Wally stands with both hands in her pockets, pointedly not looking at the brunette a few feet away. The boy she flirts with is cute, vaguely Hispanic, and completely eager for her sly smile and the exposed line of stomach between shirt and shorts.
A young girl in disguise watches her best friend flirt and hates herself because of how jealous she is.
She's been taking her frustrations out in training, on Gotham's lowest baddies that she can fight with her eyes closed, in scribbled pages of diary and really emo music. And it still isn't enough, because Wally knows. There's no way she can't know, with Robin being way too obvious and Megan hinting at it with every other conversation. She can't stand the looks of pity from Aqualad and Superboy -God, Superboy! He's so oblivious as to be socially retarded, for Batman's sake!- and most of all she can't stand the way Wally continues to flirt like this.
If nothing, her flirting has gotten worse. And she's at her keen wits end.
Wally saunters back after kissing the boy on the cheek, her hips swaying and her grin cocky. She hops up onto the low wall where Robin sits and sighs.
"Boys are so easy, you know?" she muses. Robin tries not to notice how red the sun, filtering through a high window, makes her hair.
"Mmhmm." Wally cocks an eyebrow, licks her lips nervously. Robin thinks pink lip gloss and pushup bras should be permanently banned in the base.
"What's with you? You've been awfully…batty, lately. If you catch my drift." She does, of course, and she wants to just spit it all out, now. Instead she notes the way her lip gloss is ever so slightly smudged and looks away, angrily brushing hair behind her ear. Her sunglasses shift down her nose.
"Rob?" She huffs and hurls herself off the wall. The drop is too short for her liking, and she paces away quickly, too much anger and energy in her skinny boy limbs.
"Robin!" Wally is front of her in a whirl of speed, and she stops short, frowning. She curses how adorable every damn freckle of Wally's is as she yanks her eyes upward. Not like her friend would notice, behind the shades.
"What, Wally? Obviously you just brought me out here so you could flirt with boys. Did you even know his name before you gave him your phone number? And let me guess, it was your home phone, not a dummy." Wally blinks rapidly, flashes of evergreen caught between pale red lashes.
"Whoa, dude, those are some really harsh words. I brought you to the mall so you'd get out of this damn funk you've been in. And his name is Alejandro." She very directly does not answer the phone number question. Robin sighs.
"Whatever. I'm over the whole civilian scene, anyways. I'm heading back." Wally catches her arm, surprised and upset.
"No, Rob, wait-"
But she's tired of waiting. She breaks free- easily, because Wally isn't holding her hard on purpose- and flits away, taking turns quickly enough that the speedster can't follow.
The ride back to base is long, too filled with the whine of the motorcycle and her own buzzing thoughts to be fun.
When she gets back, Megan is waiting.
"How'd it-"
"I don't want to talk about," she grits out, and for a moment she's surprised. She almost sounded like Bruce there for a second. But it's not enough of a surprise, because Megan's look of disappointment and pity is enough to make her blood boil. In a rare fit of anger, she hurls her helmet to the ground. It cracks, and Megan jumps.
She makes herself coolly pick up the pieces and throw them out. She dodges Kaldur and Conner in the lounge, because they take one look at her face and theirs fall. Her hand twitches towards the belt hidden under her jacket, and she knows the one thing that will help her iron out the aggravation.
She changes into the suit, and every time she does so she thinks of the swan woman who sheds her skin, only this is reversed- she's regaining herself by putting on the spandex and armor, the wrist computer that's closer to her than any friend, and yet she must remind herself every time that these are only tools. Without them, she must still be a soldier against crime.
The mask, at least, doesn't slip down her nose all the time.
The training programs are sleek little things, and she's a skilled enough hacker that she can make the digital dummies look however she wants. She makes it a young woman with red hair and doesn't think- just executes her moves like clockwork, dodging the projections punches and whipping lightning fast kicks to the little points that are highlighted on the body.
Too soon, it gives out a little wail and disintegrates into pixilated dust. The floor tells her she's won. It really doesn't feel like it.
A little titter of a cough behind her makes her whirl. Black Canary stands there, her eyebrows hitched high up and her arms crossed. Robin doesn't blush, like Wally would, but scowls instead. Like Batman. God, the tendencies are getting stronger every day. She needs to get out more.
"I've seen that look before. You're pissed, little bird." She huffs at the nickname.
"Sure, what of it? It's not like my emotions will change anything." Okay, that was way too bitter for Canary to hear, but she can't even begin to filter herself anymore. Dinah gives her a little surprised look, then steps up onto the platform.
"Come on, spit it out, Richie. What's eating you?" Now she really bristles.
"Don't call me that, D. It's Dick, and you know it." Dinah gives her this flippant look and gestures her onward. And suddenly she's sputtering with helpless rage and hitting herself in the thigh with gradually more forceful blows.
"Wally is such a bimbo-headed ditz sometimes! I mean, I swear, I should have "I am a hopeless idiot in love with a redhead on crack" written on my forehead, and she just keeps, keeps…guh!" She throws her hands in the air and is tempted to scream. Instead she whips around to glare at the other woman.
"I mean, how in the hell am I supposed to knock it into her thick skull that I like her, huh?" Dinah, for her credit, doesn't freak out at this whole admission, but instead simply blinks and rocks back on her heels.
"Well, I'd say you gave yourself your answer, Dick." After letting that sink in, Canary saunters off. Robin thinks about it for a long moment, then hides herself in the shadows. And waits.
Kid Flash comes in, yellow and red a blaring sign in the semi-darkness, not long later. She looks around for a moment, playing absently with her goggles, then turns to leave. Robin slips out of the darkness and starts up the training platform, just loud enough to make Wally jump.
"Rob! There you are I-"
"Get up here, KF," she demands, the timbre of her voice just on the edge of the dark gravel that Bruce uses. Wally hesitantly steps up onto the edge of the platform.
"What's up?"
"Spar with me. Now." She taps her toes, one foot at a time, to settle them into her boots better, then slinks low into a defensive crouch, hands up. Wally gives her a slow once over, then grins that narrow-eyed grin that makes her think of Cheshire.
They start out slow, baiting each other with light jabs. Over the past two years of training, Wally has gotten much better than that first lesson with Canary, and so Robin isn't sure how this engagement will turn out just yet.
It's Wally who throws the first super-speeded kick. She's learned well enough to fight with her ears and not just her eyes, so she ducks before even thinking of it and uses Wally's momentum to take out her other leg.
They end up sprawled on the floor, grappling for the top spot so they can get a punch or a kick in. She can tell from Wally's gritted teeth that they're not in it for training anymore- someone's gonna bleed.
She grins at the thought and flips them with a complicated twist of the leg, and as she sinks her first into Wally's face and feels more than hears the first blood she thinks that this is how she likes Wally the best. Hellfire gleams in those green eyes and her short hair spiked like a boy's, her lip split and blood on her teeth as she snarls and shoves Robin back, sitting on her chest and cracking her knuckles across her cheek, hitting a bruise that had just started to disappear and splitting the skin with her gloves.
She manages to get an arm under Wally's thigh and one on her other shoulder and pushes with a twist, sending the other girl tumbling on her face. It takes her a moment to get up, and then they're circling again.
Robin always goes for her feet first, because without proper footing Kid Flash usually panics a bit and forgets her speed. She gets Wally's shins once, twice, earning another bruise on the chin, then a third time that has her on her back. Robin grabs her by the hair -a cheap move, but her blood is pumping by now- and hits her two more times in the face.
Wally can't get a hold of her arms and spits a tooth in her face. She pauses with her fist back, and they glare at each other with rage until she gets up, then helps Wally up onto her haunches. The program calls an intermission, but they both know who won.
"Want to explain why you got so much angsty hate now, Dick?" she asks, wiping the blood off her chin with her wrist. Robin makes fists again, but suddenly she just aches with weariness.
"Don't call me by my name. And can you stop being so damn thick-headed for once?" Wally glances up ruefully.
"What, Rob? What am I supposed to be getting here, hm?" She flushes angrily.
"That I freaking love you, alright? There, you happy? Cat's out of the bag now, lets hope she doesn't burn fucking Gotham down!" Exhausted, Robin collapses onto the slight step of the training platform and flops her head onto her knees.
After a moment of silence, Wally snorts.
"Is that all? Sheesh, I thought it was something drastic." Robin whips around so fast her neck cramps painfully.
"What?" Wally rolls her eyes and scoots forward to sit uncomfortably close to her, wrapping her hands around her ankles and stretching.
"Please, Rob. I've known about that for forever. I just kind of hoped…that'd you'd get over it." When she looks down at her friend, as close to gaping as is possible for any Bat family member, Wally at least has the decency to look embarrassed.
"What, you thought it was some stupid hormonal crush?" Wally stares at her toes and slowly nods. Robin slumps forward onto her knees again.
"So you thought flirting with random guys would make me see that you're not interested? Because it hasn't. It's just made me really, really angsty. Like, up there with Superboy." Wally snorts again, gracelessly. She never does that around guys, at least.
"It's not even like I want to kiss you or touch you or anything. You don't even have to do anything except just…let me be around you and not make it weird, you know? And stop flirting. Because I'm racking up repair bills." She's afraid to stop talking to the floor and instead focuses on the bite of blood on her tongue.
Wally does her one better and snakes an arm around her waist, settling her cheek against her shoulder blade.
"Whatever, Robin. But you're making this way too complicated. Just saying. I'll lay off boys as long as you tell me what kind of underwear you're wearing."
This inspires the first true laugh out of Robin in days, and despite the blood smears and stains, they laugh with each other.
AN: SO. I've disappeared from to be a total weirdo over on livejournal, where I post anything and everything, no matter what fandom, under the name exterra_astris. Recently been getting into the DC Universe, too, which is just awesome, especially with the new Green Lantern movie coming out. Only it also makes me want to bludgeon Cartoon Network over the head, because they won't have new episodes of Young Justice til June! Not that that's long, now, but still. :P Obviously, I've genderbent Wally and Dick. Just cause. I'll gradually post all my stuff from lj over here, but this is all I'm doing for today.