saga/title/fandom: You and I Got Something

author: Dimitri Aidan

rating/genre: (PG-13 (for now))- Drama/Romance

warnings: slash, adult situations, adult language

summary: (Flash/GL, Batman/Wonder Woman, Superman/Lois Lane. A little Nightwing/OMC and Hawkgirl/GL) As they get ready for Bruce and Diana's wedding, Flash thinks. Getting together isn't easy in their line of work, but somehow he and John managed it; evil robots, best friends, and Yellow Lanterns be damned.

comments/disclaimers: The lack of GL and Flash interaction in JL:U spawned this story. Actually the lack of Flash in general was upsetting. In the comic Raven is an empath. I’m not sure if that applies to ‘Teen Titans’ on Cartoon Network but it doesn’t matter much. She, at some point, used her power to convince Wally that he was in love with her. She had good intentions but…you know that’s a shitty thing to do. And in this story Wally is decidedly fucked up because of it. He just doesn’t know it yet.

Chapter 7

But It’s Only Me

Wally rubbed at his eyes sleepily as he shuffled through the tower. He was suddenly very grateful for the automatic doors the tower had because it was way too damn early for him to hope to function correctly. There was a 50/50 chance that things like opening doors were beyond him at the moment.

“Wally-” Oh hey, look, it was John. Whatever else he may have said was lost on Wally as his shoulder slammed into a door and a sharp jab of pain ran down his arm. Son of a bitch. Well. It was now officially way to fucking early for him to be awake.

He couldn’t believe he’d just walked into a door. In front of John no less. So humiliating.

A hand grabbed his arm lightly and he was pulled away from the evil wall. He glanced over to see John kind of smirking at him in that strange way of his and all thoughts of denting the wall vanished. He was such a dork. John more or less led him through the maze that the tower had become to Wally’s sleep deprived state and into the break room.

Not that Wally couldn’t do it on his own. It was a matter of damage control. In that letting someone else control his progress resulted in less damage.

He was sitting at the table with a cup of steaming coffee in front of him before he really realized what was going on. He blinked at the cup then picked it up, heat from the cup flowing to his fingers.

John slunk into the seat across from him and picked up the book he must have been reading. Wally watched the other man what he hoped was discreetly but with his luck it probably wasn’t. John seemed to be really intent on his book but Wally knew better than to assume that preoccupied meant unaware. Because it didn’t. John was always aware of his surroundings. That was just…part of what being John was all about. He took a sip of his coffee, slightly surprised to find John had dumped in the ridiculous amount of coffee Wally liked, and let the warmth seep into him.

This was the part of tower duty he really and truly hated. Waking up a five AM to watch hours upon hours upon hours of news, picking up on every disaster and event so they could give out jobs. He had learned after the first time that having an alternate source of amusement was a good idea unless you wanted to risk falling into a coma.

Maybe he could use this time to catch up on his studying for school. He kept saying he was going to do it and then…well, not going it. Juggling school and ‘saving the world’ had gotten easier with the extended League, but it was still difficult.

And he still didn’t have time for an actual job. He was wandering aimlessly through college; most people were done around 24 and he hadn’t even started until he was 21...and, oh yeah, he still didn’t know what the hell he wanted to do.

The whole ‘hero’ thing had kind of fucked up any chance a person had at leading even a semi-normal life and, in his case, but him years behind everyone else.

Sometimes he wondered if should regret not giving it up after Barry had died. He hadn’t even really mourned the man, he’d just taken up the task of being Flash, because it’s what he had to do and he’d done it without question. He’d put college on hold along with most of his life and just…done what he thought he’d had to do. Even Dick had taken time away from the costume, or at least more time away than Wally ever had, and yet Dick was the workaholic.

And he was the slacker, comic relief guy who was barely treated like a teenage sidekick half of the time, in spite of being one of the original seven. And it wasn’t like he was saying he was bitter or angry about it (Though to be honest he was) he was just wondering what a guy had to do to be taken seriously? Did he need to develop another personality or become a recluse who didn’t even own a TV or be shunned by his ‘people’?

Hell, hadn’t he already done half of those things? He didn’t have any real ‘non-powers having’ friends or people close to him, and there were times when the lines between Wally and Flash could blur just a bit. Why was it that he could work this hard and do this much and still be a joke?

A hot splash on his hand was the thing that alerted him to the fact he wasn’t exactly sitting still anymore. He dropped the cup with a cry, cursing softly as he watched it fall almost in slow motion. (Super speed effected time sometimes and wasn’t that just slightly terrifying?) He cradled his burned hand for less than a second and then started to reach for the cup when a green light surrounded it. It hovered its way over to the sink where it fell with a small thump and splash.

“Erhm. Thanks man.” He rubbed his hand again, sighing. He needed to go back to bed and try to start the day over; sans running into walls and getting angry and burning himself like a moron.

“Not a problem.” John was on his feet and again his hand was on Wally’s arm. It was kind of strange that they’d probably touched more in the past ten minutes then in the past two weeks. His hand was placed under a stream of chilly water and some of the pain was chased away.

He glanced up at John from the corner of his eye and couldn’t help but squirm under the sheer amount of attention the older man was paying to his burn. He was not going to swoon or blush or anything equally as embarrassing. He wasn’t. Really. Honest.

Shit.

He was blushing.

He had to learn to control that. He was constantly being reduced to the level of a kid with their first crush. It didn’t make sense.

“So Kid, what’s eating you?”

John’s fingers left him and Wally was momentarily struck by the sense of…loss that brought on. He’d become used to John’s slightly calloused, but warm, fingers on his skin even if they’d one been touching a few moments.

Then, registering the question, shrugged and shuffled back to the table. “Nothing. Just tired. You know I hate being up this early.”

John arched an eyebrow as if to say he knew Wally was lying through his teeth. And hell, maybe he did know. Wally laid his head on the table and tried to pretend he didn’t care that John knew he was lying, even though he did kind of care. Not enough to tell the truth, but still.

“You’ll be used to it by the end of the week.” John said finally.

“Joy.” He muttered. “There is something unnatural about you being awake, making coffee, stopping potentially dangerous spills and reading…what are you reading? Does that say ‘World Takeover for Dummies’? By Assorted Criminal Masterminds?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty good.” John said as if reading a book on how to conquer the world written by a bunch of psychos they’d put in a jail various times was the most normal thing in the world. Who knew, maybe it was perfectly normal and Wally had once again missed that boat.

“Right. GL-”

“It’s important to know your enemies Wally. That way you can anticipate and counteract their next movement or plan without having to spend hours in a lab or beating up informants.”

Wally blinked. “I like beating up informants.” It was a great stress reliever and he found no one ever told him to stop it or knock it off.

“…I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, okay?”

“Uh. Okay.”

“Because if I heard that I’ll have to tell Clark and maybe Bruce and you probably won’t be allowed into the field until they find someone dumb enough to try and figure out what makes you have such violent tendencies.” John’s lips quirked almost amusedly.

“Ah. Carry on then.”

John snorted and reopened his book, spine creasing slightly. “Besides I think half of the criminal community has been following this book word for word lately. There’s even a chapter about evil electronics.”

That caught Wally’s interest. He picked his head up instantly and craned his neck as if that would help him see the aforementioned chapter. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Can I borrow that later?”

“I already photocopied the chapter. It’s in the monitor room.” He tried not to feel all warm and tingly because John knew him that well. Though, really, John was being suspiciously intuitive this morning. Knowing that he was going to be useless and keeping him from cracking his skull open, getting the coffee sweet enough without having un-dissolved sugar resting on the bottom, and now the book thing.

Weird.

But nice.

“Thanks.”

John nodded almost distractedly before standing up. “Not a problem. We should get started so J’onn can go mediate or whatever it is he does when he isn’t around us.”

“Pray for the strength to deal with us?”

“No, that’s what I do when you aren’t around.”

Wally gasped in mock offense. “That wounds me John, really. Deep inside, it hurts. I’m crying silent tears right now. You should be ashamed.”

“And deep inside I am ashamed.”

“Liar.”

“Yeah.”

They’d been at the monitor thing for a few hours, sent the others to divert a few little natural disasters, hostage situations, and rebel coups, and Wally was officially bored out of his skull. It was bound to happen of course, as he’d been unfortunate enough to leave his English book god only knew where and his plan to study had been shot to hell.

So he decided to fall back on one of his favorite pastimes.

Annoying the shit out of John.

“Is it just me or was J’onn really eager to get away from you earlier?” That much was actually true. The Martian had barely spoken a word to John and had very pointedly not gotten too close or looked the man in the eye before all but fleeing the room when they’d relieved him of duty for the day.

“It was just you.”

“Really? Are you sure you haven’t been having any thoughts that would send him running for the hills like that.”

John paused, eyes darting up from his book for a moment. Then his brow furrowed and Wally couldn’t help but be a little startled at the thoughtful expression. Why did John even have to think about that? He wasn’t supposed to think, he was supposed to make some witty but crushing remark so that Wally could continue his pointless questioning in order to break up the monotony of watching the stupid monitors.

That was just how things worked. John couldn’t go messing with the flow of things.

Then John smirked. “Unlike you Wally, my mind couldn’t be mistaken for a sewer.”

That was better. “You trying to imply something GL?”

“No.” John was back to his book now. “I was saying that your mind is so dark and twisted it’s a wonder you haven’t run off and joined one of the nuts who wrote this book.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

John nodded almost sagely though he didn’t look back up. “I know that.”

“You do?”

“Of course. You aren’t nearly that shallow.”

“I’m not? Are you sure? I could actually use the self-esteem boost every now and then.” Not that that he was admitting to having low self-esteem to John.

“Yes. The way to your heart is sugar, gore, and violence.”

“…fair enough.” Wally had to admit he had a point. Then he smiled mischievously. “Is that why you agreed to watch that horror movie marathon with me?”

Wally had been somewhere near elated to find out that the marathon they’d started watching the night before was going on all week long. It had taken a little bit of work to get John to agree to watch it with him when they let J’onn take over the nightshift.

But not as much work as it would have normally taken him.

He expected John to roll his eyes and say something about trying to avoid Wally’s whining or taking pity on him since he had no friends or some other fantastically scathing burn that Wally would laugh off before tormenting his friend some more.

Because that was how the game worked.

John’s smirk was enough to make Wally forget how to breathe. “Yes.”

Why did John insist on changing the rules?

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