"Just go! We'll fallow after the doors blow!" Robin shouted and Megan and her Uncle reluctantly disappeared through the floor. The bird checked the clock one more time and looked up at the speedster beside him after closing it down. "Wally," he said apprehensively. They had about ten seconds.
"Dick?" the red head replied, no longer bothering with formalities. They wouldn't be getting out.
His small friend gave a hopeless sigh. "… Wally, I-"
"It's been quite a ride hasn't it?"
Seven seconds.
"Yeah," The bird smiled up at his friend, removing his mask with shaking fingers.
Five.
"Wally," he paused as if he were counting their last seconds under his breath.
"Dick."
Four.
The speedster held out a hand cautiously and the blue eyed bird grasped it smiling.
Three.
"I love you," Wally almost whimpered and pulled Dick into a tight embrace. The bird quickly wound his arms around his friend's waist and squeezed knowing not much time remained.
Two.
"I love you too." His voice cracked.
One.
It was black for a moment before he woke. There was someone next to him, shaking him lightly. Robin opened his eyes behind the shades and reached up to wipe the layer of sweat from his brow. He was supposed to be dead, supposed to be gone somewhere with Bruce and his parents. If there was one reason he would be prepared for death it would have been that he could see them again. Yet here he was lying on his back in the training room. His head hurt like a monster and his body was stiff and aching, but he wasn't beaten and bruised like he should have been if he had lived.
Robin sat up weakly. His team mates were alive as well.
[0]
Civvies Robin sighed almost forlornly when he saw them in the kitchen. It wasn't that he was jealous; it was simply that he had thought Wally would have said something by now. There he was. The red head was embracing Artemis from behind while she ate her breakfast, almost completely disregarding the speedster except for when he would lean in close and nuzzle her neck. They of course had no idea he was watching them, but Robin felt no guilt in standing in the doorway while the oblivious pair cooed all over each other.
Robin wanted Wally, not in that gooey, snuggly girlfriend boyfriend way the red head and the blondee shared. But he wanted his best friend to show some relief that they'd both survived, that they both woke up to live another day.
They had said they loved each other after all, but the two had avoided each other as if they had the plague. It wasn't as if they were running at the sight of the other, but they hadn't spoken yet, hadn't expressed their relief to find the other alive and well. Shaken, but alright.
Robin couldn't watch any longer. He found himself swallowing even though his mouth had gone dry and his throat hurt. He left silently. He chilled with Kaldur, letting the Atlantean know that he'd done the best he could on their 'mission' without saying actually words. At least, the bird tried to sit with his leader until he was summoned to Atlantis for a few days of leave. Robin would have gone to find Conner or even Megan, but they had disappeared and he feared the worst if he went hunting them down. He didn't exactly want to walk in on them swapping spit… or worse.
So all the bird could do was sit and wait. Wait for his friend to approach him and confront their situation. What was so hard about talking to your friend? He watched TV, that is until the red head and the blonde started snuggling on the couch. He left to brood in his room.
[0]
"Wally!" Dick called and knocked on the door again. The wood groaned at the force he was putting behind his fist. Someone shouted inside, reassuring their guest they would be there in a moment. As promised, the door was opened only seconds later, but not by the requested red head.
"Ro-Dick!" Barry smiled, ears lifting from his bright expression. "Hey bud, how are you doing?" The blonde man before the bird grinned obliviously to the scowl he was receiving, but a glint in his eye reassured Dick that his message had not gone unread. "I'll take that Bat scowl as a 'not in the best of moods'…" The speedster stepped aside seeing no other option. If he refused to let the bird in he'd simply get pushed aside anyways. "Can I get you something to eat?" He offered when Dick entered the living room.
"No, but thanks anyways Unc," the bird told him politely. He wasn't a stranger to the Allen household: Barry had known him ever since Dick had become Robin. To the bird, Barry was an extension of the family. "Is Wally here?" He asked, cutting right to the chase.
"Nah, he's has detention at school." Barry zipped to the couch and flopped down on the cushions. "You sure you're not hungry?" He asked again, this time holding up his bag of chips. "We might have something healthy in the fridge," he offered when the bird gave him an incredulous look. "Make yourself-"
"-at home, I know." Dick finished for him. "When will he be back?" He hadn't moved.
"Uh," Barry stalled while looking at the clock next to the TV. "He gets out at four so I guess a half hour?" Dick nodded and took a seat next to the speedster on the sofa, cautious of Barry's feet near his end of the couch. He could wait; a half hour wasn't that long anyways. Plus, the bird hadn't seen Barry for a while. His makeshift Uncle was important to him; one of the founders of the Justice League that he felt had become close family. Of course Wally had helped that aspect of his life along. Their frequent play dates as kids and hang out time as teenagers made them the closest of friends…
"-and so Miriam is having the affair with Thomas while Thomas is cheating on her with Fredrick because he's actually gay but Fredrick is Miriam's husband but Thomas didn't know because Miriam didn't tell him she was married!" Barry shouted, just before the commercial break ended and his soap came back on.
"Why aren't you out?" Dick asked absentmindedly.
"Huh?"
"Why aren't you out in Central as Flash?" The thought had only just occurred to him.
"Oh, uh," Barry stalled again by watching Miriam throw a fit a Fredrick on TV. "Truthfully?" Dick nodded and Barry put on what was supposed to be a serious face. "Uh, Iris wants me home to clean the house?"
Dick looked at him incredulously. He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
The speedster lying on the couch next to him sat up reluctantly. He crossed his legs and sat facing the bird. He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again before reaching for the remote and turning off the sound on the TV. "Dick," Barry sighed. The blonde looked at his second 'nephew' and gave a hopeless kicked puppy pout without meaning to. "I think you should just wait for Wally to get back," he supplied.
"What does that have to do with you staying home?"
"I knew you'd be here eventually," Barry shrugged. "Wally's been a little on the dejected side lately, I figured you'd noticed and were gonna', well, come help?"
"I still don't see what this has to do with you." Dick turned to face Barry. "… and that's not why I'm here…" he mumbled, but Barry hadn't heard.
The speedster sighed hopelessly. "I just wanted to see you," he offered smiling slyly. "C'mon! You're, like, another one of my kids!" he grabbed the bird with his super speed and pulled him into a crushing hug. "I haven't seen you in ages and you don't call anymore and Wally always goes to the manor to hang out and I miss that little twerp who would play awful pranks on Supes whenever you came to the 'Tower!" Barry shouted while laughing. He pulled the struggling bird to his chest tighter and gave him a super speed noogie, succeeding in making the black hair stand up with static.
"Uncle-Oomf!-Barry!" Dick struggled. "You're holding too tight!" he gasped. In all truth, Dick knew he could get out of the hold with ease. But what the speedster said was true; he hadn't seen the blonde in a long time, not with Young Justice taking up his time along with a new school year. He gave up his fake struggle and let the speedster hug him tight. Barry finally released him and pushed him off the couch.
"Go get some food!" he said while shoving Dick towards the kitchen. "You're as scrawny as you were when you were eight!"
[0]
"Yo! I'm home from deten-I mean, uh, hanging out with my friends!" Wally called.
Dick's stomach dropped from where he sat on the sofa. For a while he had forgotten why he was even at the Allen household. "I know you had detention, Kid! Now get in here!" Barry called from the living room, smiling obliviously through the tension in the room when Wally entered. "How was it?" he asked.
"Ugh, Mrs. Cleary hates me-oh," Wally paused seeing his friend next to his uncle as he rounded the sofa. "…Rob?"
Barry stirred, looking cautiously at both boys. Somehow, he uncharacteristically sensed the tension mounting between them. "I'll, um, go…" he sighed and left the living room reluctantly.
Both team mates hadn't broken eye contact even when Dick leaned over to snatch up the abandoned remote. He hit the power button and the TV turned off in the middle of the scene where Fredrick was revealing that he was having an affair. The bird put the remote down reluctantly, the soap they had been watching was getting to a good part.
"Wally-"
"We need to talk."
"Wait, what?" Dick thought Wally was the clueless one here, not him. But the red head took Barry's abandoned seat across from his friend. He put on his rare serious face that didn't sit right on the lines of his face.
"About the mission-"
"The training exercise," Dick corrected.
"Right," Wally said glancing through the doorway to make sure Barry wasn't listening, which he probably was anyways. "Dick, I meant what I said."
The bird was silent. He had expected a fight, or just more ignorance, but now he felt as if he were in the wrong for thinking darkly about his relationship with Wally. "Wally, you don't have to-"
"I do," Wally's voice cracked and he grabbed his friend and pulled him into a tight embrace. He buried his face into the nook between shoulder and neck. "Rob, I don't think you understand," he said, voice muffled by the bird's sweatshirt but audible. "We were going to die-"
"But we didn't-"
"We were going to die!" Dick's eyes widened at the sudden shout. The speedster holding him had begun to shake, his shoulders quivering and arms tightening around the bird. Robin didn't fight the hold, but he didn't hug back. "I meant it when I said I loved you, I don't know what I'd do without you!"
"But you didn't talk to me!" Dick shouted and pulled away from the shaking red head. Wally's eyes were red and watery. "I waited for you to say something! But you were too busy snogging it up with Artemis in order to have time to tell your best friend that you- that you…" he let it hang in the air.
"Because I thought you were mad at me!" Wally tried to excuse himself. "It's been killing me these two days because I thought you regretted saying it!"
"Saying what?" came a voice from the hallway. They two friends turned to see Uncle Barry in the doorway shrugging. "Sorry, I heard shouting…"
"I love him but he's mad at me!" Wally shouted accusingly and pointed at the bird.
"What?" Dick said exasperated. "I thought you regretted saying it!" He shouted. Both boys scowled at each other.
But Barry was laughing. The man was leaning against the door frame bent over in hysterics at the scene the two on the sofa were making. He had a hand on his gut while he tried to steady his breathing. The boys looked at one another and at their uncle with eyebrows raised.
Dick was the first to move, closely followed by Wally. They launched over the couch in unison, the bird using his friend's knee as a springboard. The pair collided with Barry in the doorway before they all were sent reeling into the hall. The three finally ended up sprawled on the carpet, limbs tangled and a laughing blonde pinned beneath the younger two.
"Barry, sweetheart, I know it's so hard to do, but could you at least put your torn up track shoes in the garbage once in a whi-oh," Iris' voice rang through the house when she opened the door, three grocery bags balanced precariously in her arms. She blinked a couple times at the now silent trio on the floor.
"What's for dinner, love?" Barry asked nonchalantly. "Want me to cook?"
Iris didn't move but she did purse her lips and raise an eyebrow. She eyed the collapsed group more carefully and spotted the tuft of ebony hair. "Dick? Is that you under there?"
The head popped up from where it was most likely suffocating between the two speedsters. "Hey Iris, how are you?" He asked politely. Dick's blue eyes glinted innocently while he elbowed Wally in the ribs when the red head tried to tickle him. "Could I, uh, stay for dinner?"
"Why didn't you ask me?" Barry complained from the floor dejectedly. The group ignored him.
"Sure thing, but does Bruce know you're here?" Iris asked while she closed the front door with her foot and walked down the hall. "You know how he gets…"
"We all know!" the three on the floor chorused.
"So…" Iris stepped carefully around the three on the floor where they lay tangled. She moved into the kitchen and set the large paper bags down on the table. "Why exactly are you all lying on the hallway floor?" she called.
No one answered. Instead, Wally reached across Barry to his friend and pulled the ebony into a hug which was returned with just as much enthusiasm. "Iris!" Barry hissed in the direction of the kitchen from where he was pinned face first to the floor. "Get the camera!"
A/N: Boo Ya! I love Uncle Barry.
That freaking episode had me in loony town for a while. Everyone was dying and people were screaming… My lasting impressions were, Robin: How are you NOT Tim Drake… Not that I don't love Dick Grayson… Superboy: "I never once took off my shirt, you must be proud of me" *wink*. Megan:" I'm one powerful bitch y'all. Oh, and I love Conner". Artemis: Just goes to show how much the team really loves her! Kaldur: No one really likes him for some reason (I do!) but he sacrificed himself anyways and is one loyal mamo jamma. Wally: STOP SCREAMING OMIGOD your breaking my heart!
Anywho. All in all, awesome eppy. I watched it with my little sister and she was ready to cry by the end and when we got to the last scene… I'm going to kill the writers! They trolololing so hard right now.
Have an awesome day!
Moe.