Robin's heart was pounding out of his chest. His lips parted, so close to Wally's, and the fire in the hand thumbing his cheek had an unbreakable grip on him. Even though it was gentle. Even though it was just Wally. It was a demand, a magnetic pull. It was so deep-reaching that he knew if he let it have him that he'd never be the same – he'd never be able to look at Wally the same again, or at himself, because it would never fade away, this feeling. It would suckle his heart like a parasite and live within him until he was rotting away in the ground. It would fade but never, not ever be gone. And he wanted it. He knew this kind of need only because he'd known this kind of loss. He'd needed his parents all those years ago, he had needed Bruce like this. And he'd let them make homes in his heart only to be torn and shredded and cast out and left behind. In the end it was inevitable. But with this body so close, and this touch so strong, he couldn't find it in his heart to care.
/"You'd be my first. Would I be yours?"/

"Yes," he declared, with a dizzying roil in his gut, and the contract was sealed. Wally kissed him then; he kissed him so softly, so sweetly, that his head exploded with a chemical bitterness in order to counteract it. It stuck his mind like a blade and sliced through his heart. So merciless. His mouth shaped against it. The press of those firm lips tore him to pieces and all he wanted was more. Their lips drew apart and then drew back together once, twice. Wally sank his fingers into Robin's dark hair. Robin gripped Wally's waist, needing something to cling to in order to stay grounded. He tasted pizza sauce and laughter and the rolling musk of want. In the end, it was better to love and lose, than to never love at all, right?

They grinned and drew closer and closer beneath the piled blankets and pillows, legs tangling, chests together, toes and fingertips touching. Wally wrapped Robin up in his arms and kissed his shoulder. He ran his hands along his back hypnotically, resting his chin in his dark hair, radiating heat and comfort. Robin pressed his nose into the crook of his neck and rested his cheek along his shoulder, his eyes sliding shut. One arm was curled against Wally's chest, the other still resting on his waist. Sleep drifted down on him like a blanket. It settled over his eyes and his body and cocooned him warmly in every crevice of his mind. He was sinking. Falling, slowly, carefully, until everything was darkness and the scent of Wally filling his nose, he drifted off. Slumber rolled over him like an ocean wave.

Beast Boy wandered into the garage, where Cyborg was drawing out blue prints for a new weapon in his arm, and sat on the table with his hands in his pockets. He sighed. Cyborg continued to draw without looking up. "Let me guess. Problem with Kid Flash?" He asked, carefully using a ruler to align two points on the paper.

"I just don't get it." Beast Boy blurted. "How could he get under his skin like that? I mean, Robin! He was thrown down craters into the earth and manipulated by Slade, and he still came out swinging. One crush goes missing for a few days and poof!" He turned to Cyborg, crossing his legs over the papers there. "Does love really do that to you?"

Cyborg glanced up at him. "Well, Raven said it was infatuation. But yeah. You let somebody that close to your heart, you start to need them, and losing them… You know how that is. We all do."

"Yeah, but Robin has always come back. He's always thrown it off and gotten his head back into the game. Will he be able to this time? I mean, they just met, and it's just… love lasts a long time."

"I don't know, BB. But you're right." Cyborg sat back, sighing. "Love does last a long time."

Robin woke with a jerk, his heart thundering and his head reeling with flashes of nightmares he barely remembered. His body shook with tremors. Somehow he was on his back, in a bed that wasn't his, in blankets that were unfamiliar to him. He felt like he was falling, sucking air silently into his lungs as quietly as possible. He'd been kidnapped before. Where was he now? Alongside him, the pillows he'd been leaning against morphed and shifted until he realized there was a person there. He shrank back in his stupor as warm arms wrapped around him.
"Robs?" Came a soft whisper. "Are you all right?"

Wally. It was just Wally. He was home. He had entirely forgotten he fell asleep here. He'd never shared a bed with anyone in his life, why be used to it now?
"Yeah," he whispered back shakily. "Sorry. Nightmare." A hand came out of the darkness and rubbed his arm, a chin rested on his shoulder, a body pushing up against his until they were flush, and each point of contact melted Robin's steely defensive mechanisms. Until now, he hadn't known anything to be able to calm him down physically. An expanding chest and the velvet rub of skin on skin drew endorphins from his brain that tickled his stressed brain. It tensed, then flexed, and then let go. Wally rested his hot palm in the center of his chest. A deep breath entered and escaped him. He wasn't alone. Everything was fine. He relaxed.

A soft kiss to his shoulder let him know Wally was satisfied with his reply. "Dream of Paris," he breathed, and sank back to sleep. Shutting his eyes, Robin did dream of Paris, but to his surprise it wasn't sunsets and fountains. It was entirely new. He dreamed about owning a small apartment, in a quaint town with cobblestone streets, that he shared with Wally. He dreamed that the roads were narrow and had clothing lines strung up between them. There were little mailboxes and flowers curtains across the way. They were on the bottom floor. Above them lived loud, rowdy families with loads of children. He even babysat sometimes. He dreamed that he rode a bicycle to college every morning in the pink sunrise fog with Wally tailing him on his own, and they always ate breakfast at a café with a big window that looked right out over the park. They rushed to class together and ate lunch together and spent hours pouring over their homework. Wally had his science textbooks. Robin even had law textbooks. He dreamed they had a black cat and they ordered pizza every other day of the week - and that they had always known each other, ever since they were kids, and that they always would.

Wally would burst in one day with some story about getting a science internship, and babble about it for weeks while Robin studied for mid-terms. They bought pies and cakes and cookies and celebrated with music loud enough to drown out the baby crying upstairs. Sitting back on the couch, tossing papers back and forth, Robin listened to Wally rave on and on about how excited he was to start the next day. Then when the next day came, Wally shut down entirely. He said nothing. Did nothing. For a month, he barely said a word besides grunting, and Robin would lean back in his computer chair in the next room and watch him write viciously in a notebook. His worry would roil in his gut.

Then Wally went missing. It was right around the time of a lab explosion and everyone thought he was just dead, because he'd been working there that night. But Robin knew different. He looked everywhere, asked everyone, put out fliers – nothing. Robin went back to their small apartment, and pet their cat, and made tea for one, and still nothing. He looked out his window and waited for years. He finished school. He got a job as a lawyer. And right before his first pay check, right before he planned to sell the apartment and get a nicer flat, Wally was sitting on the couch when he got home - petting the cat. Smiling, healthy, eating everything in sight, almost like he'd never even left. Almost.
He tripped over his words as he tried to explain - to normal, French-born, heartbroken Robin - how in the past two years he had acquired and perfected the ability to move his body with super speed.