Archive of Our Own

It feels like another fever dream sometimes.

A much more intimate one, perhaps one he’d even call self-indulgent, but the fact of the matter is that none of it feels real.

Dick keeps stealing surreptitious glances at his teammates more often than he wants to admit, but he has to make sure that Artemis isn’t suddenly wearing green again and that M’gann’s hair is still cropped short, because if he’s wrong, if this is all just another figment of his imagination, he doesn’t know if he’d be able to come back from it this time.

But the Wally he sees isn’t fifteen or even twenty; he’s twenty-two, taller and bulkier and so fast that it takes Dick’s breath away. He’d loved Wally the way he was. His subconscious wouldn’t imagine him any different than he had been before, and it’s that certainty that calms his rapid heartbeat whenever he starts to doubt.

It’s already more than Dick has ever let himself wish for when he’d felt weak with loneliness and grief. Dick almost feels greedy, wanting more of Wally when he just got him back. Wally though, Wally is—he acts like he’s—

Dick won’t let himself finish the thought, too used to squashing it down whenever it’d tried to rear its naive head in the past.

——

It starts the first night. When Wally sees right through Dick’s nonchalant, “I’ll see you later?” and pulls him in close, hands wide and warm against Dick’s back.

Wally had kept one hand on him all night; a palm spread over Dick’s knee during the rest of family dinner that Bruce had inexplicably let Wally stay for, an arm around the back of Dick’s chair, a bracing press against the small of Dick’s lower back as they’d left the dining room. Dick had done the same, holding too tight onto Wally’s arm, but unable to shake the fear that he’d be gone again the moment that Dick let go.

“Sleepover?” Wally says into Dick’s hair, and Dick goes slack in relief at not having to let him out of his sight just yet.

It’s only when they’re tucked into Dick’s bed in Bludhaven, Wally in a borrowed set of clothes, ankles tangled together as Dick listens to Wally’s heartbeat that he thinks to ask, “What about Artemis?”

Wally tilts Dick’s chin up, green eyes searching, and says, “She can wait.”

He thinks that he should protest more, insist that he’s okay, because no matter how he looks at it, Dick isn’t the one that’s supposed to be tangled up in Wally’s arms.

Instead, he rests his head back on Wally’s chest and tries to breathe past the knot in his throat.

He feels small here, which is ridiculous, especially next to Wally, who he hasn’t been smaller than since his growth spurt at sixteen, but Wally feels different. Dick has never held a Wally with such broad shoulders and corded muscle and it makes him feel bigger than he is.

Or maybe it’s just that he’s here at all.

——

Dick wakes up to Wally’s heartbeat in his ear and Wally’s hands wide and heavy over his side and back. It quells the inevitable spike of panic that everything was a dream before it even starts.

He’s tempted to pretend to be asleep for a while longer, listen to Wally’s sleep soft sounds and feel his stomach rise with each breath. But, he realizes in the next moment that Wally’s already awake, running a calloused palm across Dick’s back, fingers spread wide like he needs to touch as much skin as possible.

It makes Dick shiver, but only because he lets it. He doesn’t want to be Nightwing here. Wally’s been gone for too long for Dick to want to hide anything from him anymore. Even if they haven’t done this before; even if every caress and whispered word is something that Wally shared with someone else before, Dick has been feeling so empty for so long that he doesn’t want to keep holding himself back from this.

“Dick?” Wally whispers into the hair at his temple. His other arm comes up to wrap around Dick’s waist, and Dick can’t help but notice how big Wally feels as they curl further into each other.

Wally’s forehead presses warm against his own, breath damp and thick with sleep, but Dick doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about any of it. He—

“Wally.”

He’s kissing him.

Foolishly, stupidly, euphorically.

Wally’s kissing him back just as desperately, like it’s been something that’s been building up for him too, and Dick should be asking about Artemis—should have pushed more about it last night even—but it’s not the first time that Dick has done this with someone who may already be in a relationship.

Though, he does hope it’ll be the last.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this,” Wally breathes against his lips. “How long I—every day. I thought about you every day.”

And Dick can’t breathe against the maelstrom of emotions in his chest, so he clings to Wally’s back and says, “Me too. Me too,” and revels in the way that the words make Wally kiss him deep and hard and bruising.

Dick’s been—hell, Dick’s been wanting this since he was thirteen and Wally was just growing into his limbs and now he has him, close and pressing Dick deeper and deeper into the mattress as they grip at each other’s skin.

“What can we do?” Wally asks, pulling away to press kisses down Dick’s neck.

This is already more than Dick ever thought he would get and it’s—it’s better than he thought it would be too, so he says, “Anything,” and means it.

Wally lets out a shaky laugh and says, “You’re gonna kill me all over again, Boy Wonderful.”

It makes him laugh, because Wally can always make him laugh even though it’s objectively way too soon for jokes like that. Dick wants him so much that it feels like a brand on his skin.

He rolls Wally onto his back, holding in a pleased sound at the head-to-toe press of their bodies before he sits up to grind back against Wally’s half-hard cock in his boxers.

“Can we—not like that,” Wally says, and Dick would roll his eyes about masculinity and bring up how Wally petulantly didn’t talk to him for a week after Dick’s growth spurt finally pushed him that extra inch taller, so of course this is a thing, but the look in Wally’s eyes is more amused than embarrassed and Dick doesn’t think that’s it. “Not the first time.”

The words aren’t a promise, but Dick selfishly wants them to be and if Wally wants—well. Dick will do whatever he can so that there will be a next time.

He leans down to press a fierce kiss against Wally’s up-turned lips and rolls them so that Dick’s back is flat against the mattress and he can feel every line of Wally’s body against his. “Okay, like this,” he says, and then he spreads his legs and watches Wally shake.

“Yeah,” Wally says. “I want to see you. Shit, I can’t believe—how do I—”

Dick just wants to be kissing again, so he pulls Wally in and shuts him up as he reaches into his bedside drawer for lube.

Wally’s running his hands up and down Dick’s thighs, opening his mouth up for Dick’s tongue, and Dick could crawl out of his skin for how much he wants this. Wally is so warm, but it’s a different kind of heat, reminiscent of the burn of friction, and he wonders if Wally always felt like this or if it’s a new thing.

He pries one of Wally’s hands off his thighs to hand him the lube. Wally stares at it.

Dick could do this himself. It’d be quicker; it would be the understatement of the year to say that he knows what he’s doing much more than Wally does, but he wants Wally’s hands and so he’s going to get them.

“Just go slow,” he says for Wally’s sake more than his own. Dick doesn’t need it slow and the moment that Wally touches him with slick fingers, he regrets saying it at all because Wally goes slow.

In every single scenario where he’d imagined himself with Wally, none of them were ever slow.

His eyes scan Dick’s face from where he’s propped up on an elbow and it’s almost disconcerting until Dick realizes that Wally’s taking in Dick’s reactions to every subtle shift of Wally’s finger and it’s—

He tries to pull Wally in for another kiss to hide the way his face heats up, but all Wally does is kiss the inside of Dick’s wrist and keep his eyes locked on Dick’s own.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Wally says, and Dick wants to laugh because that’s his line, isn’t it? “I can’t believe you’re mine.”

He says it so wonderingly, so empty of that possessive, macho tone some of Dick’s one night stands had when they tried to say the same thing.

It’s the first time that Dick has ever wanted to say it back.

“I’m yours,” he says, watching the way Wally’s breath hitches. Dick pulls Wally’s hand away while he can, fits his hips up close to Wally’s cock and says, “So take me already.”

Wally presses in slow, still so slow, and kisses any part of Dick’s skin he can reach. Dick’s already been remarkably patient this morning and now he just wants.

Dick rolls his hips in a practiced move and Wally just—Wally falls apart.

He drops his forehead against Dick’s shoulder and finally, finally he’s moving his hips in these deep, rolling thrusts and pressing fingerprints into where he’s gripping Dick’s thighs and he’s saying, “You’re so amazing. You’re perfect. You’re all I’ve ever wanted,” and Dick has to kiss him or else he won’t be able to breathe past his heart in this throat.

The sex is luscious and languid and so unfamiliar that Dick is left burning for what feels like hours, a low ache in his belly that spreads to his limbs. Somehow, Wally has turned this into lazy morning sex without him realizing it, their bodies riding this ebb and flow together as they moan into each other’s mouths.

It’s nothing like what he expected sex with Wally to be like, and he lets himself revel in the feeling of being so…

When they come it’s like letting out an exhale.

Dick has never come like that in his life and all his limbs melt into molasses. Wally must feel the same because he’s slumped over Dick, his heavy weight a comforting blanket as they lie entangled together.

He can feel Wally’s breath against his neck and his heartbeat against his chest and Dick is a completely different person than the one he was yesterday, when he woke up in a world without Wally West in it.

His hands twitch at the thought and Dick has to kiss Wally right now, has to feel his lips against his and his breath on his face and—

They stay in bed all day.

——

Wally leaves later that day, pressing quick kisses to Dick’s mouth in between pulling his suit back on. “I’ll be right back. I just have to let some people know I’m back before they find out through the Bat grapevine.”

“Right, because we’re known for being so talkative,” Dick murmurs, leaning back against the covers to try to coax Wally into another round.

Wally just gives him a pointed look before glancing at Dick’s phone. On cue, it dings with another text message from Barbara and—oh, that’s Tim too.

“That doesn’t mean they’re asking about you.”

Wally grins. “That’s cute, Rob, acting like you really believe that.”

Dick rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Stop calling me Rob. I’m not in middle school anymore. Now get out of here. Run your errands.”

“Sorry, babe,” Wally says, grinning at the blush blooming on Dick’s cheeks. “I like nicknames.” Wally leans in for another kiss, turns it slow and lingering in a millisecond and Dick’s brain is starting to turn to mush again.

Next thing he knows, Wally is gone.

Dick showers. He works out. He calls Bruce just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating everything. He texts Barbara and Tim back.

He’s debating whether or not he should call M’gann, just to have her check if his memories are real or if he’s really losing it this time, when suddenly there’s a warm chest against his back, lips pressing against his nape, and Dick could sob with how relieved he is.

“Miss me?”

Dick’s hands shake as he lays them over Wally’s grip on his waist. He can’t even think of lying. “Yeah.”

Wally pulls him closer, twisting his hands so they’re palm to palm, and Dick is reminded of the time Wally called him during that mission with Haley’s circus almost ten years ago. Right when he needed to hear his best friend’s voice, he was there.

“You have pretty good timing, huh?”

“That’s what my Aunt Iris said,” Wally says, tone low and fond, even though his words are light. “Scared her so bad that she dropped the turkey. I mean, I caught it before she even really noticed, but Uncle Barry ratted me out.”

“He didn’t even give you a full day back before he snitched on you?”

“I know! Sounds like everyone was way nicer when they thought I was dead. Not fair.” The way he so casually mentions it, like it’s nothing. Just a blip in the story of his life when it should’ve been the ending point. It’s–

“What did Artemis say?” The words are out before Dick really even thinks of them, spawned by the way Wally talks about the people he loves, and if he’s really being honest, the dark jealous part of himself that he hasn’t had to acknowledge in years.

Wally hands squeeze tight and he turns Dick around before Dick’s mind can start running in circles over what that could possibly mean.

“Don’t worry about it,” Wally says, coming in close for a kiss that Dick still can’t believe he can get. And maybe it’s wrong to not press for more or even talk to Artemis himself, but…

Dick lets himself be pulled under and doesn’t worry about the details.

——

Dick manages a whole week losing himself in Wally and forgetting about all of his other obligations before Zatanna quite literally blows the hinges off his door.

“I hadn’t heard from you in a week,” she says twenty minutes after bombing his apartment, flagging down a waiter with an elegant wave.

The café that she’d dragged him to is shockingly loud compared to the relative privacy of his apartment in Bludhaven, even with only ten tables occupied. Dick feels like he has to learn how to be a real person again after spending more time than he can ever remember in bed.

“And you still kidnapped me when you found out why because...?”

“Oh, please,” she huffs, taking a sip of her coffee before the waiter can put it down. The waiter stares at her in blatant admiration, eyes drifting to her low-cut top, and nearly faints when she shoos him away. “You’ll live without getting railed by Wally West for five minutes. Call me greedy, but I need some best friend time too.” She makes a face. “Platonic best friend time. Gossip version only.”

Dick grins. “What? You want details? How many are we talking?”

Zatanna raises her eyebrows. “How many are you willing to give me? Artemis was always so stingy with the details.”

Dick feels his smile falter, just briefly, but Zatanna notices before he can fix it.

“I only really knew where to find you because Artemis had already called me,” she says, and the stare she fixes him with isn’t judging, but it’s not exactly soft either.

The sound of ceramic cups clinking is loud in his ears and Zatanna’s stare is heavy on his face. He hasn’t felt this kind of naked vulnerability in a very, very long time. He wishes he were home. With Wally.

“She said that he told her that he loves you,” Zatanna says, and Dick has to set his cup down or he’ll drop it. “It was the first thing out of his mouth too. No, ‘hey, Artemis, you look great. By the way, not dead.’ Kind of a shit move, but she has a boyfriend now so I guess it could have been worse. And I am a sucker for romance.”

Dick feels the smile spread across his face as warmth tingles down his fingertips. “First thing, huh?”

“Really?” Zatanna asks, amused. “That’s all you heard?” A smile pulls at her mouth and Dick knows that she’s happy for him, really happy, free of any judgment. “You always did want to be the center of attention.”

“What can I say? I’m good at it.”

He is good at it. It explains why Zatanna grins at him fondly, eyes softening. “You look happy.”

“I am,” he says, smiling into the rim of his mug. He is, and it’s such a thrill, how that’s true now when he can’t remember the last time he’s said that and meant it.

“Alright, back to gossip.” Zatanna says, flipping her hair over her shoulder before she leans back in with a conspiratorial grin. “Tell me everything.”

——

“Hey, babe,” Wally says, pressing a kiss to Dick’s neck as he wraps his arms around him. “How was hanging with Zatanna?”

Dick smiles, covering Wally’s hands on his waist with his own. He loves you. He still feels warm with the knowledge, the security that he never really considered having for himself.

He’s never been this lucky in his life. And until he hears the words from Wally himself, he’s not sure if he really can believe that he is.

“Nothing really to report.”

——

To avoid another Zatanna situation, they visit the Watchtower the next time they’re able to keep their hands off of each other.

Bart cries for twenty minutes when he first sees Wally. Loudly.

“Aw, come on, don’t cry. I’ll see you at Uncle Barry’s this Friday,” Wally says, shooting Dick a fondly exasperated look as Bart sobs into his jacket.

“I’m j-just so h-happy,” Bart gets out through his tears.

Dick understands. No one had felt more responsible for Wally’s death than Bart had and his grieving process had been spent in therapy with Black Canary more often than not. The relief he’s feeling has to be monumental.

“Come on,” Jaime finally says, taking pity on Wally and gently pulling Bart far enough away that Wally can detach himself from Bart’s clinging limbs. Bart decides to cry into Jaime’s shoulder instead which Jaime allows with no apparent protest. Jaime holds out a fist for Wally to bump his knuckles against. “Good to have you back, hermano.”

Wally grins. “Good to be back.”

——

Wally and Artemis don’t really hang out.

Dick can’t describe it as anything other than indescribably weird.

They’re the same in all the ways that count; they bicker on missions and Wally cracks jokes that Artemis rolls her eyes at, but the distance between them is so pronounced only because it’s been over half a decade since they’ve treated each other like friends instead of…something more.

Wally looks surprised when Dick mentions it and then shrugs. “For me, that’s how we’ve been for the last two years. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her as anything other than a friend.”

It has to hurt though, Dick thinks, having someone’s last words to you be I love you and then have their first words back be I love someone else.

He’d feel guilty about it if he wasn’t deep in the trenches of the honeymoon phase.

Being wanted by Wally is intoxicating.

He’s not shy about showing affection, something that used to twist Dick’s stomach into knots whenever he was around Artemis and Wally too long. Now that he’s on the receiving end of it, the touches, sappy looks, and the excessive pet names make his grin silly.

And the sex.

God, the sex.

“Oh my god, I get it. Wally West is a sexual savant and you’d put that dick on a pedestal if you could,” Jason mocks. “Now will you shut the fuck up about it?”

Dick gapes. “I wasn’t even saying anything!”

Jason scoffs from under his mask. He leans back against the wall of the rooftop stairwell they’ve camped out on and crosses his arms. “That reaction tells me that I was right.”

Dick hasn’t seen Jason in a few weeks, not since Wally came back, and it’s the first time that Jason has searched him out instead of the other way around since… well since Jason came back too. Dick can read the clues here and he’s pretty sure that Jason’s missed him. He’d tease him about it if it wouldn’t make Jason ignore him for the next three months on principle.

“I’m surprised you’re even on patrol. Timmy says that you’re becoming a shut-in.”

Dick winces. Tim doesn’t have a leg to stand on there, perpetually on his computer unless on patrol, which makes it even worse if he’s warning Jason about Dick’s own behavior. “I’ve been going on missions,” Dick says, feeling defensive.

“Yeah?” Jason raises a judgemental eyebrow through the mask. “Any of those missions not include your new boy toy?”

Dick scowls, caught out. “What does it matter?”

Jason pushes himself off of the wall and stretches with strategic lethargy. “Look, take it from a guy who came back from the dead too.” Dick flinches, but Jason barrels on. “The longer you keep him to yourself—away from everyone else—the longer it’ll take for him to process that life moved on without him.”

Then he flips off the roof like a showy asshole and Dick can’t even judge him for it. Dick’s the one who taught him that move.

Dick can’t help but run a hand through his hair agitatedly. He’s not keeping Wally to himself. He’s here isn’t he? Living his life normally, on patrol, while Wally…he doesn’t know.

The thought makes his hands shake as he takes out his phone to text what’re you doing tonight?

Wally responds right away. visiting the fam in central. Be at your place before ur done w patrol

See Jason? He wants to say. Wally is seeing other people than him. There’s no problem here.

——

Sometimes Dick wonders who Wally is really seeing when he looks at him.

“How did you know it was me?” Wally asks.

Dick’s reading through his third case report of the night and Wally has been here for the last three weeks, so he can accurately say that he has no idea what Wally’s talking about. “What do you mean?”

Wally leans against the arm of the couch. “You know. When I first got here, Big B made me go through all these tests right away to make sure I was me. But you just knew. Part of me was worried you were gonna taze me on the spot, so the hug was a nice surprise.”

Dick absentmindedly taps his pen against his bottom lip, briefly tearing his gaze away from the papers in front of him. “I don’t know. It was just… you.”

Wally smiles and the look in his eyes is so soft that it makes Dick blush, pleased until Wally opens his mouth and says, “The other you used to say the exact same thing.”

“The other me?”

Wally laughs. “Yeah, the other you. The one who lived with the other Wally and me. Or I guess I lived with them since I was, you know, not meant to be there.” Wally’s voice is soft, Dick realizes, the same way it gets when they’re in bed together, Wally kissing his fingers as he tells him that he loves him without actually saying the words. “He could always tell whether it was me or his Wally coming through the door. Even when we came back from training together, both looking like we got ran over.” His eyes look right at Dick, but they’re far away and Dick can’t handle the sense of unease rising in his belly. “Always knew which one of us got that welcome back kiss.”

And that sounds a little too much like longing.

“Was that some kind of test?”

It’s like the blinds are lifted from Wally’s eyes as he goes, “Wait, what? No! No!” He’s quick to deny it, hands in front of him like that’ll protect him from Dick’s anger. “I just wanted to know how much of what I knew about you there is true here.”

Dick’s blood pulses. “I’m the one you knew first. I’m the one you should know.”

“I do know you!” Wally yells as he leans forward, hands reaching for where Dick’s own hand is clenched around his pen. “You’re both different. I know you’re different. I just—there were a lot of things that were similar too.”

“Like what?” Dick spits, feeling vulnerable and ripped open. He’s so sick of being a consolation prize.

Wally hesitates like he can see the traps planted at his feet. “Babe, come on. I didn’t mean anything by it.” He pulls gently on Dick’s hand, gaze imploring until Dick relents and lets Wally wrap him in his arms. “You’re amazing. I love you and I’m lucky that you want me in every universe, especially this one.”

It’s like a balm on all of Dick’s wounded feelings and his anger washes away as quickly as it had risen. Ten weeks after Zatanna had first told him that Wally had felt that way and now he finally has proof. The persistent thought that he’d never hear Wally actually say those words had grown within him for so long that he hears his own awestruck voice say, “You love me?”

Then Wally grins, all charm and tenderness and Dick is gone for this man. “You betcha, babe.”

——

Dick and Wally were at the Watchtower when Gar strolled in, sunglasses on, and announced, “Who else is coming with me to the wrap party for Space Trek downtown tonight? That’s right, all of you.” Which explains why they’re in one of the gaudiest clubs Dick has ever seen. Neon lights criss-cross across the ceiling in streaks of pink and blue and the music sounds like someone recorded a stalled car engine.

It reminds him of his early twenties.

“You’re in your early twenties!” Raquel yells, clinking her shot glass with his before sliding the liquor down her throat. She raises her head with an exaggerated, ah. “Now enjoy it!”

Dick does enjoy it, dancing with anyone who comes up to him and stealing kisses from Wally when people’s backs are turned (or even when they’re not. Shamelessly, he’s always liked showing off what’s his).

It’s one of those times that he’s pressed all up against Wally, mouth hot and warm, that Barbara comes up between them, drunk as he’s ever seen her.

“Think a girl could ever get in on this sometime?” she shouts, winking and making Dick laugh into her shoulder as she gives them both a heated once over.

Wally wraps an arm around Dick’s waist and pulls him closer, effectively shifting Barbara out from their embrace. His tone is light but his grin is laced with an edge when he says, “Not a chance. This one is all mine.”

Barbara laughs and punches Wally’s arm hard enough to make him wince, but it’s her, so that was bound to happen whether she held back or not. “Guess I’ll have to get by with just the memories.”

She smacks a kiss on each of their cheeks and makes a beeline towards where Kaldur and Wyynde are making eyes at each other by the bar.

Wally is still tense against his side and Dick elbows him. “Hey, wanna dance?” he asks, knowing it’ll get Wally to look at him like that and pull them even closer.

“How about we go home instead?” he asks, heat dripping from his voice and hands dipping down, down, down Dick’s back until they rest boldly on his ass.

Dick loves the way Wally’s eyes don’t waver under the neon lights of the club.

“God, yes.”

That night Wally makes him come six times.

——

The downhill slide is a steady, slippery slope, and they’re already halfway down it before Dick realizes that something is wrong.

He should have realized it during Gar’s party, but he’d been drunk on cosmos and the feel of Wally’s attention on his skin.

He starts to realize it the next time they’re on a mission with Zatanna and one of her protégés stares just a little too long at Dick’s ass in his suit.

Dick is about as far from self-conscious as a person could be, but the way that Wally looks at him after Zatanna elbows Traci and says, “We’ve all been there, done that,” stirs up a feeling not too far away from it.

But it really hits him the next time they’re at Will’s, and Wally is just that little bit too energetic in the way that he’s been ever since he came back, quite literally vibrating in his seat so hard that he starts to phase through it with a yelp. He clatters to the floor and the chair bursts apart in a flurry of splinters.

“Shit, sorry,” Wally says, and then the next moment the floor is spotless, all evidence cleared.

Will blinks. “Is the vibrating thing normal now?”

Dick’s smile edges towards smug, but he can’t help it. Wally’s speed is impressive and amazing and he’s all his. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Will takes Dick’s grin the wrong way and he laughs, winking. “No wonder you left me for him,” Will jokes, tapping Dick’s head with a brush of knuckles. “If you ever change your mind you know where to find me.”

“As if,” Dick says, but in the next second he’s giggling into Will’s shoulder because he knows that out of all of his friends, it’s probably Will who’s most aware of how much Dick was looking for Wally in other people.

Wally doesn’t think it’s as funny as Dick does, as evidenced by the way he whips around the moment that they get back to Dick’s apartment that night, voice dark. “Roy?”

“He goes by Will now.”

“Not the point!”

“Then what is the point, Wally?” Dick yells, falling into the argument too easily, but now that he recognizes that he’s been feeling this build for so long, he can’t help but be relieved. “Why do you have such a problem with who I’ve been with?”

“I don’t know, okay?” Wally says, the thrum of frustration in his voice matching the way he pulls exasperatedly at his hair.

“Then figure it out! You always do this. You just ignore the hard feelings and make me figure it out for you.” He doesn’t know where the words come from until they’re out. Some vestiges from listening to Wally at fifteen going ugh, why does Artemis make me so crazy, at eighteen going California seems really far, I mean, if things don’t work out then I’ll be there alone, at twenty going I’m just not good enough to be Kid Flash anymore, alright? Is that what you want to hear?

Wally stands up straight, voice lilting in the way it does when he’s insecure. “Oh, so you’re so mature? Sleeping with anyone that will have you just so that you don’t have to deal with your feelings?”

And Dick is… Dick is angry, suddenly, overwhelmingly furious.

“You died,” Dick yells, voice cracking like it hasn’t since he first saw Wally fade away right in front of his eyes. “You died and do you remember what your last words were? The last people you thought about and who you told Barry to let them know that you loved them? Because it sure as hell wasn’t me. I listened to those comms, Wally. I heard every word that you had for everyone that wasn’t me.”

He thinks he might be crying, but when he reaches up to brush a hand over his cheeks, they’re still dry, and that just makes him more angry.

“And you,” he hisses, shoving at Wally’s chest. There’s a vindictive, vicious part of him that’s pleased at the wide-eyed look on Wally’s face. “You come back, you fuck me, and when I ask, you tell me nothing. Who didn’t want to talk about his feelings then?”

Dick feels tension thrum through him, tingling into his fingers and making him clench his fists. And he can’t stop, all of his problems flooding forward at once. “Did you ask her to wait, Wally? Did you ask your girlfriend to wait for you? Or is that only something I have to do, even though you’d never looked at me like that a day in your life?”

Wally doesn’t meet his eyes and Dick wants to scream and yell and fight back in a way that he never has been able to.

When he speaks next, his voice is a sharp whisper. “Is that what you’re telling me, Wally?”

“I don’t. I don’t know.”

Dick sneers. “Let me know when you figure it out.”

Wally grits his teeth and shoves his hand so deep in his pockets that his waistband dips low. He starts to pace, the edges of him starting to blur, and Dick knows that he’s barely hanging on to staying at normal tempo. “Everything was so much easier over there,” Wally murmurs, low enough that Dick doesn’t think that it was meant for his ears.

God, he hates when Wally does that. Talks about the years that he was gone with yearning in his voice like he’d want to go back if he had the choice. Wally has always been quick to love and it always seems like he loves everyone else more than he loves Dick. It’s painful, being cared for less than an alternate version of himself.

The thought makes him pause.

“Did you sleep with him,” he snaps, watching Wally’s head jerk up. The green look on his face doesn’t ease the roiling of his own stomach. A sick rush of clarity hits him. “The other me? That’s why you didn’t want me to ride you that first time. What? Is that how you did it with him?”

“No!” Wally snarls. “Of course not—that’s not what it was like over there! That Dick Grayson wouldn’t have ever done that to his Wally West.”

Dick hears every accusation that Wally alludes to and he’s so angry. He didn’t think he could ever get this mad at someone and he’s had his fair share of shouting matches with Bruce that had nearly taken the mansion down, but this, Wally’s scorn and derision makes him want to scream until his lungs give out.

“Then go back!” The words feels ripped from his chest, aching and open. “I’m not him and I never will be and I’m so fucking sick of you right now that I wish you never came back.”

He regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. He doesn’t mean them, he knows that. He can’t mean them when just the thought makes his heart shatter in two.

But he still said them.

Wally looks like Dick killed him all over again. “I shouldn’t have,” he says, devastatingly quiet, eyes filled with venom. “Then I’d never have known that the real thing was such a disappointment.”

Wally’s gone the next second, not even a blur left behind.

——

Dick thinks about it, about just going over to Will’s to take him up on the offer so that Wally really has something to actually be mad about, and he’s halfway there, crouched on a ledge in his Nightwing costume when he realizes that he doesn’t want Will’s hands on him. He doesn’t want anyone’s hands on him actually, except for a certain dumb speedster who wouldn’t know communication if it bit him in the ass.

He is mad though, petty even, and his lease is up, so when he comes back to his apartment a week later, after hiding out at Wayne Manor and accepting Alfred’s gentle food-based concern until Bruce tries to actually get him to talk, he packs up his stuff, moves to an apartment closer to the police station, and pointedly doesn’t tell Wally.

See how Wally likes that.

——

Wally doesn’t like that at all and it turns so ugly so fast that Dick is left reeling.

He’d thought that he’d known what it was like to fight with Wally. You can’t truly know someone as well as they do without a few disputes along the way and they’d been teenagers together. Dick still remembers the absolute blowout they’d had over Wally quitting the team.

But they’d gotten over it. They always do.

Although, Dick has to admit that even though neither of them had said the words, their fight had been more like a breakup. And that is something they’d never gone through with each other.

He wishes they were still fucking about it. Angry sex is satisfying and makeup sex even more so. He lets that thought go soon enough. Wally treats him like he’s a leper, six feet away at all times, never able to truly hide the scornful curve of his frown.

If they’re cold to each other on missions, they’re absolutely frigid to each other when they’re loitering around the Watchtower at the same time. When they bother to meet each other’s eyes, all it does is lead to a tersely silent spar that ends in kicks that connect too hard and punches that neither can seem to pull.

It makes him sick with fury and an underlying feeling of hopelessness that he’s far too familiar with. Who does Wally think he is—telling Dick how he was allowed to grieve? Condemning Dick for his past relationships when he used to laugh all teasingly impressed when he had found out about Raquel and Zatanna and Kori.

That burnt tar feeling bubbles up his throat when he thinks about it and he can’t help but think vindictively, if Wally expects it, then I’ll give it to him.

When he asks Conner to mark him up, just as a façade, a mirage that will make Wally steam with jealousy as green as his eyes, that happy day in the coffee shop with Zatanna feels so far away. It feels safer with Conner than it would with Will because, much like Wally, Conner doesn’t actually want him.

“I don’t think…” Conner says, eyes flicking to the side as he sets his jaw in that way he does when he wants to disobey on a mission but doesn’t. “You should talk to him about this, Dick.”

“Oh, because you’re so great at communicating in relationships?” Dick says before he can help it. Conner winces, hanging his head, and Dick hates himself. Hates how he can’t keep it together anymore. “Supey, I need you to do this.”

The clinical, apathetic way Conner goes about sucking hickies into his neck makes it easier. Dick hasn’t realized that he’d been worried about it, being touched again in that way, but this is more reminiscent of a good spar than to any type of passion.

The way it makes Wally steam in rage feels pretty good too. Never let it be said that Dick isn’t a bitch when he wants to be.

——

He gets Conner to do it again, and Dick provokes him enough that Conner accidentally squeezes his hips too hard, leaving handprints that make Conner’s face go pale with guilt.

When he walks into the room where he knows Bart and Wally are playing games, he makes sure he’s wearing his dark blue shirt so that the marks on his neck really pop. He perches on the arm of the couch by Tim, trying not to grin pettily at the hard clench of Wally’s jaw when his gaze drops briefly to his neck before turning back to the screen in front of him.

Dick waits, bides his time because he is vindictive, and his moment comes in the form of Barbara, passing through from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn in hand. She lobs one at him and when he catches it in his mouth, he high-fives her, letting his shirt pull up to show the bruises on his hips, knowing exactly what they look like.

“What’s wrong with you?” Wally spits, glaring at Dick’s exposed skin like it personally offends him. The controller in his hand is gone, shattered on the floor.

“You are!”

And then they’re at each other, hands fisted in each other’s clothes as they scrap like they’ve never been trained to properly fight before. In the flood of red, Dick barely recognizes what he says, calling Wally every name in the book until the words, “I’m nothing to you here,” rip from his throat, raw. He hates it, hates feeling so exposed even as they keep yelling at each other.

Then, to dig the knife even deeper (to Wally? To himself? He’s not sure anymore), he says, “No one else cares Wally!”

“I do.”

Dick freezes, turning to a pale-faced Tim who he hadn’t realized was even still there.

“You knew how I… about him.”

It’s the words as much as Tim’s heartbroken, stricken face that finally break through the pungent haze of Dick’s rage.

“Oh, Timmy…” Dick breathes, gut-punched, because he had known and he hadn’t even stopped for a minute to think of how walking around with marks in the shape of Conner’s mouth would make Tim feel. He’d been so caught up in himself that he hadn’t bothered to think about the casualties. He takes the jacket that Wally passes him without even realizing it, popping the collar to cover up his neck. “Tim, it’s not like that.”

He can only stare mutely as Tim’s eyes fill up with tears and he gasps out, “I have to go,” before tearing out of the room like Black Flash himself was on his heels.

The balloon of tension that had felt ever-present in whichever room him and Wally had occupied over the last few weeks has popped, and in its wake, Dick is left cold.

“Maybe we’re just bad for each other.” The words bubble from Dick’s throat and he’s tired and lonely and fucking sad.

“No,” Wally says quietly, reaching out a hand to hover near his elbow. “No, babe, that’s—“

He cuts himself off and the silence that follows is deafening.

“Thanks for the jacket,” Dick says morosely, sliding it off his shoulders and handing it back. It feels like more of a white flag than an olive branch when Wally takes it, fingers curled in the fabric.

——

“Hey,” Wally says, knocking gentle knuckles against the open door frame of the kitchen like Dick hadn’t heard his steps from all the way down the hall. “Can we talk?”

It’s the most courtesy that either has extended to the other for months. Somehow, Dick feels even more distant from him because of it. He’s abruptly glad that he’d wore his sunglasses today, feeling safe behind their dark lenses.

Curling his fingers away from the fridge handle, Dick nods. “Yeah.”

He follows Wally out the door as he leads him somewhere more private, but before they even make it halfway down the hall, Wally wraps a soft hand around Dick’s elbow and he finds himself corralled against the wall.

“I’m sorry. What you did while I was gone… it doesn’t matter.”

Dick is still so, so tired.

“It just—hearing about you with other people makes me feel just like I did there. Where I was with you every day and you still weren’t mine. I know that doesn’t make it right,” Wally rushes to add, trying to meet his eyes. “That’s just—it’s what I took this long to realize.”

“That’s not me,” Dick feels himself say. “I’m not whoever that guy was in that other universe. And even when you were gone I–I was yours the whole time.” In another time, he would make a joke about his redheads only phase, but it doesn’t seem very funny right now.

“I know. That’s not who I think you are. I know what that Dick Grayson is like and I know what you’re like. I thought of you and it brought me back.”

Dick can’t help a smile, but it feels foreign. “Cute, Wally. Very romantic.”

“No, you don’t get it.” Wally’s eyes are beseeching and he grips tightly to the hem of Dick’s shirt. “I needed a tether. It’s easy to get stuck in the speed force. I got out in that other dimension because I thought about how you’d react to me leaving my socks on the floor instead of Artemis. When I—the first time I was fast enough to try to get back here I tried to think of her and I just ended up back at their fucking apartment. It took you. The real you. I had to think of your sleep-deprived, cranky—”

“Wally—“

“—brave, amazing, sexy self.” Wally laughs and his voice is thick. Dick can feel himself melting at it, his arms slowly wrapping around Wally. “I’m sorry I messed it up. I’m so sorry. You mean everything to me.”

They stand there, holding each other, until Dick says, “I didn’t mean it. When I said I wished you never came back. I—” His voice breaks, wet with regret and he pulls Wally in closer, clings to him like he did that moment that he’d shown up in Bruce’s dining room. “I looked for you for so long. I quit the team. I missed you so much I thought it was going to kill me.”

He’d wanted it to, at the time. Because then he’d at least be where Wally was.

“I love you so much,” he chokes out, pained.

Wally’s breath catches. “You do?”

And Dick didn’t realize that he’d never said it out loud. He’s thought it enough times over his lifetime, especially since Wally has been back, that it feels so obvious, so ingrained in his core. In hindsight, maybe Dick’s own lack of communication had its own negative influence on Wally’s insecurities.

Wally looks at him, awed, like he’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life and Dick feels laid bare.

He takes off his sunglasses, letting Wally see him, every genuine emotion, every wet tear clinging to his lashes.

“Yeah, I do.”

It’ll take time. They’ll be okay.