gasping into each other’s mouths. Heat lances up Dick’s spine, pools low in his stomach.
Distantly, he notes, he’s shaking. His breath rattles in his throat, a tremble coming from his core and working outwards. He ignores it, wishes he wasn’t on top so he could feel up Wally properly, wants to put his hands under his shirt, wants to hook his legs around his waist, lock him in close, take everything he can get. Wally pulls his face away and Dick can’t help his little whine, bereft, but then Wally starts to kiss at his jaw, at his neck, hesitant at first, like he’s waiting for Dick to tell him no. It’s good, it’s how he likes it, a scrape of teeth, scratch of stubble along his jugular, making him shiver and arch into it. Wally’s hand shifts from his waist to his ass, grabbing and kneading, nails digging into his boxers. Their hips rock against each other in a slow, dragging pace. Something doesn’t quite feel right, the sensation dulled. Dick swears, fumbles a hand into his underwear to pull out the foam packer he’d forgotten about, chucks it off the bed, nearly falling on Wally’s face as he does so. Wally laughs at him, soft and amused and happy, which turns into a hiss as Dick rubs on him again with nothing in the way, a hard line filling out against the crease of Dick’s thigh. Wally slots their mouths back together as Dick sucks a breath in through his teeth, gets a grip like a croc bite on his hair near the nape of his neck, as close to the scalp as possible, just how he taught Wally he likes it, remembered years later.
He remembers, in a flash of technicolor imagery, his too-red lips in Wally’s old bathroom mirror. Crying silently on the toilet, both hands pressed over his mouth. Willing himself to become a black hole of sound, for nothing to escape him. Trying to breathe slow through his nose. His mind skips further back, past the golden hot rush of feeling good , of liking it, straight to the feeling of something that had surged up in him like a king tide the second Wally’d taken his shirt off. Made him grab too hard to be casual. Made him too needy for what should be a hookup. Made him just a little too desperate. He’d made a promise to himself. Not to ruin everything good in his life. And Damian’s right outside.
“I- no,” he says suddenly, half into Wally’s mouth, and everything freezes immediately. Wally’s hands fly out of his hair and off of his ass, drops his knee, pushes his head back into the pillow to create a distance that Dick feels as much as any overdue slap, a relief and a hurt all at once.
“Okay,” Wally says, sounding breathless, eyebrows tilted up in big-eyed worry. He clears his throat. Dick wants to take it back, a swoop like a starling in his stomach- I changed my mind, we’re good, please kiss me again. He wants him, so badly he almost wants to cry from it. “Okay. Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Dick says, which isn’t the truth but isn’t a lie. “I just- we can’t. We can’t. I’m sorry.” He pushes himself up and off of Wally, ends up sitting cross-legged next to him as he sits up and turns on his lamp. Dick shuts his eyes against the sudden light.
“Hey,” Wally is saying, scared-animal soft, taking Dick’s hands in his. “It’s okay, we don’t have to do anything, don’t apologize. Can we talk about it?”
Dick pulls his hands away. “We-,” he starts, and then a laugh begins to bubble out of Dick, his voice cheery and sparkling-bright, even while whispering. “No, no. We can just… not. Let’s just go to bed, I’m sorry, I- hah- I’m just a little tired, I made a mistake! I made a mistake. Let’s pretend this never happened. I was just- I’m tired, and we should forget about it.”
The silence curdles. Dick opens his eyes.
Wally’s got an odd sort of expression, takes Dick a second to place it as wounded, not the usual hurt-pride kind either, something deeper, crushing. It warps and shifts as he watches, a confused forehead wrinkle, an insulted nostril flare, a pained lip twitch, before snapping to anger.
“No,” Wally says, sharp. “No, I’m not doing that.”
“I-,”
“No,” Wally says, a little louder, just barely above a whisper, cutting him off. Dick’s mouth goes dry, what little residual heat there was between his legs dying away. “I’m not going to fucking forget- I-,” he stops, stares hard at the door. “I’m going to yell at you, Grayson,” he says, words overly precise, enunciated with a careful bite. “Can I take you up to the roof for it? I don’t want to wake up your kid.”
Dick barely manages to nod before Wally hooks an arm like an iron bar around his waist and hauls him off the bed in a blur of motion too fast to even begin to track, leaves him staggering for footing on hard flat concrete, outside, both of them in their socks. An access door bangs shut somewhere behind them. Wally’s standing too far away for comfortable conversation, hunched slightly, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes, his mouth an unhappy twist. Everything is yellow-grey in the light polluted moon of the city.
“Wally, I-,”
“No!” Wally snaps, dragging his hands down his face. “Jesus Christ, I-I don’t want to hear it right now! Don’t try to speak! I’m not going to pretend this never fucking happened, again! Who the fuck do you think I am to you?”
“You’re my best fucking friend, jackass,” Dick snaps back, throwing his hands in the air, because that’s his universal constant, like breathing air, like rain in Gotham, and he can’t let someone doubt it. “Like you’ve always been, Wally!”
“You’re not fucking acting like it!” Wally shouts, jabbing a finger at him, and anger and fear flare up like twin fireworks in Dick’s stomach. “Who am I that you can just act like everything’s fine, that you can just forget about everything that’s happened over and over again!” He hasn’t come closer- it’s a testament to the power of aging that neither of them have gotten in each other’s faces, lashed out. “I can’t stand how you fucking act like nothing has ever gone on, it makes me feel like I’m insane-,”
“I’m sorry I’m not perfect,” Dick tries to spit, it comes out all desperate, like he can’t catch his breath, a crack in the last word. He swallows hard. “No, look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to- I can be better, I will be better-,”
“I’m not asking you to be!” Wally yells, physically turning around like he can’t stand the sight of Dick anymore, putting his hands on the top of his head and staring up at the sky. Dick wants to throw something at him, make Wally look at him, or maybe he just wants to throw up. “Don’t twist my words, I know you’re a cunt, Dick! I know you better than anyone! I’ve always known you! I don’t need you to stop being one, I like you how you are, I just want clarity, man! You’re not nearly as upfront as you’d like people to think you are, and I-,” Wally cuts himself off, big inhale, a pause, an exhale like a smoker, low and slow. “I’m just fucking angry at you,” he says, too quiet when he’s facing away from Dick like this. “I’m not going to drop you, Jesus.” He scrubs his face with his hands. “I’m allowed to be angry without it being the end of the world.”
“I know,” Dick says, also quiet, feeling wrongfooted, scared, angry, sick. This fight isn’t going the right way- he’s supposed to be saying different things, reacting in another way. He’s known he’s changed, objectively, for a long while, lost pieces of himself and scarred over things that he never imagined would disfigure him so completely. It’s quite another to confront it in the here and now, to realize that he doesn’t know how to fight with Wally anymore. To realize something has carved out what he thought was a key piece of him. He used to know how to hit, how to take one in turn. How to wake up the next day like nothing had happened.
They stand silently for a minute, Dick breathing rabbit fast. He counts back from twenty in German and French, then Mandarin, when neither of the other two calm him down any. Goes over the apology checklist he runs through with Damian with stunning regularity- acknowledge the other person’s feelings. State where you went wrong. Apologize, without a ‘but’. Make amends.
“You’re upset,” Dick says, knowing already that this is going to be the world’s shittiest I’m sorry with only two words out of his mouth. “I am not… the best at communicating, and I’m sorry. I will try to be better.”
“Yeah, you will,” Wally says, flat. “Starting right now. What the hell was that, Dick?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Dick says, which isn’t his biggest flaw as a human being but is definitely up there. That hit of fear hasn’t gone away, still buzzing in his fingertips and chest. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s not an answer,” Wally says, still flat.
“It was a mistake,” Dick says again, a bit uselessly. Wally puts his hands over his face again, still turned away from him. “I don’t… I don’t know what you want from me, Wally. I don’t understand. I’m sorry.”
“Last time,” Wally asks after a minute. “That a mistake too?”
“Yes,” Dick says. They’ve never said the words out loud before, never acknowledged that it happened. It’s dizzying to hear it come out of Wally’s mouth. “I should never have…” Wally’s shoulders are slumping further as he talks. Everything he says seems to be making it worse. One of his best fucking skills. “I’m sorry. It’s my mistake, it’s not- its not you-,”
“It wasn’t a mistake to me,” Wally says.
“It-,” Dick starts. Stops, for far too long, feeling roughly the same as he’s felt all the times Harley’s hit him in the head with a hammer, staring dumbstruck at Wally’s back. Says, “It wasn’t supposed to be important to you.”
Wally spins to stare at him, a near mortally offended look on his face. “It was,” he snaps. “How could it not be?” Dick puts the back of his hand over his mouth, tries to remember how to breathe. “I mean- fuck, man!” Wally continues when he doesn’t say anything. “All these years I- I’ve never understood what was different- how I was supposed to interpret-,” he cuts himself off with a frustrated noise, slaps his palms against his thighs. “You’ve dated or hit on half the people we know, but you’re always- you’re so careful, with me, and I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it because then you go and you-you kiss me, you ask to have sex, and it’s everything I ever wanted, and then we pretend it never happened. And some of that’s my fault but some of it is definitely you, I know I didn’t reach out or talk to you after but I wasn’t the one who wasn’t there in the morning. But I know you’re not fucking- trying to jerk me around.” His voice cracks. “I know you. You’re not cruel.”
“You like me,” Dick says, meaning for it to be a question. He feels like a rock dropped off a cliff, the sensation of falling filling his stomach.
“Did you not want it?” Wally demands, harsh. “Did you think I wasn’t serious about you? Or did you just think I couldn’t handle it?”
“I can’t answer that,” Dick replies, a ringing noise starting up in his ears.
“Too bad!” Wally says. “We’re communicating like fucking adults, Dick! You’re gonna have to figure one out, because I’m not talking to myself here, and we’re not leaving until I understand what the hell is going on with you! I know what I want and it’s not the end of the fucking world if you don’t want it too, but I’m not going back to pretendi-,”
“You’re not supposed to want me!” Dick shouts. “You’re fucking better than that, Wally! It doesn’t matter how I damn well feel, you are a better person than I am. I can’t answer you! There’s nothing to understand, and I’m sorry! It doesn’t matter what I want, because you are not supposed to want me!” Wally’s arms are folded over his chest, holding eye contact, his expression finally gone quiet.
“You didn’t know,” he concludes.
“How would I have known?” Dick snaps, throwing his hands in the air.
Wally laughs, not quite amused. “Dick, everybody w-,”
“They don’t know me!” Dick interrupts. “You know me, Wally, as you keep fucking reminding me! I can’t goddamn let myself want anything to do with you, because you know me and I know you! Because I’ve fucked it up with Babs and Kori and everyone else and I couldn’t fuck it up with you too! I- I can’t believe we’re even talking about this!” He sounds venomous and incredulous, bitterness creeping in like an alcohol aftertaste. “I fucked up, Wally, I’m sorry. I never should have- touched you. It was a lapse in judgement and self-restraint and I hurt you and I’m sorry.”
A long silence. Wally hasn’t dropped his gaze, but the set of his shoulders has softened, his mouth open ever so slightly. “I would never have- I wouldn’t.” Dick says finally. “I wouldn’t have done that to you. If I had known. Because I- you’re important to me.”
“I know,” Wally says, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
“I’m scared,” Dick says, talking fast, wanting to just get the words out so they can be moved on from, maybe, maybe. “I don’t… I don’t know what to do. With this. I never thought you would…” he trails off. Silence, for too long, neither of them quite looking at each other, heads ducked. “Can we not- be standing so fucking far away from each other?” Dick bursts out. “Please.”
“Yeah,” Wally says, a bit wetly. “Yeah we- we can.”
They both take a few steps towards each other, stopping close but not centered, not quite touching for a few seconds before Wally puts his forehead down on Dick’s shoulder. Dick tips his head over slightly, his ear just barely brushing the shaved-close hair on the back of Wally’s head, their hands hanging loose at their sides. Too much and not enough at the same time. Paradoxically wants to jump backwards and throw himself into Wally’s chest at the same time, his brain skipping like a bad CD from sensation to sensation. The shoulder of Dick’s shirt is damp. The back of Wally’s knuckles brush his. A car drives by, bass thudding even four storeys up.
“I can’t do a- a situationship,” Dick says, squeezing his eyes shut. “Or friends with benefits or- or whatever. This is for keeps. Or not at all.”
Wally links their pinky fingers together. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” he says, quiet. “You’re stuck with me, Rob.”
“I don’t know how I managed that,” Dick tells him, sounding stuffy even to his own ears, looking out across the roof. Someone’s got a rooftop garden going, tomato plants and trellised peas swaying gently in the whisper of a breeze.
“You’re you,” Wally says, like it’s an answer. Like he means it.
Dick doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but eventually Wally pulls his head away, leans back far enough to touch the pads of his fingertips to Dick’s cheek, exploratory. Dick sighs shakily as he glides his fingerprints over the wet, soft skin under his half-shut eyes, a prickling feeling left in their wake, Wally traces a gentle line over his lower lip with one finger, presses gently on his chin, his temples, tilts his face slightly as if to see it better in the dim lighting. Touching just to feel. Looking just to see.
Dick slips back into his body slowly, like stretching an old leather glove back out, though he can’t quite remember leaving it. Wally’s eyelashes are clumped together, damp, his nose and cheeks red and blotchy.
“I want you all the time,” Dick admits, too earnest again, too needy, too desperate, a little coil of shame still turning under his ribs. Wally’s fingers stop just below his cheekbone. “It’s kind of frightening.”
Wally’s nose bumps his cheek, fingers creeping under his chin to tip his face up towards his own. “Gonna run from a challenge?” he breathes. They’re too close for eye contact.
“No,” Dick says. “Never.” Then: “Are you?”
“No,” Wally replies. “I- I’ve left a lot of things, Dick. Never managed to leave you. Never really wanted to.”
They don’t quite kiss. Dick doesn’t particularly want to, doesn’t think Wally does either. They breathe the same air for a minute, nothing more.
“I want you too,” Wally says. When he talks, their lower lips catch on each other’s for the barest fraction of a second, both of them separated by a hair's breadth. “In every way you’ll have me.” Dick makes a small noise in his throat, involuntary, and Wally’s other hand grabs his own.
“Take me to bed,” Dick tells him, because he can’t think of anything else to say.
The walk back down is a good reset. Washes his face again in the bathroom to get all the salt off with Wally sitting on the toilet lid blowing his nose, pretending not to watch each other. Dick never seems to realize how loud it feels in his brain until it goes quiet like this. He turns the tap cold enough to make his ears ring, puts his whole head under it, stays there until he starts to feel like he’s waterboarding himself. Wally hands him a towel when he comes up. They both look even more exhausted in this lighting, slumped shoulders and heavy eyelids, Wally’s face a little grey-looking, hollowed out. Dick feels much the same way. Like a scraped and gutted carcass. It doesn’t feel good, but it does feel clean. Wally tips his head forward to rest on Dick’s hip as he towels off his hair, and doesn’t protest when Dick pulls him up and half carries him to the bedroom, too tired to make it a full ride.
“How long?” he has to ask, even though the comforter has long since settled over them, laying together in the dark, elbows touching. He keeps his voice barely above a breath, hoping Wally’s already asleep.
Wally shifts, looking over at him. Dick keeps his eyes on the ceiling.
“Long time,” Wally breathes back. “Early Titans I knew I liked you. You were so…” He sighs, rolls onto his side. “Funny. Smart. Interesting. Lots of words, mostly complimentary, although I did want to kill you with stunning regularity.” Dick huffs, amused. “Felt like living with a summer thunderstorm, in a good way. You were so vibrant,” Wally continues, and Dick can hear him smiling. “And then you… You told me your name. And it felt like getting shocked all over again.”
Wally puts a hand on his forearm. Dick covers it with his own.
“When did you?” Wally asks, kneading at the muscles just below his elbow.
“I knew… When I was nineteen I knew there was something,” Dick says. Had felt it nagging at him just a few months before they’d hooked up. Had thought it had been purely hormones- his dose had recently been upped- simple, mindless attraction to someone kind and pretty. Wanted to burn it out of his system, go back to their friendship as it was, and he was sure he and Wally were solid enough to blast past either a rejection or a hookup. Thought that if he got turned down or had his shit rocked it’d be like rebooting a computer. Had severely miscalculated. Looking back it echoes nearly to the day they met, like ripples on a lake, though the moment of impact for him was less tossed pebble and more meteor strike. “But I haven’t ever said it until tonight. Not even to myself.”
“We’re kind of stupid,” Wally says.
“It’s been said a time or twenty,” Dick sighs.
“I can’t believe you didn’t know,” Wally says. “I wasn’t good at hiding it. I used to- hah! I used to walk around for days after parties wanting to throttle Roy because you both kept publicly making out with each other when you were tipsy.” Dick croaks out a laugh. “I’m serious, I was having visions. I couldn’t even look at him sometimes. It wasn’t pretty,” Wally tells him. “Did you two ever end up hooking up?”
Dick makes another rusty-hinge noise. “No, no,” he says. “Roy and I- no. We’re too similar. We would have left psychological craters you could see from Mars. I do actually know what’s good for me, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.”
“I see,” Wally says. “Makes sense. I did.”
Dick sits up sharply to look down at him. “You what? Really?”
“Lay down,” Wally complains.
“I want details!” Dick tells him, though he does settle, moving closer to wrap an arm around him.
Wally’s huff sounds embarrassed. “It wasn’t anything exciting,” he murmurs. “We were eighteen, I think? Were hanging out, had like… two shitty beers each. We may have talked some shit about you,” he admits with a sheepish little wiggle. “A lot, actually. And then we had sex on his couch.” His cheek feels warm against Dick’s bicep, like he’s blushing. “The end. It was a long time ago. We should go to sleep.”
Dick laughs creakily, squeezes Wally’s shoulders. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Was he good?”
“Oh my god go to bed,” Wally hisses. Dick tucks his face into Wally’s hair, chuckling.
“I just want to know if I should be worried about Roy or not,” he says. “I mean, was he better than me?” Wally makes a strangled noise and starts trying to suffocate Dick with a pillow, which devolves into a wrestling match that continues until Dick hisses “Shit- Damian, shh!” and they quiet back down, smothering giggles, Wally’s face and ear still blisteringly hot through the thin cotton of Dick’s borrowed shirt when he presses a cheek to his chest.
“Sorry I took over your life today with no warning,” Dick says in an undertone after a while, as they’re disentangling to actually go to sleep. “Thank you. For everything.”
Wally, settling back onto his stomach, sighs. “I always want you here,” he replies, just as quiet. “Come when you want. Stay as long as you need.” He reaches out and runs his fingers through Dick’s hair. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” Dick says, pressing his face into the pillow as something catches under his ribs. It smells like Wally. Falls asleep like that, something bright oscillating behind his sternum.
-
Wally wakes up to something on his bed shifting, disoriented. He throws a hand out, catches someone by a wrist- remembers Dick, looks up.
There’s a sliver of dawn light coming through the crack in his blackout curtains, and it’s caught Dick across the chest. He smiles down at Wally, his hair is sticking up in a million directions and his face is swollen, like it always is the morning after he cries. It makes Wally wince a bit- seems deeply annoying to have to deal with.
“Go back to sleep,” Dick says, a little barb of morning rasp in his voice, though he seems significantly more awake than Wally feels. “‘S early yet. I’ll make us breakfast.”
“Good luck,” Wally tells him, “Was s’pposed to go shoppin’ yesterday. Situation’s a lil’ dire.”
“We can fix that today,” Dick says. “Damian thinks grocery stores are fascinating, he loves them. You’ll get to hear his rant on ‘American excesses’ and watch people try to figure out if he’s mine and if what they’re recognizing me from is Sixteen and Pregnant. It’s a riot.”
Wally snorts. “Lookin’ forward to it,” he says, and Dick leans back down to kiss him, gentle, all the raw desperation from last night gone. Wally squeezes at his shoulders, scrubs his face against Dick’s neck until he squeaks, both of them warm and morning-soft, kisses him again, and Dick smiles into his mouth before pushing him against the mattress with a hand on his chest.
“Good morning,” Wally says. Dick’s nose wrinkles with his grin.
“Sure is,” he replies. “Excellent, even.” There’s a thump outside the door, from around the couch area. “Speak of the devil,” Dick says fondly. He slides out of bed, huffs when Wally yawns so hard his jaw cracks.
“Go back to sleep,” Dick tells him, one hand on the doorknob, the other one up under his shirt to scratch at his stomach. “I’ll get you when the food is ready.”
Wally sinks back down into his sheets, rolling over to Dick’s side of the bed where it smells like him. “Feed me, housewife,” he says, dropping his voice low in a cartoonish parody of a man. Dick honks with laughter, louder than Wally thinks he means to, and scoops a balled up sock off the floor to bean Wally on the back of the head with it. The door clicks shut, and Damian says something low on the other side, Dick responding cheerily. Wally smiles to himself, eyes drifting back shut. Excellent morning, indeed.