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Dick and Wally time yaaaaay!
o.o.o.o
Chapter length: 5,156 words
o.o.o.o
The scent of bleach was so overwhelming that Wally was sure his olfactory receptors would be damaged by it.
He had spent the entirety of his morning hours mixing up and utilizing a bleach concoction to try and save his furniture from the blood of the very strange Artemis.
After, of course, picking up all the clothes and various items she had strewned all over his bedroom floor while prancing around his house in her birthday suit.
So basically is was not the kind of morning he wanted to discuss in his weekly phone calls to his mother.
"Hi mom, what's going on? How's dad doing? Who me? I've just been scrubbing dried up blood from that couch you guys helped me buy a few years back. S'no big, I'm much more interested about your day!"
Yeah, that wouldn't go well.
With a sigh the scientist leaned back to observe the results of his latest bout of vigorous scrubbing. The stain was far less garish than it had been when he'd started, but the only accomplishment he'd made with it was that it now resembled the faded color of an old cherry Koolaid spill. A much more passible excuse for Wally West, but it still simulated incriminating body fluids more than he'd like.
He groaned out loud, dropping the worn, pink-stained rag back into the bucket before combing his fingers frustratedly through his tousled hair.
"She could have at least stayed to help," he grumbled to himself, sitting with a flop onto the chair he had borrowed from his kitchen. His lower lip pouted outward as he turned his attention to the window, arms crossed. The sun was filtering in through the open pane, and it was difficult for Wally to accept it had only been several hours since Artemis had left in his clothes. "It's her blood…"
Like she had chosen to be shot?
Wally scowled at his own thoughts, observing one of his red hands absently; the crimson tinge of his raw skin reminded him jarringly of last night.
All morning his mind had drifted back to the questionable blonde. And it wasn't just to think about her incredible naked bod that he had innocently taken note of.
He was way more mature than that.
Hah.
Aside from that though, he wondered if she was okay.
What if Artemis hadn't made it home?
She had certainly seemed like a mildly unstable individual, and her wound… well, she should have been laid low for at least a few days. Or a week. It was entirely possible, he supposed, that she could have been simply experiencing a high period and completely relapsed into horrible, delusional pain before she could make it back home.
Wherever her home even was.
"Should have taken her home," Wally scolded himself, his fingers curling around his biceps. "What a stupid move, just letting her walk away like that. What if she got herself killed?"
The thought made him feel uneasy.
On the off chance Artemis hadn't passed out (unlikely), what if she had traveled back through the place she had been attacked to start with? What if her would-be killers were waiting for her there? What if she was so unstable she didn't even know her way back to her home?
"Idiot!" Wally growled at himself, getting more antsy and frustrated with each passing thought. He stood up so suddenly that his chair fell over.
He had let a woman who was barefoot, clad in nothing but baggy clothes, and injured, walk herself home in Gotham freaking City? If Mary West was sitting there with him right then, she would have given him a good earful about what a horrible gentlemen and indecent human being he had been.
'I thought I raised you better than that, Wallace West!'
And she'd be right on all accounts. She had raised him better.
Yet the sad truth was that Wally knew he would be doomed to live in the dark about Artemis no matter what direction her story had taken.
Wally was no psychologist, but it didn't take one to pick up on body language that shouted loud and clear, 'I don't want to be here and there's no way in hell I'm coming back, you crazy ginger'.
Which is why I should just forget about her, he tried to convince himself mentally, sighing and bending down to begin anew on the cleansing of his furniture. Why waste my time? If she didn't care about her life then why should…
He bit down hard on his tongue to quell the stinging thoughts. No, that way of thinking wasn't even in his DNA. He cared. He cared a whole awful lot about life, about her life.
He couldn't fathom just letting a dying human being expire right in front of him, no matter what they thought of themselves. There was nothing on the planet that could convince him that everything from the previous night had been a waste of his time.
Wherever you are, I really hope you got there safe, Wally thought, frowning blankly at the messed cushions. The blood seemed so trivial now.
He wondered more than ever what events had gotten her shot in the first damn place. Who had shot her, why was she out so late in a bad neighborhood, and most importantly of all, why had she been in the nude when he found her?
It was not a crass intentioned thought, it was one that bubbled and frothed with potential rage. All of the worst case scenarios kept running through his head over and over.
What if someone had sexually assualted her, then she'd gotten herself away and they'd shot her in spite?
She'd have probably had bruises if she'd been assaulted...
But it wasn't enough to reassure him. There were only so many situations he could envision her in which the climax resulted in her naked and shot on a dark weeknight.
Wally shook his head violently, trying to quash all of those thoughts. He had to or it'd eat him up from the inside out until he was hunting down the woman's would-be killer and interrogating them until they fessed up.
Come to think of it, that didn't sound like such a bad idea...
"This blood isn't going anywhere anyway," the redhead said aloud, slowing in his attempts with the rag. "I need to go on a jog or something… blow off some steam…"
Wally was just about to do exactly that when his front door opened, and Dick Grayson stepped in like he owned the place.
The man was in his police uniform, his wide shoulders far more tense than they usually were when he swaggered into his best pal's apartment looking for shits and giggles. It was because of this that Wally could immediately tell something was off.
"Dick, what's up?" the scientist asked curiously, happy for the distraction. He straighened up and dropped his rag into the bucket; bleach water splashed over his arms and face.
"Hey," Dick said breathlessly, not having looked at Wally yet as he swiftly turned and closed the door behind him. "I've had a call. Dude, we really need to ta—"
Upon facing his friend, the dark-haired man froze in place with his mouth open in mid-sentence, staring at Wally with wide blue eyes. It was a freaked out kind of expression, maybe the way Wally would expect his friend to look at him if he'd sprouted an extra head in an experiment gone wrong. Not that Wally logically thought that would happen or anything, but Dick was always on his case about his home science lab and seemed thoroughly convinced Wally was going to mutate into something grotesque one day.
Very funny, highly improbable.
But then, that was Dick Grayson in a nutshell.
"You alright?" Wally asked, snapping his fingers. "What kind of call? Work call? Or are you having Babs problems again? Oh wait, I bet Zee hit on you again, didn't she?" Wally groaned. "Dude, I am so not relationship counseling you again, do I look like I've gotten laid in the last year? You're on your own."
Wally had this tendency to blab when he was unsure about something. And he was very unsure about the slightly horrified look Dick still had on his face.
"Jesus Wally, what the hell did you do!?" Grayson exclaimed, voice strangled as he took a step forward.
The redhead was so confused by his behavior; what was with everyone in his life being so odd here lately? Was there some kind of new drug going around the underground?
So good even the law enforcement was getting hooked on it, obviously.
"Man, what are you talking about?" Wally inquired back, watching his friend's wild eyes dart from his chest to the couch. Then, it sort of clicked for Wally. "Oh… "
He must have looked like a homicidal lunatic to Dick, standing there with sleep crazy hair, tired eyes, and a gigantic, deep red blood stain on his white t-shirt. When he had carried his charge home, she had bled all over his clothes, and it had seeped through his blue cotton button down shirt onto the one beneath. Wally had been so distracted by everything in the last twelve hours that he had forgotten to ever shower or at least change into some clean duds.
So now Dick was seeing what looked like his best friend turned axe murderer, frantic in his maddened attempts to wash away the evidence of his act of crime.
Wally's eyes bugged out with the realization of it all. He brought his hands up in front of himself, waving them in a gesture of surrender as he stepped back from the sofa.
"I swear this isn't what it looks like!" he yelped loudly, unsure of what to say to remedy the situation. How could he have been so dumb to forget to clean himself up? Who sat around in someone else's blood for twelves hours? "I know this looks really bad."
"Bad?" Dick managed. "Wally, this is— am I going to have to drag my best friend's ass down to the station for questioning? I can't believe this!" He reached for his belt, his fingers resting readily on the cool metal of his handcuffs; a relfexive reaction rather than a hostile one.
Wally still couldn't believe he was even seeing the gesture though.
"Dude, really? You actually think that I—? Oh man, friendship terminated!" the redhead groused, crossing his arms.
"Wally, you clearly aren't seeing this from my point of view right now. I'm with the law, and right now you're looking kind of criminal! Believe me, I don't want to do this, but you need to start explaining right now or I'm going to have to take action," Dick said to him, pulling his hand away and gesturing at the blood. "I've known you for years and I know you're not a murderer, but I can't just ignore this."
"Alright, alright! I understand, dude, I do," Wally told him, hating everything about the situation. It was funny that he had thought he couldn't suffer two bad days in a row, but so far it was shaping up to be just that. "Just… chill and give me a chance here before you drag me downtown for questioning. Okay?"
Dick opened his mouth to answer, but right then the scientist's stomach let out a loud, protesting gurgle, making him clutch at his empty abdomen. He hadn't even had any breakfast this morning, which was a pretty serious thing for him.
There was hardly anything in the world that could tear Wally away from his precious food, but apparently bleeding blonde women were more important to his brain than getting proper feeding.
Clearly it needed to sort out it's priorities.
Wally gave his pal an apologetic look. The man's eyebrow went up.
"Seriously?" he deadpanned. "You're under threat of arrest and you're thinking about food? I would say I'm surprised, but exasperated is a better word for it," Dick said, rubbing a hand over his face with a resigned half smile.
"I forgot to eat breakfast!" Wally defended, walking into his kitchen; he could hear Dick's boots thudding across the floor as he followed, no doubt eyeing the bloody couch for a better look as he passed it. "I've been… distracted."
"With killing people?"
"No! Damnit, Dick, that's not funny!"
"Neither is you or your apartment right now."
Wally ignored him, walking over to his double wide refrigerator and sticking his head inside of it busily. He was aware that Dick was hovering behind him impatiently, and he never appreciated someone rubbernecking him where food was concerned.
"Sit the hell down while I make me some pancakes or something," he said, grabbing a couple of pieces of string cheese. "You want coffee?"
He heard Dick sigh, then a moment later the scraping of wood against linoleum told him that he had made himself comfortable at the kitchen table.
"It's noon but... Sure, why not. Look, I came over here because we got a call down at the station. There was a body found on the outskirts of the slums."
Wally's blood turned to ice in his veins.
Oh no.
An image of a blonde haired, broken body consumed his mind's eye. It was like a nightmare coming to life, his fears being confirmed.
He lifted his head up, bumping it against the fridge in his haste and dropping the stick of cheese that had been hanging between his teeth when he yelped in pain. Rubbing at his sore head and trying not to panic too much in front of Dick, Wally gave him a searching, desperate look.
"What? Who? What did sh— what did they look like? Was it someone we knew?"
"Nah. Male, confirmed member of a prominent gang," Dick said simply, waving it away. Wally felt like he could breathe again.
It wasn't her…
He repeated it in his head like it was a mantra, his heart thudding to a slower pace.
"But that's not why I came to see you. We got some witness testimonies from the nearby Bibbo's restaurant. There was a man in there that was pretty convinced he had seen a suspicious redhead carrying someone out in the rain last night as he left the restaurant, after a series of gunshots had been heard."
Wally didn't look at him. Instead he busied himself with grabbing a couple of mugs and setting the coffee maker up correctly, taking his time with the buttons like he had never used it before in his life. He cleared his throat once the machine whirred into action, heating up the water. He had begun mixing pancake batter in a bowl before he bothered to answer.
"I'm not the only redhead in Gotham," he grumbled, pouring the pan full of slightly lumpy batter. He didn't even know why he was lying to Dick about it; maybe because he was already on thin ice with the whole blood everywhere thing. Either way, he wasn't too keen on confirming his presence near Bibbo's just now.
"But you are the only one I know of that visits it religiously," Dick pointed out cheekily, grinning. Wally had to give him that one; Bibbo's was pretty much his dinner every single night after work. Hey, he didn't claim it to be the healthiest habit in the world, but that's why he kept himself healthy by jogging it all off… then eating some more.
A neverending cycle of gaining and losing calories, as he liked to reason.
"But even more interesting," Dick plowed on, raising his voice over the combined sounds of coffee trickling into a cup and the mix starting to sizzle. "I saw a woman in your clothes today. Right outside the police line."
Wally fumbled in shock, knocking the bowl off the counter with his elbow. Luckily there wasn't much left inside of it, but it still made one hell of a mess, splattering over everything within a two foot radius, which included his pants. It didn't phase the scientist any, as he was far too elated at the prospect that Artemis may have been alright after all.
"What, you saw her?!"
Dick raised his eyebrows. Wally sighed, turning back to his late breakfast. He flipped the giant pancake onto it's other side before addressing his pal again.
"Okay, so I was the redhead at Bibbo's… but I wasn't doing anything suspicious…"
He told Dick everything.
He told him about the gunshots, the hesitation, the crashing sound that led him to a blonde woman bleeding. He told him about patching her up("That's where all the blood came from, are you satisfied now?"), about her roaming around his house naked the next morning and digging through his stuff like it was no big deal(Dick cackled at this point), and lastly about her hurry to leave.
"Wait a minute," Dick interrupted at the end of it all, palms resting flat on the table. "So this chick was dying, but she refused to let you call an ambulance?"
Wally glanced away uncomfortably.
"Well… sort of. I just assumed she didn't have insurance, or maybe she was… a, uh… you know." His face flushed. Somehow he knew it didn't seem quite right, but it had been his first thought.
"Workin' the corner?" Dick supplied, his face devoid of humor. He had probably been on the scene of one too many such cases to find it anything more than absolutely depressing.
"Well, yeah. What are you thinking?" Wally asked, eyeing him after flipping his oversized and half-burnt pancake onto a plate with practice.
"A lot of things I wish I could say I wasn't thinking," Dick admitted, narrowing his eyes in thought. Wally handed him a mug filled with coffee before moving back to the stove; Dick sipped at it thoughtfully. "Wally, are you still in contact with her at all? Her being shot near the same place that man was killed... I can't help but think it might all be connected. I need to ask her some questions."
"What, you think she killed that guy?" Wally asked, his heart hammering at the very idea.
What if she had found her killer and exacted some sort of revenge?
Wally may have wanted to hurt the person for what they'd done to the Artemis, but that was all more figurative; sure, he'd like to see the perpetrator get locked up, but taking someone's life?
That was unfathomable.
But what if he had saved the life of a cold blooded murderer without realizing it?
No, a voice told him with certainty. That's not right at all.
He seemed so certain about a woman he didn't even know, yet he knew deep down that it was true. She was no killer. A little off her rocker, but he couldn't believe she was a killer.
"Maybe, maybe not. She didn't tell you anything, did she? Anything at all about what she might be doing or where she might be going?"
Wally laughed at the very idea.
"Dude, the woman was half-delirious with pain and probably a little psychotic. She didn't tell me anything; hell, she barely let me touch her to patch her up. What makes you think she'd tell me a thing when she was so determined to get away from me and back to her friends?"
Friends. He couldn't forget the way she had used that term, the way her expression had resembled that of someone just told they had to endure a very unpleasant visit at the dentist's office. Whoever her "friends" were, she hadn't sounded like she thought very highly of them.
"And she wanted to leave before her friends got concerned…" Dick murmured more to himself, eyes slit. He looked at Wally. "What I'm thinking now is that you may have gotten yourself involved in something you shouldn't be involved with," the raven-haired man sighed out, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Wally, it sounds honestly to me like a gang war of some kind. Or..." he trailed off, expression pensive. "Assuming for a moment there is a connection between her and the crime scene, and given the state of the victim, it could have been…"
Wally immediately knew what Dick was thinking, and the ludicrousy of it made his blood pressure rise. He shook his head, anger etched across his features; it was the kind of crap a logical guy like him just couldn't tolerate, and never would. It would never cease to astound him, how such silly rumors could turn even the smartest people into blathering idiots.
"Dude, don't you even say it!" he growled, pouring more batter into the frying pan. "I can't stand it when you talk about that shit. It's stupid. She is not!"
"Wally, you don't even know this woman! Can you just get traught for about ten seconds and consider the possibility that there is something to all this werewolf talk?"
There it was, the thing that made Wally lose both his hair and his faith in the human race.
Werewolves.
What a major load. It was no secret to anyone that the slums were a strange, creepy, and very dangerous place, full of all sorts of criminal weirdos who wanted to work their way up to the top, make a name for themselves. Somewhere along the line, rumours had gotten started among Gotham that there were some kind of… beasts that had moved in and started laying claim to the territory. It had started out as a joke several years ago, probably set ablaze by some delinquent college students that'd consumed too much booze.
Then the media had gotten in on it all. Every single dog attack that happened within the invisible boundary of the slums was accompanied by a news story that questioned whether it really was a dog attack at all. Then the joking voices became more serious, and Wally's tolerance for the joke waned with each passing day.
"Are there werewolves in Gotham?"
"Third dog mauling this week… could it really be the work of feral beasts?"
"...group is determined to shed light on the reality of werewolves in the Gotham slums."
"We have to start taking this seriously before it's too late."
Wally would bet all of his money that it was some douchebag gangsters that called themselves the Werewolves, who by now were most likely eating up all the publicity and thinking of ways they could rake in some cash off of it. It physically pained him to see the entire city starting to accept creatures from myth as a viable possibility for the severe death toll in the darker part of town. An insult, actually.
"Don't you think it's a little upsetting to people's memories of the dead, to suggest to them with a completely serious face that their loved one was slashed to death by a werewolf?" Wally snorted, flipping the finished pancake onto the plate with the other one. He grabbed his pancakes and a bottle of syrup, and sat himself down across from Dick, who appeared unphased by Wally's question. "And by the police no less! It's a lie on top of pain they're already experiencing."
Dick shook his head, leaning back in his seat.
"You haven't seen half the things I have, Wally. Spend a few weeks on the job sometime, and I think it'd have you singing a new tune."
"Pass. And doubt it." Wally dumped the remaining half-bottle of syrup all over his flapjacks. "Werewolves are magic, and this man doesn't do magic. Because magic doesn't exist, in case you hadn't noticed, and there is no logical, scientific explanation for the existence of any sort of… were-monsters to be roaming the streets of Gotham at night. You heard how dumb that sounded, right? Now imagine being me and having to listen to everyone talk about it like it's as plausible as a thunderstorm rolling in."
The cop rolled his eyes. The redhead stabbed into his breakfast with gusto, shoving three or four fork fulls of it into his mouth before bothering to start chewing it all.
"Mmm, 'ats goo'," he hummed, practically melting at the delicious sugary taste spreading over his tongue. There was simply no better way to start the day than with a giant stack of pancakes… or three. Wally would almost say he couldn't function normally without the things in his system; after all, it was about the only smell that could get him out of the bed in a flash in the early morning. " 'ou wan' shum?" he asked Dick, swallowing. "I'm definitely making more of these, and I'm feeling nice despite your crazy talk."
"No thanks," Dick said, holding up his coffee mug to indicate that it was enough. "Some of us have been up since seven, I'm ready for lunch."
"More for me!" Wally sang happily, taking a swig from his own coffee. Dick waited for him to come up for air before shaking his head.
"You know, I'm not going to sit here all day trying to convince your oversized ego that there's a such thing as werewolves," Dick said, standing up with a grinding of chair legs. "But I am going to tell you that you should really watch yourself. Regardless of who this Artemis girl is and what she's involved in. I don't think I could handle having to choose between the law and my best friend."
Wally's brows furrowed.
"I wouldn't ask you to do that. If I ever got on the wrong side of the law I would fully expect you to treat me just like anyone else. You know that."
"It's not that simple. I've arrested a… friend, before. It's hard."
The scientist averted his gaze, well aware of who he was talking about.
"I remember..." Wally reminded him quietly.
It had been a hard time for everyone involved in the case, not only for Dick but for Barbara and Bruce and Tim and…. the list went on. Even Wally himself had felt the repercussions of it all, had felt somehow betrayed by someone he had considered a good friend. He never wanted to cause Dick or his friends or family that sort of pain.
A silence passed between them, in which Wally didn't take a single bite of his late breakfast.
"Well," he began in that same soft tone, looking his best friend dead in the eye and smiling a little wanly, "you don't have to worry at all about that. I'm pretty positive that Artemis is never showing up on my doorstep ever again."
"You know, I'm surprised you let a strange woman just take off with your Stanford hoodie like that," Dick said, scooting his chair in and leaning on the back of it. A smirk graced his features; a clear attempt to steer the conversation toward lighter waters. "Your lucky Stanford hoodie with the gigantic bleach stain on it?"
"Shu' up," Wally growled, cheeks filled to the brim with food. Dick cackled at him.
"Come on, you never shut up about that thing. Let's see, how was it? 'Dick, you don't understand, this hoodie has powers! I was wearing it when I aced my exams and the first time I got laid!' Something like that, right?" Dick wheedled, clearly having a good time recalling the fond memories from their two overlapping years at Gotham University.
Wally had originally attended the prestigious Stanford University in California, but in the middle of his sophomore year had learned of some pretty stellar opportunities for himself if he transferred to Gotham University clear on the other side of the states. It seemed that somehow the local branch of Star Labs had learned of himself and a few other exceedingly intelligent students and offered them some interesting career possibilities if they attended their last years at Gotham Uni. It was there that Wally had met Dick, whom had been just starting his Freshman year at the very same college.
And thus was Wally doomed to be life friends with a man that took great pleasure in causing him any sort of embarrassment and discomfort, especially when it came to matters of romance or flirting, which some liked to argue that Wally did far too much. He totally disagreed.
"Dude, I never said any of that! Okay, so I did mention it acing me some exams, but I'm pretty sure you're making up that last part!"
He wasn't. Wally really had been wearing that hoodie when he got laid for the first time. It wasn't like the world's best thing ever, because he had been totally awkward and weird and inexperienced in all things woman, so he liked to pretend that he had no memory of bragging about such things to Dick.
So far it had done wonders for his ego.
"Right, right."
"Even if that were true, which it's not, don't act like you've never had something you felt like made you lucky!" Wally reposted, getting up from his own seat to start making himself a few more pancakes. "Like that super expensive, incredibly awesome calculator that Babs got you in sophomore year of highschool, which you swore up and down was the sole reason for your exam success forever thereafter? The calculator you treat like a freaking baby? Ringing any bells?"
"Hey, that thing is special, do you have any idea how hard it is to find one that includes the differential equations function?" Dick defended. Wally grinned to himself, glad to have gotten the subject off of himself. "Babs worked her ass off to get me that thing, of course I treat it like a baby."
"Right, and it has nothing to do with the fact that she also gave you a sweet wittle kiss on the cheek when she gave it to you," Wally crooned, making exaggerated kissy faces in his direction. "Oh, and let's not forget that special blue and black jacket of yours that you just so happen to wear every single time you see Zatanna. You thinkin' maybe one day it'll get you a kiss from her, too?"
"Alright, ha ha, Wally. I've gotta get back to the station now," Dick insisted abruptly, already striding out of the kitchen. The redhead knew he had struck quite the nerve; Dick had been struggling with feelings toward both of the women for a few years, and it was rather painful (yet incredibly entertaining) for Wally to have to watch. It was like an ongoing television series that he couldn't wait to see the finale of.
He just hoped there wouldn't be any tears.
"Have fun," he called cheerily.
"And let me know if you have anymore contact with Artemis," Dick called.
Wally's face fell a bit. He didn't answer, and the sound of his front door closing was like an echo in his ears.