Title: Love
Author: Enchanting Slasher
Characters/Pairing: Bruce, Bruce/Wally
Rating: PG
Word Count: 947
Prompt: Love, Prompt 20
Summary: "Sometimes Bruce can't help but wonder if he was doing the right thing."
Disclaimer: DC's characters. Damn them.
Author's Notes/Warnings: Someone asked me to do a shot from Bruce's point of view. I admit I write better from Wally's perspective but I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. It's slightly longer then my usual shots which is a bonus I guess. Anyway I hope you enjoy it. :)
Sometimes Bruce couldn't help but wonder if he was doing the right thing. Wally is so young, a lot younger than he is. The speedster is open, bright, trusting which is pretty much everything that Bruce will never be. A little part of him always wonders if being with the speedster is starting to change him a little, morphing Wally into something that isn't so clearly defined. The black is starting to smudge into the white.
He watches him staring down his opponents in battle. There is a swagger to his walk that used to infuriate Batman, a cockiness that only seems natural in a man his age. He quips lines that only a child would find amusing, simple comedy that speaks volumes about the kind of man that Wally West is. And as he watches these little moments something inside of him starts to break because no-one was ever supposed to mean this much to him. This is more than he ever wanted to feel and the idea of someone like Wally holding his heart both thrills and terrifies him at the same time.
At the beginning it had been easy to treat his interest in the pretty red-head as nothing more than a human weakness. It was something that he could easily ignore and eventually overcome. After all Wally had many flaws and quirks that annoyed the hell out of him and although he had legs to die for and a face that was easy on the eyes he wasn't quite sure on what the rest of the attraction was based.
It was only when he actually took the time to get to know Wally that he realised he'd made certain assumptions about him. That he wasn't the only one who knows how to put on a damn good facade. Yet still despite this Wally at the core was all heart and the cynical side of himself suggested that perhaps he cared too damn much, opening himself up for all kinds of hurt.
The very few people who knew about this ... /relationship/ had been stunned; as though it had come completely out of the blue. Bruce wondered how anyone could have not seen it coming especially with the way they've acted like total idiots around each other. It was clear from the very start that the pair of them are terrible at relationships, although Bruce can grudgingly concede that Wally is perhaps the more emotionally stable of the two of them.
They have their moments were everything seems utterly perfect. The stolen kisses in the control room when they are pretty sure no-else is there, the dinner dates that Wally seems to care about so much even if it does mean he has to play a girl. Bruce can't help but love the moments after sex were everything seems so perfect and safe; the world seems to have stopped just for them.
Yet other times it seems as though the whole damn world is against them. He worries about what Barry would say if he was still alive. He can't imagine that his friend would be particularly pleased to find out that his nephew was dating someone almost ten years his senior and with a ton of issues to boot. And then there is Dick to consider. Wally has been his adopted son's best friend ever since they ran together in the Teen Titans. He's dreading that particular conversation and Wally has been patient up till now but Bruce knows it's killing him to keep things from Dick.
He images that both of them would be/will be very disappointed in him because he was in a position of trust. Barry wanted him to watch over him if anything ever happened to him but he can't kid himself enough to think that includes sleeping with him.
And every time John calls Wally a kid he cringes a little yet he can't help but feel irritated on his behalf. Wally is almost 22 now but he has never been a child. He joined the league at the tender age of seventeen shortly after being given the mammoth task of filling those golden boots that Barry had left behind. Bruce can't help but wonder if any of them know exactly what Wally has struggled through just to get to this point and if they knew would he have more of their respect? A kind of respect that doesn't come from running around the world to punch Lex Luthor/Brainiac, although Bruce can't help but smile quietly with pride at the thought of it.
Perhaps there are many reasons why Bruce Wayne and Batman should not date this man; reasons that he's worried about every day since he kissed him in the Control Panel. Yet every time they are together he can't seem to remember a single one of them, being wrapped up in Wally seems to dominate almost all his thoughts.
It's the way his skin feels against his own, soft and smooth with hardly any scarring. The way his mouth seems to form elegant shapes as Bruce strives to try and force Wally into making as many as those beautiful sounds as he possibly can. And sometimes he swears he can get lost in the warmth and love that those gorgeous green eyes radiate towards him.
And then it started to occur to Bruce that it didn't matter what everyone else thought. It didn't matter about the 'what ifs' or even what the future may hold for them. The right now is too damn good to be ignored.
Because when he is with Wally he feels like a different man, a better man.
A man capable of love.
