Fandom: Young Justice
Characters: Dick Grayson/Wally West
Rated: K+
Word Count: 2680
Summary: Wally visits Dick on the anniversary of his parent's death and takes him on a picnic by the lake.
Notes: A little bit of angst given the day, but this is mostly cavity inducing fluff, fluff, fluff, some water-soaked hijinks and more fluff.
Written with ninjawing tumblr!
Dick relaxed under Wally's surrender, and he took the room to roll them over again, bracing himself over Dick. "Now," he grinned, "thanks to you, I'm going to get out of these," Wally motioned to his sopping, dripping clothes.
"But I feel so exposed," he drawled over dramatically. "So be a gentleman and hold up the blanket so my virtue isn't sullied?"
Wally pushed up and off Dick, walking gingerly over to the blanket and began to pack up the food—in-between bites, of course—and tossed a suggestive eyebrow back over at his boyfriend.
"What virtue?" Dick pushed himself up on his arms, moving over to help Wally. He didn't exactly need the blanket as cover—nothing Robin hadn't seen before—but he would need something to replace the clothes once they were off. It wasn't cold, and Dick felt the wind more than the speedster, but Wally wet and naked and outdoors wasn't the most comfortable situation.
Even though Wally was adorable when he was trying to be sexy. Idiot didn't realize that 'hot' was his natural state of being. The eyebrow just made Dick want to swoon a little and maybe squeeze him into the next world.
Not… that he'd ever do either. Obviously.
Once the mostly-empty containers were secured and returned to the backpack, Dick stood up and shook out the blanket.
"I suppose, however, that as your boyfriend—" Best word in the world. "—I should still protect this nonexistent virtue from prying eyes."
He spread out the blanket in front of him, making a point of turning his head away. For the moment.
"Go on then. You should get out of those before you start sniffling all over our d—"
Robin cut himself off, suddenly extremely interested in the sun setting over the trees at the far end of the lake.
Because suddenly, jokes about dates… weren't jokes anymore.
Clearing his throat and trying to will away his heating ears, Dick jerked the blanket as a way of distraction. "Our… little outing." Lame."I won't peek."
Lie.
Wally tilted his head in confusion as Dick stared into space for a second, but just snorted as Dick finished his sentence with an obvious lie.
Which was, of course, the point.
He turned his back to Dick, throwing a "you better not" coyly over his shoulder and wiggling out of his jacket and shirt with less finesse than he'd hoped. They were sticky and cold, and he did his best to be somewhat suave, because Dick was right there, but he was also right there, and Wally was sticking close because the further he backed away the easier it was for Dick to peek, but that gave him very little maneuvering room—he hooked his thumbs over the seam of his jeans and shimmied most of the way out of them, but when he tripped over his pants legs as they got caught in each other, it was probably a Fail. He groaned, hopping around a bit to pull off the clumsy !%# $%ing things, but finally he was down to his red boxers.
It wasn't that Dick wasn't interested, he just wanted to honestly be a gentleman and… not look.
Only Wally made that very difficult, hopping a little too far away from the blanket and giving Dick a nice view of a pert little ass, clearly defined by the soaking red boxers the way… well, his own underwear probably left nothing to the imagination either.
Wally dug his thumbs into the hem and started shimmying out of them, too, unaware that Dick could easily see by now.
Which, no matter how nice a view it gave Robin, was a little unfair.
He whistled in appreciation and the tiniest hint of warning, and cackled as Wally hiked his boxers back up, spinning around in indignation and unwittingly giving Dick a wonderful frontal view as well. His shoulders were still shaking when he pulled the blanket higher, hiding Wally from his eyes entirely—or hiding himself, he wasn't sure—and giggled out the most insincere apology he could manage.
"It's not my fault you can't stand still," he pointed out, lowering the blanket enough to peek over it.
Totally inconspicuously, of course.
"Hey," Wally barked, half-in-jest, covering his jiblets and wiggling back into his boxers. He sighed, dropping his hands to his sides. "Actually, I don't know what to even do with these. It's all gonna have to air dry. That'll take forever," he groaned, casting one eye at the sinking sun. His stomach grumbled.
Dick frowned sympathetically at him from over the blanket, when Wally snapped his fingers.
"Pass me some tarts or whatever's left?" he asked.
It's probably dark enough. I hope.
"Okay, remember I had something to show you?" he took a tart and stuffed it in his mouth. "I'been prachtisching" —gulp—"chechk thish owut."
Wally wandered around to the other side of the tree, and down on the bank. He faced away, rolled a shoulder back at Dick and, winking, dropped his shorts.
"321GO!" he shouted, and holding his boxers over his head like a flag, hopped over the water and ran, buck naked, over the lake itself.
"WoooooooHOooooooooooooOOoooo!"
Okay.
When Wally said he'd been practicing, Dick didn't think he meant streaking.
He was probably referring to the running over water bit, but Wally was also naked, and look, Dick was seventeen. His brain was allowed to selectively process what was happening around him, and what was happening right now was that his boyfriend was literally streaking in front of him.
Even though the redhead was technically just a blur at the moment, going far too fast for Dick's regular human eyes to track.
Robin gave himself a second to recollect his jaw, then snorted with laughter and busied himself wringing out the rest of Wally's soaked clothes. It might have helped a bit more if Wally had grabbed his shirt and jeans as well, but eh, he was the one streaking, he could choose what he took with him. Personally, Dick wasn't a fan of running with his junk flapping in the wind.
Wally looked like he was finishing off, rerouting towards their side of the lake, and it was getting chilly. Dick shucked off his own soaking boxers, wringing them out as well and reaching for his jeans.
Wally leaned into the turn at the far side of the lake, kicking up water behind him, and almost slipping onto his side as he spun a wide arc, but he juuuust managed to keep traction, and whooped back to the shore.
When Wally got close enough to see his boyfriend, Dick was turned away. Dude. He's not even looking.
"YO!" he yelled, "You even watching this fabulousne-"
Oh.
Dick was pouring himself into his skinny jeans. Sans boxers. Wally stopped cold, mouth agape, and … plunged into the lake.
Luckily, it was only half a foot deep at that point.
Dick was still shimming his way into the rest of his clothes, so Wally gathered his wits and climbed the rest of the way to shore quietly and donned his own boxers behind the tree.
"See?" he said as he came back around, "totally dry." He leaned in. "I could do yours if you want me to."
"Nah, don't need 'em," Dick grinned, asking, "So you going to do that for everything else now?"
"They're too heavy; it would take too long. But …" he grabbed the blanket and shook it out, "toga me?"
It was a little funny. Two years ago, they wouldn't have given a shit about walking around naked in front of each other, and now Wally was making sure he had boxers on before he came back into Robin's line of sight, and Dick in turn yanked up his jeans before Wally reached shore.
He didn't actually know how to tie a toga—well okay he had an idea—but he wasn't about to pass up this chance, so he shrugged and grabbed the blanket with an amused, "Just this once, but you need to learn to dress yourself eventually, you know."
He held up one end of the blanket to Wally, measuring the length of the toga from his waist down.
"Here, hold this," he passed off that end to the redhead's right hand, and while Wally held it up, Dick walked around him with the other end, wrapping it around his hips once and tying it off at the back.
It fell apart the moment he let go.
"Dammit."
"Okay, let's try this again." He picked apart the knot, holding up one end to Wally again, and this time Dick leaned close, reaching around the speedster to pass the rest of the blanket around his body.
Wally smelled like the wind and outdoors, and now like water that wasn't chlorinated and tapped. Even after that little dip in the lake, he radiated warmth, freckled chest and cheeks flushed from the run.
School and classes that he enjoyed and should have gone to, all dropped just to spend time with Dick.
It had been nine years.
He shouldn't… he shouldn't need Wally anymore on this day. He should be okay.
But he wasn't. And Wally knew, even though he never said it aloud. His best friend had trained himself to read Dick the way Robin had trained himself to read people, and it wasn't for justice. It wasn't for a greater cause or personal reasons.
It was just for him.
Silently winding the blanket around three times to make sure it didn't fall apart, Dick pulled it up under Wally's left arm and over his back to where he was still holding the other end of the blanket in front of him by his shoulder, securely tying it off in a Batman-taught knot.
He stepped back to observe his success. The long span of cloth was only wide enough to cover Wally's long legs from waist to just below his knees, and one end of it stretched up, covering the right side of his chest and back. It probably didn't look as good on him as Dick thought, but he didn't really care.
"Looks great," he told his best friend.
Then he stepped forward, wound his arms around his boyfriend, and buried his face into his neck.
Dick probably wouldn't have appreciated how freaking cute Wally thought he looked trying to get the toga to fit right, so he bit his bottom lip to keep from commenting on it. It was warm and snug when he finished though, and felt great, and of course it looked great, it was on him, right? He was just about to confirm that when Dick had his forehead pressed to the crook of his neck.
Oh.
He froze a second before winding his arms back around Dick, drawing him as close as he could.
He'd almost forgotten - in the silliness of being dumped in the lake, chasing each other down, hell, making out - he'd almost forgotten what this day meant.
Why they were here.
Nine years.
He'd seen it get easier over nine years, slowly, painfully, and he'd even missed what must have been the worst of it in the very beginning. But it still hurt.
And he - he hoped Dick didn't mind how silly they'd been that afternoon.
He ran one hand over the back of Dick's head, carding his fingers through his hair absentmindedly.
Nine years since the day they fell, since Dick - if he'd been a little older or his parents more permissive - nine years since he could have joined them.
It gave Wally vertigo.
He gave into the urge to sit down, and, scooping Dick up, he wandered over to the swing and sat facing the sunset over the lake, Dick sideways in his lap. It was so beautiful, and honestly, he rarely took the time to appreciate the little things, the things he had. Things he definitely may not have ever had.
Dick's hair tickled his cheeks as a breeze passed through, and he felt very aware of the fact that without the boy in his lap, not only would he not be there, lakeside looking at the reddest sunset he'd seen in a long time, he may not have been any of the placed that had forged his life in the last six years.
Because if he hadn't seen that blurry smudge of a kid on his television set when he was 13 years old, he probably wouldn't have gone into his garage that day and opened those bottles and blown himself sky high.
If that kid hadn't stayed on the trapeze landing that day, Kid Flash—and so Wally West, to an extent—wouldn't exist.
The feeling of vertigo, of fragility was back, awash with an overwhelming sense of gratitude that Dick made it, and Wally squeezed Dick tightly, burying his face right back into the brunette's collarbone.
Butterflies and hurricanes indeed.
He didn't protest being carried, and adjusted easily, like an oversized koala clinging to his branch.
How stupid and unrealistic and cliché would it be to say he felt… safe?
Because Wally might drop him as a joke—not that Dick couldn't hang on himself—but Wally could and did try to drop him sometimes, and Wally could leave even easier, run away and not look back, and Dick wouldn't even be able to catch him.
Robin caught scores of strangers every week, and failed to catch him boyfriend every night.
Sighing once, Dick lifted his head, pulling back to look at Wally.
Sometimes, he was thankful that he didn't remember every crime scene they swooped in to investigate, how much it had hurt to have that baseball bat crash into his body or the sound his ribs made as they cracked under Deathstroke's boot.
But then there were times like this, days like this when Dick was so very aware of the fact that if—and it was such a big 'if' that it was almost a 'when'—something happened, he would probably forget.
Like he'd forgotten far too many details about his parents.
So he sat silently in his best friend's lap, and did his best to memorize everything about this moment. Robin took in Wally's arms warm around him, his hair askew and his face glowing in the sunset. Richard neatly categorized he sound and smell and taste of what it meant to feel safe.
And Dick committed to memory the amount of happiness one person could give him, running over everything he wished he could actually bring himself say.
I'm glad you blew yourself up.
I'm glad you wanted to be Kid Flash.
I'm glad you liked me.
I'm glad you loved me.
I'm so thankful that you're alive.
What came out of his mouth, however, was a simple and childlike, "Are we going now?"
"Uhm, sur-" Wally began, but was interrupted by long low growl from his stomach. "… but maybe I should finish off the tarts first."
Between the freezing dip in the lake and the running on water, he probably needed rest and more than a little to eat.
With one hand around Dick to keep him in place, he pushed the swing as far as he could back to the bags of food, precariously balancing on tip toe as he leaned over until his fingertips grazed the top tupperware.
"Gottit," he grinned, letting go and letting the swing slide back in the opposite direction. He popped off the cover and ate one, chewing thoughtfully and staring at the sunset as the swing rocked side to side.
His foot grazed the backpack he'd set beside the tree. The backpack with the homework he'd brought.
Well.
"Homework."
There were at least eight or so tarts left. They probably had time.
And now was as good a time as any.
"Hey, uh, Dick?" He swallowed the last bite. "Do you mind grabbing my bag real quick? I should, uhm …"
He let his sentence trail off, trying to suppress the subtle blush creeping into his cheeks as he gestured to the bag, just out of his arms reach, but within Dick's.
…Homework?
"Um… yeah."
You brought homework with you?