The dial tone rings, then a click.
"Hello?"
"I think I might be gay."
There was an awkward pause. "… Who is this?"
"Meg, it's me."
"Oh! Hi Wally! I haven't heard from you in forever! How are y—"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm good, you're good, and gorgeous, but seriously Meg, let's get back to the topic here; I think I might be gay."
The awkward silence makes a return. "I—uh—is that a good thing?"
"I don't know! That's why I called you!"
"Uhm, Wally, I'm not—"
"No no I know, but you've always had these weird freaky deaky psychic powers, even though I don't believe in that weird supernatural stuff, like, remember when Conner Kent, in High School, man what a douche, he was a complete quiet stony type, and guess what! He actually wasn't a douche, he was just completely weird and had never had friends before or something. Like how did you even know that? It's like after talking to him once, you knew, and then bam! We're all friends and—"
"Wally! I can't read minds so— What's your point?" Megan's tone is mixed with exasperation and amusement.
"Okay, okay, um. I met this guy today—and wow Meg, I've never been into a guy before and I was really into him. And I've always been into girls, and especially you know that, and, and—did you see this coming?"
"Wally, I'm not psychic." Meg starts, with a small sigh. "But, what I'm learning right now in my psychology classes at GoU and that studies show that sexuality is more fluid. That's not rigidly 'straight' to 'gay', but that most people actually fall on a spectrum!"
Wally blinked dumbly. "Is that true?"
Megan laughed. "Well, it's not completely proven, but there's a lot of evidence supporting it."
"Look, I know I was a little mean when you said you were majoring in Psychology and I called it—"
"The biggest lie, and not a real science, and a huge waste of time and money?"
"—Yeah, that. Um, I really take it back."
"I thought you would."
"See! You are psychic!"
Wally's eyes jolt open as the door of the apartment is opened loudly and slammed with the same fervor. His eyes flit to his bedside alarm clock, the bright red digits screaming in the darkness, '3:37 A.M.' and irritating his pupils.
"Aw, fuck!"
Roy.
"Wha—how many pizza boxes is that?"
Wally's eyes widen. A… female?
Roy and females, other than Dinah Lance-Queen, do not mix.
"At least he put them to the side." A cackle follows.
"Wait, is he here?" Unknown female's tone goes rigid.
"Probably sleeping. Fuck it, let's just—"
Roy's voice is abruptly cut off and Wally feels like a pervert for listening in on the conversation, not that the walls would have allowed him to block out much noise to begin with.
"He cannot know about this." Roy again.
There's a quiet shuffle.
"I know."
Wally's eyebrows rise at the exchange, but thinks it's because Roy is just being embarrassed about his to-be one night stand. He grunts, and rolls over in his bed, cocooning himself in his sheets and shortly falling back to sleep.
It's around noon when Wally decides he should get out of bed, and decidedly, get some food. He rolls out of bed, and strolls out of his room, his door creaking loudly as he opens and steps through it. He looks at Roy's door, across from his, and snickers briefly, wondering if she was still here.
He steps into the kitchen and begins to rustle around the drawers, looking for his favourite bowl and cereal (Lucky Charms, specifically), before moving to the cold mammoth of a fridge that he and Roy had splurged on. As he sticks his head into the glorified icebox, he hears Roy's door open behind him, and a very hungover Roy appearing from behind it.
The other male staggered into the kitchen, before abruptly sticking his head into the sink and turning the cold water on full blast, and all over his face.
"So…. someone go it in last night." Wally snickered.
"Shut… " Roy's speech is briefly garbled by the running water. "… up."
"What's her name?"
"None of your business."
Wally muffled a laugh. "Feisty." He glanced at Roy's outstretched neck, deep splashes of purple dotting his throat and following down past the neckline of his t-shirt. "And from the looks of it, she was too."
"Yeah." Roy grumbles. Wally hears him mutter under his breath, and catches the word, 'bitch'.
"So I guess Ollie's rich-boy party wasn't that bad then, I take it?"
The water stops running and Roy pulls his head up from under the tap, slicking back his hair with his hand and looking at Wally.
"It was fucking awful."
"How?" Wally asks, slightly surprised. "I mean you got her—"
"She wasn't from the party." Wally's confused.
"Then what was she—"
"She was the after-party entertainment."
Wally's briefly stunned. "Oh."
He then explodes, yelling and whooping. "Roy! You fucking wildcat! At first I thought, 'man, what kind of rich socialite girl does that nowadays' but now it all makes sense! Holy shit man!"
"Shut. Up." Roy bites out the words through gritted teeth. "You're too fucking loud, and I'm way too hungover."
Wally calms, and then hurriedly asks, "Oh shit—is she still here?"
Roy chokes on his spit, and waves his hand. "No—fuck, no way, no."
"Oh thank god. I can't believe it!" Wally's laugh resumes full volume. "Did you at least tip? Or at least give her the ti—"
"I'm going back to my room. And don't wake me up."
A week passes, and Wally feels like his heart has been mended enough for him to resume his normal life, which wasn't much to begin with. Wake up, go to STAR labs for his internship, go to work, go home, and, finally, go to sleep.
Rinse, lather, and repeat.
It was a terrifying cycle of monotony, save for the few hours of research work he did at STAR labs, and Wally would believed that it would drive him over the edge.
Plus he hadn't seen Dick since the magazine thing.
No wonder he didn't even know he lived there—he was like a ghost. Wally would sometimes hear a faint closing of a door, or the jingling of keys, like a whisper in the distance. By the time he's poking out his head out the door, the corridor is silent, or Dick's door lock briefly clicks shut. Wally knew that this wasn't normal; or at least he was pretty sure it wasn't normal.
A few more weeks pass, and Wally still hasn't heard much more than faint voices behind Dick's door, multiple at once, all male (not that Wally was keeping track). He doesn't question it, because hey, he barely knows anything about the guy and plus he's not one to judge or anything. But god, does Wally ever wish he could see him at least once, once, is that too much to ask?
His prayers are briefly answered on a late Tuesday night.
It's getting there.