Nowhere I Won't Find You
Nowhere I Won't Find You | Ao3
Wally vanishes. Dick finds this entirely unacceptable.
His first week off the Team, Dick runs the numbers. He has the data, both from samples he'd taken at the site and from the research he's able to hack from LexCorp. They keep dedicated servers for special projects, so everything they have on the anti-Reach tech is all in one place. Easy pickings.
He pins down the exact output levels (with regard to environmental considerations) of radiation, alien or otherwise; outlines any and all reactions the devices had and caused with peripheral elements, as well as what kind of energy that last piece of tech in the arctic was generating while in chrysalis mode; and graphs speed, trajectory, and the effects of energy discharge on a human body going at superhuman speeds.
He creates a digital simulation, maps the probabilities, and then reworks all the math from the ground up to ensure there are no errors.
He does this three more times. Meticulously.
On a Thursday morning, at four-seventeen, he calls Bruce.
"I need your help," he says curtly.
Bruce waits for him to continue. There's the faint click-tap of a keyboard over the line; there's the unmistakable symmetry of two people hard at work in the early hours.
Dick's never sure if he's been following in Batman's footsteps, or if he's simply cutting a parallel over time and distance. If these two things, somehow, might be the same. "I'm sending over some multisource data spreadsheets and a working model for-"
"It's been a long time since you've needed me to look over your homework," Bruce says in a colorless way that could, to someone else, come off as derisive. But Dick recognizes it for bland curiosity.
"No, the math is perfect," he says. "But I need to rebuild Bart's time machine."
Bruce terminates the call without further comment. Anxious minutes pass, the exhaustion and caffeine-crash pulling down on Dick like a wet cloak. At precisely four-fifty-seven, Bruce calls back.
"How long have you known?" He asks impatiently.
"For sure? About when I called you. But I had a hunch when he-when it happened." Dick swallows, a dry click, but tries to pass it off as anything else. A sigh, an exhale, impatience: one thing in the world that isn't fear or loss or treacherous hope. "People don't just disappear."
Bruce is silent with the weight of Dick's declaration between them: the truth that people do, that people are killed or trapped or transported, that they vanish to places you can't ever reclaim them from.
At length he says, "Contact Bart, but no one else. This is a longshot. Don't set yourself up for disappointment, Dick." He pauses briefly, and Dick almost thinks he'll offer some kind of-consoling platitude, or. Encouragement. But all he says is, "Tell Bart to keep his mouth shut."
"Thank you," Dick says.
The line disconnects a second time, and Dick crawls into bed. Despite his exhaustion, he's too keyed up to fall asleep for another few hours. When he does, it's to the same vision he's seen every night for the last week: a video feed of Wally, slowing down, fading out until he's. Gone.
Three weeks later in the Batcave, Nightwing's going over the coding for about the eightieth time while Superman focuses his eye lasers on their new prototype, works the circuitry on a molecular level until it adheres to their tremendously complicated schematics. Batman and Bart had recreated them from the original, from Bart's memory, and from the partial diagnostics Dick was able to pull from the fried data banks.
"Nightwing," Batman says firmly with his arms crossed, pointedly not looking at Bart. "You will be coming back."
Bart-Impulse-the new Kid Flash-glances at Batman with a mix of fear and admiration, but at least has the grace to look somewhat abash. "You're not-sending me back, too, are you? After Dick gets back? Since it's fixed now?"
"'Nightwing' when we're in costume, buddy," Dick corrects.
Bart's lip twists miserably. "I've made a life here, I'm on the Team. Don't make me go back."
"No one said anything about sending you back," Dick says, minimizing his wrist display and setting his hand on Bart's shoulder. "If that was in the cards, we would've fixed your time machine months ago."
Batman says nothing, passing Superman a thin ice pack when the work is complete. Superman presses it briefly to his eyes, flashes Batman a small smile. "Thanks, Bruce."
Batman sighs, long-suffering.
Superman rolls his eyes fondly. "We're all friends here."
"Not the point," Batman grumbles.
At Dick's side, Bart flutters his fingers nervously at superhuman speed. "So we're clear," he mutters, relief obvious on his face and in the set of his shoulders. "That-wasn't a future I'd wanna go back to. Bring my second-cousin home, okay?"
"That's the plan," Dick says, his stomach rolling over with everything he hasn't allowed himself to feel. Not yet. Not when he's in sight of avoiding the grief and fury altogether.
"Nightwing," Batman says seriously, passing over a small, remote device. "If our math is wrong-"
"It's not," Dick says easily.
"-if you do not find him, or if he is not alive-"
"He will be."
"You will be coming back," Batman says again. Then he bows his head, and almost looks sad. Well, as sad as a man can look in mask designed to instill abject terror. "Good luck."
Dick runs the numbers one last time. Then he climbs into the machine, rebuilt to bear two mostly-adult bodies, and activates the precise location in time and space where his data projects Wally 'landed'.
Because Wally did not disintegrate. Wally slipped dimensions.
The way time-travel works is that it doesn't. There is no past or future, no spot on a graph where you can point to and then appear, no magically significant historical event that a device could fixate on and gravitate toward.
There is reality; there is the eternal present; there are things happening, one after another, in an ongoing tapestry of vibrating molecules that you never get to see from a distance. There are endless versions and patterns stacked one on top of the other, versions where Bart's future is an apocalyptic wasteland or where Speedy was never cloned, where Dick's family wasn't killed. Where Bruce's wasn't.
Where Wally's opening his eyes to snow and sunlight, after closing them to chaos and energy and the dizzying blur of his uncle and cousin. To thousands of miles of ice in every endless direction.
Dick finds him immediately. There's no search, there's no long, drawn-out battle against some bizarre alternate-reality monster, there's just-
"Oof."
-Wally, still in his Kid Flash suit, spitting snow out of his mouth because the time machine landed right on top of him.
"Dude," he says, wriggling out from under it as Dick leaps down beside him. "Did it work? Where is everyone?"
Dick pulls him to his feet, gives him a good once-over. Messed-up red hair, red cheeks from the chill and from exertion, spotty freckles and bright green eyes. Slush melting quickly against the spandex of his suit, sliding down his lean body. His living, breathing body.
"Uh, hello? Rob? You in there?"
Dick leans in, staring Kid Flash-his Kid Flash, his since forever ago, his best friend from the beginning-down through two layers of plastic, his mask and Wally's goggles. Then he crushes KF to his chest.
"Dude." Wally pats his back gingerly. "You all right there, bro?"
"Shut up," Dick sighs. KF smells like cold sweat and BO and a bit like burnt hair. He squeezes tighter.
"Ow," Wally says.
Dick steps back. "Are you hurt?"
"I don't know, man," he says, working his shoulder in slow circles, elbow cocked crookedly to the side. "I thought I was a goner for about point zero eight seconds."
Dick turns his head. "Come on. We're going home."
"Home?" That's about when Wally notices the time machine's significance. "Rob. Hey. Where are we?"
"Leaving." In the moment of the metaphor of your death, Dick thinks blearily. In a parallel universe, in the exact time and place you left behind, except in this version there's nothing here but you.
He wraps his fingers tightly around Wally's wrist, but doesn't pull him toward the machine-just sort of hangs on for a minute.
"What happened?" Wally's expression has cleared from bemused to wary, but his voice is gentle. He sets his free hand on Dick's shoulder. "Rob? Dick."
The thing is, Dick hasn't thought about Wally being dead at all, hasn't allowed the idea to sink in and sure as hell hasn't started working himself up to accepting it. It wasn't a context he'd entertain: life without his best friend.
So he'd dismissed it early on, threw himself into the active theory that Wally wasn't gone. Found a way to bring him back. The cool detachment he's done his best to cultivate over the years, the ability to distance himself from the mission so that the mission can be completed successfully-after weeks of running himself ragged, it's all starting to crumble away. Crack apart like giant sheets of crystal, spark and clash and angle out all their sharp edges into Dick's lungs.
He takes a slow, steadying breath. Says, simply, "You disappeared. I did some calculus and found you."
Wally purses his lips. "You're acting kinda weird, man." He peers closer. "When's the last time you slept?"
"Tonight." Dick shoves him into the time machine and crawls in after. It's a tight fit, and Wally's hip is sharp against Dick's thigh, and yeah, Wally really needs a shower-but they're both here, and whole, and soon they'll be home.
He presses his face into Wally's neck as he activates the machine, and they disappear.
It's another six and a half days before Wally tracks him down on a rooftop in Blüdhaven. Nightwing's in a low squat behind a row of gargoyles, binoculars tilted against his eyes, and he just shows up in his civvies looking irritated and cold. The temperature's been dropping at night and the idiot's only wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt.
"Remember that part where you forgot to tell me that everyone thought I was dead," he demands, stalking closer.
Nightwing straightens, turns away from the relative quiet of his city's streets.
"Or the part where I avert earthly destruction, everyone disappears, you show up, and five minutes later a month has passed?"
Nightwing sighs, tucking his binoculars away. "I had a drug bust planned for tonight."
"And then you, jerk, you dump me off at the League and say you'll be right back while they run some tests, and then you don't pick up your phone for a week and I have to track your ass down-"
"Artemis glad to have you back?" Dick asks lightly. "Or have you already driven her away with your damn mouth?"
Wally's next to him in an instant, fuming. "She's your friend, too, Grayson," he says irritably. "Why are you avoiding me? You did more than-than anyone else. To bring me back," he says, a thread of brittleness his voice, "'cause you're my best friend. What gives, man? Why the radio silence?"
Because I love Artemis, Dick thinks bitterly. She's like a sister to me.
Because I hate every fucking person who gave up on you, people I'd give my life to protect.
Because I would've lost my goddamn mind without you around to ask stupid questions, and now Artemis has you back and we're all back to square-fucking-one-
"I'm waiting," Wally says. Then he grabs Dick's shoulder and shoves him roughly around, forces the eye-contact. He's angrier than Dick's seen him since he asked Artemis back onto the field. "I swear to god, you were never this cryptic as a thirteen-year-old, you're spending way too much time around Batm-mmph."
Wally's head cracks against brick, because Dick has him shoved up against a rooftop exit with his hands pinned high above his bright hair. Now that they've grown up, Dick has a considerable weight advantage: all the fluid bulk of an adult gymnast over a lithe runner's form.
"What," Wally gasps against his mouth, and Dick bites down on his lip and shoves his knee roughly between two long, strong legs.
The kiss is fierce and hard because he knows Wally doesn't want this, because Wally never shuts his fucking mouth, because if Dick pushes his tongue down his throat then maybe he'll get the fucking picture. Before speeding off and never talking to him again.
But Wally doesn't tense up. He relaxes beneath Dick, opens his mouth. Parts his thighs just so.
It weirds Dick the hell out, and he steps back abruptly.
"All that buildup," Wally snaps, flush, his mouth gleaming in the bright mix of moonlight and light pollution that rises around them like luminescent fog. "And you're the one backing off?"
"Wally-," Dick says, bewildered. He never thought Wally would reciprocate. He never thought this was anything more than one-sided.
"Yeah, that's still my name, and what the hell, man? Have you been carrying a torch for me? Freak," he says, wiping his mouth. Then his eyes go wide. "Is that why you never hang out with me anymore? I thought you were mad 'cause I quit the Team!"
"I've been busy," Dick says defensively. "I have the-I have patrols, and the League, and I'm still training Tim-"
"You're useless," Wally growls, and grabs Dick by the neck of his Nightwing costume, holds him in place while he surges forward. Kisses him like Dick's never seen him kiss Artemis.
Artemis.
"Wally," Dick pants, pushing back. "You have a girlfriend."
"I was dead," Wally points out. "We broke up."
"What?"
"I mean she thought I was dead," Wally clarifies, "and she did her-thing, that thing she does where she sort of. Cuts out her feelings? So she doesn't have them?"
"I don't," Dick tries, but then Wally's kissing him a second time.
"Look," Dick tries again.
"Would you stop," he finally manages, backing Wally up against the rundown brick once more. "Are you and Artemis seriously broken up? Don't you-aren't you upset, or, uh-"
"Devastated," Wally says, tilting his head to the side, his eyes gone serious and sad. "I vanish, and my brilliant super-ninja girlfriend doesn't even fucking look for me. The only person I've ever loved enough to mostly forget about you, and she writes me off. Dead meat. How d'you think that made me feel?"
Dick lets Wally go. Falls back about three paces, nervousness lancing through his chest like he's about to lose his balance-a sensation he hasn't felt since he was a child, since he was four and he'd first started across a tightrope a foot off the ground.
"I thought you knew," Wally sighs, his words tangled up in pale curls of cold air. "I thought you just ignored it. And then Zatanna happened, and Artemis happened, and I thought-but then you and Zatanna broke it off, and then there was that thing with Barbara for about a minute, and-I-," he pauses. Reaches forward and grabs Dick's hands. "Pretty sure we're both idiots."
"I maintain that this is all on you," Dick says automatically, and he's definitely not whelmed right now. Not whelmed at all. "I'm finishing my patrol, so-"
"So what? So you can ignore me for another week? Another month?" He lets go of Dick and shoves his fists into his pockets, hangs his head because he's an open-fucking-book. And Dick's an oblivious jerk.
"-So get out of my way, and meet me back at my place. Midnight-ish," Dick grinds out.
Wally stares at him, his eyes dark and heavy under his bright hair. Then he's gone.
"So we're clear," Dick says later, peeling off his mask, "I wasn't-making a declaration. That's not what that was."
"Refusing to accept I was gone," Wally says neutrally, "and rebuilding Bart's time machine in less than a month, and bringing me home from another dimension-wasn't a declaration. Right."
"I have an unhealthy reaction to loss and acted inappropriately. There was no reason to believe you weren't dead," Dick says firmly, fumbling at the zipper on his Nightwing suit.
"You mean despite the presence of alien tech, superhuman powers and speeds, and-oh yeah, the fact that there wasn't even a body?"
Dick lifts his hands in surrender. "Okay, yeah, there were reasons-but not reasons Artemis would have picked up on. You can't blame her for. Trying to move on." There's a fine line between an actual chance and an impossible delusion, Dick thinks bitterly. It was a very near thing. "Artemis isn't me, she wasn't raised by Batman-"
"Well, Batman didn't come after me either," Wally cuts in quietly, "And if you think that I'm not aware of how much Artemis isn't you after everything we-"
"She'll come around." Dick fishes through the clean-clothes basket for a t-shirt and some boxers before stepping unselfconsciously out of his Nightwing getup. "Give her some time to get used to things-"
"Can we not have this conversation while you're naked," Wally says, aggrieved, and Dick looks over his shoulder at him in surprise. They've been sharing locker rooms since Dick was nine.
"Seriously?" Dick sighs, pulling on his shorts.
"Dude. I don't know if you've noticed, but you've definitely, uh, matured. In the last three years. And you've made out with me in the last three hours, so I'm very aware of these things right now."
"Thanks," Dick says flatly. Then he feels Wally's hand on his bare waist, snaking around over his belly, and yeah, Wally's still a bit taller than Dick is, even if Dick's got about fifty pounds of muscle on him these days.
"I'm going to explain this very clearly," Wally says, like that's something he's even capable of doing. His nose presses cold against the back of Dick's neck. "Do you remember when I was fifteen, and flirting with everything that moved?"
"How could I forget," Dick says tiredly, leaning back into the firm circle of Wally's arms. He forces his body to relax and hopes Wally can't feel the wild rush of his heart, fluttering like a bird caught up in the hollow rafters of his ribs.
"I had to get over you somehow," Wally murmurs against the crown of his head. His breath comes warm and soft. "We were kids. I didn't think it'd ever be on the table, you and me."
Dick says nothing, but maybe his shoulders come down just a bit more.
"So. I had that stupid crush on M'Gann-and wow did I dodge that bullet, holy crap-and then I started dating Artemis. Which was great," he says hurriedly. "She's great. Except she misses being on the Team like a severed limb, and we'd fight about it, and I think she-I think she felt liberated. When I disappeared. I think she wanted-"
"If you are going to tell me," Dick says sharply, his spine going rigid all over again, "that Artemis was happy you d-"
"Dude, no!" Wally flinches when Dick steps away, but leaves two fingers curled over his hip. "I'm just saying if she maybe felt trapped, before-if she had that freedom after, as a consolation, to help her deal with me, with me dying-I mean, she'd need to make the best of a terrible situation-"
Dick turns around, crossing his arms and staring Wally down with raised eyebrows. Wally trails off, red in the face. Dick watches him fidget restlessly and thinks, Maybe we've all matured a bit.
It's not like what he's saying isn't true. Dick knows Artemis almost as well as Wally, and-yeah, that's her all over. But. "Did you actually break up," he asks flatly.
"I-yeah," Wally says, sheepish.
Dick waits. It's something he's picked up from Batman over the years, that people will usually talk all on their own if you just give them the space. Nature abhors a vacuum. People get an urge to fill a silence.
"Okay, so we-I mean, the night I was back, she lost her shit and she-didn't even hit me or anything," he says wryly. "She just started crying. She felt bad. I felt bad. I would've forgiven her, I don't-like you said," he explains with a soft, self-deprecating shrug: one shoulder hitched up partway. "She couldn't've known. She didn't do anything wrong. And I've been forgiving her for not being you for the last five years."
Dick swallows.
"Then we had breakup-sex."
Dick snorts. "Oh yeah? How was that?"
"Really sad," Wally says, and he sounds it. He moves toward Dick once more, tentative, shy with his touch like he's never been in his life. Curls his fingers around Dick's neck, rests his thumb on an angled collar bone. "Would not do again."
Dick catches his hand and means to stop it right there, stop all of this and just, just have a conversation. But instead, he presses the calloused palm to his mouth, watches Wally's eyes darken and flash. "I'm not gonna be your rebound lay, KF."
"Hey," Wally says, pulling Dick close and getting strong, wiry arms around his torso, "Artemis was my rebound lay for years, it's the least you could do."
"I don't think it works like that," Dick starts to say, but Wally kisses him again. And this time, Dick doesn't stop it.
Dick did, actually, end up going through with the drug bust. Because he was off-schedule, and maybe a little off his game due to random and unexpected makeouts with his back-from-the-dead BFF, more goons showed up and things got a bit hairier than they really needed to.
So when Wally inches Dick back onto the bed and slides his boxers down over his knees, his fingertips stutter and pause over the newly-formed bruises across the tops of Dick's thighs.
"What could you possibly have been doing," Wally mutters between kisses. "These look like they hurt. They're even swollen, you should totally be on ice right now." He's been dragging his mouth down over Dick's belly, catching his teeth on the edge of a hip or the smooth curve of a long abdominal muscle, but now he's gone still with his thumbs sinking into Dick's sides.
"Had to crawl through a window." Dick shifts impatiently, starting to take issue with the fact that he's the only one who's naked here. But Wally's fingers simply hold him firmly in place, studying the dark, angry marks.
"Huh," is all Wally says. He absently smooths the soft flesh of Dick's flank, thoughtful and distant. Then he brings his mouth down, feather-light, his lips wet and his tongue cool as he traces the contours of first one bruise, then the other.
"Wally," Dick grits out, because his arousal is heavy and obvious between his legs, and goddamnit there are better things for Wally do with his mouth.
"Shh," Wally murmurs, and continues trailing soft kisses from hip to knee until Dick feels like he'll lose his mind.
Just as he's about to throw in the towel and maybe actually beg, Wally shifts. Slides his cheek over the head of Dick's stiff cock, his tongue over the full, flush length.
"Oh my god," Dick breathes. "Can you please-fucking-why can't. Ugh."
"It's amazing," Wally says, glancing up at him with mischievous eyes that glitter in the dim bedroom, "how you can go on twelve-hour stakeouts and months-long deep cover missions, but can't handle your shit for one little blowie."
"Remind me to reconsider my course of action," Dick huffs, "the next time you disappear." For a minute he thinks he may have said the wrong thing, because Wally goes very, very still.
But then he grins, bright and feral. "You don't mean that. You fucking love me, Grayson."
"You seem pretty confident of that," Dick says, doing his best to keep his voice level. He doesn't seem to be succeeding.
"Dude," Wally says, drawing his tongue roughly from base to tip in one wet stripe. Dick squirms and pants. "Remember that one time where you went to another dimension to rescue me? I know where I stand." Then he swallows Dick wholesale.
The world folds down to its base parts until Dick's only point of focus is the the slick heat of Wally's mouth, the way his hands ease over Dick's thighs and dip back to cup his balls. The way he keeps glancing up to meet Dick's eyes, and even if he's slow and easy and thorough, the pressure builds fast and massive. A black hole, a perfect vortex of force at the heart of everything.
"Wally," Dick chokes out, and then Wally's mouth is gone, so maybe Dick should shut the hell up. "I'm not-I-"
"Shh," Wally says, flashing him a wet, red smile. Then he pulls his shirt over his head. Dick's too caught up in the starry expanse of freckles, in those bony elbows and shoulders, to even notice Wally's digging around in his pockets. Well, until he unearths a foil packet and a small tube.
Dick stares, entranced, as Wally's quick fingers make short work of his belt, and the heavy metal thud as it hits the ground along with his jeans flares sudden and violent in the vicinity of Dick's hips.
"Are you-?"
"I said shh," Wally chastises, climbing into Dick's lap in a warm wave. Mindful of the bruises, his cock slides against Dick's own, already saliva-slick, and Dick bites back a low moan. "Hang on a sec."
Dick doesn't hang on, though. He reaches between their bodies for more friction, rolls his hips even as Wally works himself open with slick fingers. Holds him in place with an arm low behind his back as Wally nearly loses his balance.
"Show's gonna be over soon," he says shakily, "if you don't quit that." His thighs tense and quiver on either side of Dick's. Then he murmurs something soft and frustrated along the lines of, "Good enough," and snatches up the condom.
He bats Dick's fingers away and slowly rolls it on, the pressure perfect and not nearly enough.
"Are you sure," Dick says for the last time, because he won't be able to ask again. But Wally simply growls, deep in his chest, and sinks down without warning.
"Fuck," Dick hisses, because he's so, so tight, and his cock's warm and leaking against Dick's belly, and his hips've fall open seamlessly. Now his arms are sliding around Dick's neck; now he's pressing open-mouthed kisses to Dick's forehead.
"Why do always fight so hard," Wally says hoarsely, rocking forward in a way that makes the air go out of the room, "against the things you want so much?" When Dick's hands twitch high on his ribs, Wally reaches down and covers them with his own. Braces his weight as he moves, and Dick was already close, already seeing white-
"Let yourself have this," Wally breathes, the graceless composition of his limbs cutting a perfect form, giving wings to the fierce, furious emotion rising in Dick's chest. "Just this one thing. Please."
Dick slides his hands down to Wally's hips and grips them like handles, like they were formed to fit his palms. Then he fucks up into Wally in hard, severe strokes, cataloging everything for future reference-every small sound, the pale column of his throat, the faint sheen of sweat on his face and neck and beading on his shoulders. The way he gasps like he can't get enough oxygen, and the way his red hair sticks to his forehead as he stares down at Dick through heavy, hooded eyes.
"Please, Robbie," Wally whispers once more, and it's done.
The force of it washes over Dick like tidal rhythm: a glittering ocean too brilliant to look into. It's going snowblind; it's the way dawn flashes off the Gotham skyline as if striking gold instead of glass.
There are a few moments of white noise, wetness on his belly and the jackrabbit pulse of a body stretched out on top of his own. When Dick comes to, they're both lying back on his bed, sticky and sated, panting like hungry speedsters.
So, that was good, Dick means to say.
"So. That was good," Wally says. Dick huffs out a laugh and presses his face into a warm, freckled neck.
"I meant to ask," Wally says hesitantly, after they've cleaned up. "Do you think I could crash here tonight? It's way awkward back at the apartment."
Dick snorts. "Mi casa, su casa," he says, pulling back the covers. Then he reaches over and draws Wally toward him, kisses him like it's nothing, like it's something he's allowed. As natural as a heartbeat.
Wally's flushed and sleepy-eyed when he pulls away, but still manages to crow, "Great! I'll move my stuff over tomorrow."
"Because giving you the couch for a night or two is the same asking you to move in," Dick says, wrinkling his nose.
Wally throws himself back on the bed, arms out, blissfully relaxed. "Like you'd make me sleep on the couch."
Dick looks down at him, something tight and warm expanding in his chest. Like I'd ever let you leave, he thinks, and only manages to hide half of his smile.
Wally cracks open one eye and looks up at him imperiously. "Go to sleep, Grayson. It's like two a.m., and you've gotta cook me breakfast in the morning."
"Yeah, that's not happening," Dick says, sliding in next to him. Wally immediately tangles their limbs together in a hopeless jumble, and Dick-well. Dick runs a mental inventory of the kitchen. He could probably manage an omelette.
Wally vanishes. Dick finds this entirely unacceptable.
His first week off the Team, Dick runs the numbers. He has the data, both from samples he'd taken at the site and from the research he's able to hack from LexCorp. They keep dedicated servers for special projects, so everything they have on the anti-Reach tech is all in one place. Easy pickings.
He pins down the exact output levels (with regard to environmental considerations) of radiation, alien or otherwise; outlines any and all reactions the devices had and caused with peripheral elements, as well as what kind of energy that last piece of tech in the arctic was generating while in chrysalis mode; and graphs speed, trajectory, and the effects of energy discharge on a human body going at superhuman speeds.
He creates a digital simulation, maps the probabilities, and then reworks all the math from the ground up to ensure there are no errors.
He does this three more times. Meticulously.
On a Thursday morning, at four-seventeen, he calls Bruce.
"I need your help," he says curtly.
Bruce waits for him to continue. There's the faint click-tap of a keyboard over the line; there's the unmistakable symmetry of two people hard at work in the early hours.
Dick's never sure if he's been following in Batman's footsteps, or if he's simply cutting a parallel over time and distance. If these two things, somehow, might be the same. "I'm sending over some multisource data spreadsheets and a working model for-"
"It's been a long time since you've needed me to look over your homework," Bruce says in a colorless way that could, to someone else, come off as derisive. But Dick recognizes it for bland curiosity.
"No, the math is perfect," he says. "But I need to rebuild Bart's time machine."
Bruce terminates the call without further comment. Anxious minutes pass, the exhaustion and caffeine-crash pulling down on Dick like a wet cloak. At precisely four-fifty-seven, Bruce calls back.
"How long have you known?" He asks impatiently.
"For sure? About when I called you. But I had a hunch when he-when it happened." Dick swallows, a dry click, but tries to pass it off as anything else. A sigh, an exhale, impatience: one thing in the world that isn't fear or loss or treacherous hope. "People don't just disappear."
Bruce is silent with the weight of Dick's declaration between them: the truth that people do, that people are killed or trapped or transported, that they vanish to places you can't ever reclaim them from.
At length he says, "Contact Bart, but no one else. This is a longshot. Don't set yourself up for disappointment, Dick." He pauses briefly, and Dick almost thinks he'll offer some kind of-consoling platitude, or. Encouragement. But all he says is, "Tell Bart to keep his mouth shut."
"Thank you," Dick says.
The line disconnects a second time, and Dick crawls into bed. Despite his exhaustion, he's too keyed up to fall asleep for another few hours. When he does, it's to the same vision he's seen every night for the last week: a video feed of Wally, slowing down, fading out until he's. Gone.
Three weeks later in the Batcave, Nightwing's going over the coding for about the eightieth time while Superman focuses his eye lasers on their new prototype, works the circuitry on a molecular level until it adheres to their tremendously complicated schematics. Batman and Bart had recreated them from the original, from Bart's memory, and from the partial diagnostics Dick was able to pull from the fried data banks.
"Nightwing," Batman says firmly with his arms crossed, pointedly not looking at Bart. "You will be coming back."
Bart-Impulse-the new Kid Flash-glances at Batman with a mix of fear and admiration, but at least has the grace to look somewhat abash. "You're not-sending me back, too, are you? After Dick gets back? Since it's fixed now?"
"'Nightwing' when we're in costume, buddy," Dick corrects.
Bart's lip twists miserably. "I've made a life here, I'm on the Team. Don't make me go back."
"No one said anything about sending you back," Dick says, minimizing his wrist display and setting his hand on Bart's shoulder. "If that was in the cards, we would've fixed your time machine months ago."
Batman says nothing, passing Superman a thin ice pack when the work is complete. Superman presses it briefly to his eyes, flashes Batman a small smile. "Thanks, Bruce."
Batman sighs, long-suffering.
Superman rolls his eyes fondly. "We're all friends here."
"Not the point," Batman grumbles.
At Dick's side, Bart flutters his fingers nervously at superhuman speed. "So we're clear," he mutters, relief obvious on his face and in the set of his shoulders. "That-wasn't a future I'd wanna go back to. Bring my second-cousin home, okay?"
"That's the plan," Dick says, his stomach rolling over with everything he hasn't allowed himself to feel. Not yet. Not when he's in sight of avoiding the grief and fury altogether.
"Nightwing," Batman says seriously, passing over a small, remote device. "If our math is wrong-"
"It's not," Dick says easily.
"-if you do not find him, or if he is not alive-"
"He will be."
"You will be coming back," Batman says again. Then he bows his head, and almost looks sad. Well, as sad as a man can look in mask designed to instill abject terror. "Good luck."
Dick runs the numbers one last time. Then he climbs into the machine, rebuilt to bear two mostly-adult bodies, and activates the precise location in time and space where his data projects Wally 'landed'.
Because Wally did not disintegrate. Wally slipped dimensions.
The way time-travel works is that it doesn't. There is no past or future, no spot on a graph where you can point to and then appear, no magically significant historical event that a device could fixate on and gravitate toward.
There is reality; there is the eternal present; there are things happening, one after another, in an ongoing tapestry of vibrating molecules that you never get to see from a distance. There are endless versions and patterns stacked one on top of the other, versions where Bart's future is an apocalyptic wasteland or where Speedy was never cloned, where Dick's family wasn't killed. Where Bruce's wasn't.
Where Wally's opening his eyes to snow and sunlight, after closing them to chaos and energy and the dizzying blur of his uncle and cousin. To thousands of miles of ice in every endless direction.
Dick finds him immediately. There's no search, there's no long, drawn-out battle against some bizarre alternate-reality monster, there's just-
"Oof."
-Wally, still in his Kid Flash suit, spitting snow out of his mouth because the time machine landed right on top of him.
"Dude," he says, wriggling out from under it as Dick leaps down beside him. "Did it work? Where is everyone?"
Dick pulls him to his feet, gives him a good once-over. Messed-up red hair, red cheeks from the chill and from exertion, spotty freckles and bright green eyes. Slush melting quickly against the spandex of his suit, sliding down his lean body. His living, breathing body.
"Uh, hello? Rob? You in there?"
Dick leans in, staring Kid Flash-his Kid Flash, his since forever ago, his best friend from the beginning-down through two layers of plastic, his mask and Wally's goggles. Then he crushes KF to his chest.
"Dude." Wally pats his back gingerly. "You all right there, bro?"
"Shut up," Dick sighs. KF smells like cold sweat and BO and a bit like burnt hair. He squeezes tighter.
"Ow," Wally says.
Dick steps back. "Are you hurt?"
"I don't know, man," he says, working his shoulder in slow circles, elbow cocked crookedly to the side. "I thought I was a goner for about point zero eight seconds."
Dick turns his head. "Come on. We're going home."
"Home?" That's about when Wally notices the time machine's significance. "Rob. Hey. Where are we?"
"Leaving." In the moment of the metaphor of your death, Dick thinks blearily. In a parallel universe, in the exact time and place you left behind, except in this version there's nothing here but you.
He wraps his fingers tightly around Wally's wrist, but doesn't pull him toward the machine-just sort of hangs on for a minute.
"What happened?" Wally's expression has cleared from bemused to wary, but his voice is gentle. He sets his free hand on Dick's shoulder. "Rob? Dick."
The thing is, Dick hasn't thought about Wally being dead at all, hasn't allowed the idea to sink in and sure as hell hasn't started working himself up to accepting it. It wasn't a context he'd entertain: life without his best friend.
So he'd dismissed it early on, threw himself into the active theory that Wally wasn't gone. Found a way to bring him back. The cool detachment he's done his best to cultivate over the years, the ability to distance himself from the mission so that the mission can be completed successfully-after weeks of running himself ragged, it's all starting to crumble away. Crack apart like giant sheets of crystal, spark and clash and angle out all their sharp edges into Dick's lungs.
He takes a slow, steadying breath. Says, simply, "You disappeared. I did some calculus and found you."
Wally purses his lips. "You're acting kinda weird, man." He peers closer. "When's the last time you slept?"
"Tonight." Dick shoves him into the time machine and crawls in after. It's a tight fit, and Wally's hip is sharp against Dick's thigh, and yeah, Wally really needs a shower-but they're both here, and whole, and soon they'll be home.
He presses his face into Wally's neck as he activates the machine, and they disappear.
It's another six and a half days before Wally tracks him down on a rooftop in Blüdhaven. Nightwing's in a low squat behind a row of gargoyles, binoculars tilted against his eyes, and he just shows up in his civvies looking irritated and cold. The temperature's been dropping at night and the idiot's only wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt.
"Remember that part where you forgot to tell me that everyone thought I was dead," he demands, stalking closer.
Nightwing straightens, turns away from the relative quiet of his city's streets.
"Or the part where I avert earthly destruction, everyone disappears, you show up, and five minutes later a month has passed?"
Nightwing sighs, tucking his binoculars away. "I had a drug bust planned for tonight."
"And then you, jerk, you dump me off at the League and say you'll be right back while they run some tests, and then you don't pick up your phone for a week and I have to track your ass down-"
"Artemis glad to have you back?" Dick asks lightly. "Or have you already driven her away with your damn mouth?"
Wally's next to him in an instant, fuming. "She's your friend, too, Grayson," he says irritably. "Why are you avoiding me? You did more than-than anyone else. To bring me back," he says, a thread of brittleness his voice, "'cause you're my best friend. What gives, man? Why the radio silence?"
Because I love Artemis, Dick thinks bitterly. She's like a sister to me.
Because I hate every fucking person who gave up on you, people I'd give my life to protect.
Because I would've lost my goddamn mind without you around to ask stupid questions, and now Artemis has you back and we're all back to square-fucking-one-
"I'm waiting," Wally says. Then he grabs Dick's shoulder and shoves him roughly around, forces the eye-contact. He's angrier than Dick's seen him since he asked Artemis back onto the field. "I swear to god, you were never this cryptic as a thirteen-year-old, you're spending way too much time around Batm-mmph."
Wally's head cracks against brick, because Dick has him shoved up against a rooftop exit with his hands pinned high above his bright hair. Now that they've grown up, Dick has a considerable weight advantage: all the fluid bulk of an adult gymnast over a lithe runner's form.
"What," Wally gasps against his mouth, and Dick bites down on his lip and shoves his knee roughly between two long, strong legs.
The kiss is fierce and hard because he knows Wally doesn't want this, because Wally never shuts his fucking mouth, because if Dick pushes his tongue down his throat then maybe he'll get the fucking picture. Before speeding off and never talking to him again.
But Wally doesn't tense up. He relaxes beneath Dick, opens his mouth. Parts his thighs just so.
It weirds Dick the hell out, and he steps back abruptly.
"All that buildup," Wally snaps, flush, his mouth gleaming in the bright mix of moonlight and light pollution that rises around them like luminescent fog. "And you're the one backing off?"
"Wally-," Dick says, bewildered. He never thought Wally would reciprocate. He never thought this was anything more than one-sided.
"Yeah, that's still my name, and what the hell, man? Have you been carrying a torch for me? Freak," he says, wiping his mouth. Then his eyes go wide. "Is that why you never hang out with me anymore? I thought you were mad 'cause I quit the Team!"
"I've been busy," Dick says defensively. "I have the-I have patrols, and the League, and I'm still training Tim-"
"You're useless," Wally growls, and grabs Dick by the neck of his Nightwing costume, holds him in place while he surges forward. Kisses him like Dick's never seen him kiss Artemis.
Artemis.
"Wally," Dick pants, pushing back. "You have a girlfriend."
"I was dead," Wally points out. "We broke up."
"What?"
"I mean she thought I was dead," Wally clarifies, "and she did her-thing, that thing she does where she sort of. Cuts out her feelings? So she doesn't have them?"
"I don't," Dick tries, but then Wally's kissing him a second time.
"Look," Dick tries again.
"Would you stop," he finally manages, backing Wally up against the rundown brick once more. "Are you and Artemis seriously broken up? Don't you-aren't you upset, or, uh-"
"Devastated," Wally says, tilting his head to the side, his eyes gone serious and sad. "I vanish, and my brilliant super-ninja girlfriend doesn't even fucking look for me. The only person I've ever loved enough to mostly forget about you, and she writes me off. Dead meat. How d'you think that made me feel?"
Dick lets Wally go. Falls back about three paces, nervousness lancing through his chest like he's about to lose his balance-a sensation he hasn't felt since he was a child, since he was four and he'd first started across a tightrope a foot off the ground.
"I thought you knew," Wally sighs, his words tangled up in pale curls of cold air. "I thought you just ignored it. And then Zatanna happened, and Artemis happened, and I thought-but then you and Zatanna broke it off, and then there was that thing with Barbara for about a minute, and-I-," he pauses. Reaches forward and grabs Dick's hands. "Pretty sure we're both idiots."
"I maintain that this is all on you," Dick says automatically, and he's definitely not whelmed right now. Not whelmed at all. "I'm finishing my patrol, so-"
"So what? So you can ignore me for another week? Another month?" He lets go of Dick and shoves his fists into his pockets, hangs his head because he's an open-fucking-book. And Dick's an oblivious jerk.
"-So get out of my way, and meet me back at my place. Midnight-ish," Dick grinds out.
Wally stares at him, his eyes dark and heavy under his bright hair. Then he's gone.
"So we're clear," Dick says later, peeling off his mask, "I wasn't-making a declaration. That's not what that was."
"Refusing to accept I was gone," Wally says neutrally, "and rebuilding Bart's time machine in less than a month, and bringing me home from another dimension-wasn't a declaration. Right."
"I have an unhealthy reaction to loss and acted inappropriately. There was no reason to believe you weren't dead," Dick says firmly, fumbling at the zipper on his Nightwing suit.
"You mean despite the presence of alien tech, superhuman powers and speeds, and-oh yeah, the fact that there wasn't even a body?"
Dick lifts his hands in surrender. "Okay, yeah, there were reasons-but not reasons Artemis would have picked up on. You can't blame her for. Trying to move on." There's a fine line between an actual chance and an impossible delusion, Dick thinks bitterly. It was a very near thing. "Artemis isn't me, she wasn't raised by Batman-"
"Well, Batman didn't come after me either," Wally cuts in quietly, "And if you think that I'm not aware of how much Artemis isn't you after everything we-"
"She'll come around." Dick fishes through the clean-clothes basket for a t-shirt and some boxers before stepping unselfconsciously out of his Nightwing getup. "Give her some time to get used to things-"
"Can we not have this conversation while you're naked," Wally says, aggrieved, and Dick looks over his shoulder at him in surprise. They've been sharing locker rooms since Dick was nine.
"Seriously?" Dick sighs, pulling on his shorts.
"Dude. I don't know if you've noticed, but you've definitely, uh, matured. In the last three years. And you've made out with me in the last three hours, so I'm very aware of these things right now."
"Thanks," Dick says flatly. Then he feels Wally's hand on his bare waist, snaking around over his belly, and yeah, Wally's still a bit taller than Dick is, even if Dick's got about fifty pounds of muscle on him these days.
"I'm going to explain this very clearly," Wally says, like that's something he's even capable of doing. His nose presses cold against the back of Dick's neck. "Do you remember when I was fifteen, and flirting with everything that moved?"
"How could I forget," Dick says tiredly, leaning back into the firm circle of Wally's arms. He forces his body to relax and hopes Wally can't feel the wild rush of his heart, fluttering like a bird caught up in the hollow rafters of his ribs.
"I had to get over you somehow," Wally murmurs against the crown of his head. His breath comes warm and soft. "We were kids. I didn't think it'd ever be on the table, you and me."
Dick says nothing, but maybe his shoulders come down just a bit more.
"So. I had that stupid crush on M'Gann-and wow did I dodge that bullet, holy crap-and then I started dating Artemis. Which was great," he says hurriedly. "She's great. Except she misses being on the Team like a severed limb, and we'd fight about it, and I think she-I think she felt liberated. When I disappeared. I think she wanted-"
"If you are going to tell me," Dick says sharply, his spine going rigid all over again, "that Artemis was happy you d-"
"Dude, no!" Wally flinches when Dick steps away, but leaves two fingers curled over his hip. "I'm just saying if she maybe felt trapped, before-if she had that freedom after, as a consolation, to help her deal with me, with me dying-I mean, she'd need to make the best of a terrible situation-"
Dick turns around, crossing his arms and staring Wally down with raised eyebrows. Wally trails off, red in the face. Dick watches him fidget restlessly and thinks, Maybe we've all matured a bit.
It's not like what he's saying isn't true. Dick knows Artemis almost as well as Wally, and-yeah, that's her all over. But. "Did you actually break up," he asks flatly.
"I-yeah," Wally says, sheepish.
Dick waits. It's something he's picked up from Batman over the years, that people will usually talk all on their own if you just give them the space. Nature abhors a vacuum. People get an urge to fill a silence.
"Okay, so we-I mean, the night I was back, she lost her shit and she-didn't even hit me or anything," he says wryly. "She just started crying. She felt bad. I felt bad. I would've forgiven her, I don't-like you said," he explains with a soft, self-deprecating shrug: one shoulder hitched up partway. "She couldn't've known. She didn't do anything wrong. And I've been forgiving her for not being you for the last five years."
Dick swallows.
"Then we had breakup-sex."
Dick snorts. "Oh yeah? How was that?"
"Really sad," Wally says, and he sounds it. He moves toward Dick once more, tentative, shy with his touch like he's never been in his life. Curls his fingers around Dick's neck, rests his thumb on an angled collar bone. "Would not do again."
Dick catches his hand and means to stop it right there, stop all of this and just, just have a conversation. But instead, he presses the calloused palm to his mouth, watches Wally's eyes darken and flash. "I'm not gonna be your rebound lay, KF."
"Hey," Wally says, pulling Dick close and getting strong, wiry arms around his torso, "Artemis was my rebound lay for years, it's the least you could do."
"I don't think it works like that," Dick starts to say, but Wally kisses him again. And this time, Dick doesn't stop it.
Dick did, actually, end up going through with the drug bust. Because he was off-schedule, and maybe a little off his game due to random and unexpected makeouts with his back-from-the-dead BFF, more goons showed up and things got a bit hairier than they really needed to.
So when Wally inches Dick back onto the bed and slides his boxers down over his knees, his fingertips stutter and pause over the newly-formed bruises across the tops of Dick's thighs.
"What could you possibly have been doing," Wally mutters between kisses. "These look like they hurt. They're even swollen, you should totally be on ice right now." He's been dragging his mouth down over Dick's belly, catching his teeth on the edge of a hip or the smooth curve of a long abdominal muscle, but now he's gone still with his thumbs sinking into Dick's sides.
"Had to crawl through a window." Dick shifts impatiently, starting to take issue with the fact that he's the only one who's naked here. But Wally's fingers simply hold him firmly in place, studying the dark, angry marks.
"Huh," is all Wally says. He absently smooths the soft flesh of Dick's flank, thoughtful and distant. Then he brings his mouth down, feather-light, his lips wet and his tongue cool as he traces the contours of first one bruise, then the other.
"Wally," Dick grits out, because his arousal is heavy and obvious between his legs, and goddamnit there are better things for Wally do with his mouth.
"Shh," Wally murmurs, and continues trailing soft kisses from hip to knee until Dick feels like he'll lose his mind.
Just as he's about to throw in the towel and maybe actually beg, Wally shifts. Slides his cheek over the head of Dick's stiff cock, his tongue over the full, flush length.
"Oh my god," Dick breathes. "Can you please-fucking-why can't. Ugh."
"It's amazing," Wally says, glancing up at him with mischievous eyes that glitter in the dim bedroom, "how you can go on twelve-hour stakeouts and months-long deep cover missions, but can't handle your shit for one little blowie."
"Remind me to reconsider my course of action," Dick huffs, "the next time you disappear." For a minute he thinks he may have said the wrong thing, because Wally goes very, very still.
But then he grins, bright and feral. "You don't mean that. You fucking love me, Grayson."
"You seem pretty confident of that," Dick says, doing his best to keep his voice level. He doesn't seem to be succeeding.
"Dude," Wally says, drawing his tongue roughly from base to tip in one wet stripe. Dick squirms and pants. "Remember that one time where you went to another dimension to rescue me? I know where I stand." Then he swallows Dick wholesale.
The world folds down to its base parts until Dick's only point of focus is the the slick heat of Wally's mouth, the way his hands ease over Dick's thighs and dip back to cup his balls. The way he keeps glancing up to meet Dick's eyes, and even if he's slow and easy and thorough, the pressure builds fast and massive. A black hole, a perfect vortex of force at the heart of everything.
"Wally," Dick chokes out, and then Wally's mouth is gone, so maybe Dick should shut the hell up. "I'm not-I-"
"Shh," Wally says, flashing him a wet, red smile. Then he pulls his shirt over his head. Dick's too caught up in the starry expanse of freckles, in those bony elbows and shoulders, to even notice Wally's digging around in his pockets. Well, until he unearths a foil packet and a small tube.
Dick stares, entranced, as Wally's quick fingers make short work of his belt, and the heavy metal thud as it hits the ground along with his jeans flares sudden and violent in the vicinity of Dick's hips.
"Are you-?"
"I said shh," Wally chastises, climbing into Dick's lap in a warm wave. Mindful of the bruises, his cock slides against Dick's own, already saliva-slick, and Dick bites back a low moan. "Hang on a sec."
Dick doesn't hang on, though. He reaches between their bodies for more friction, rolls his hips even as Wally works himself open with slick fingers. Holds him in place with an arm low behind his back as Wally nearly loses his balance.
"Show's gonna be over soon," he says shakily, "if you don't quit that." His thighs tense and quiver on either side of Dick's. Then he murmurs something soft and frustrated along the lines of, "Good enough," and snatches up the condom.
He bats Dick's fingers away and slowly rolls it on, the pressure perfect and not nearly enough.
"Are you sure," Dick says for the last time, because he won't be able to ask again. But Wally simply growls, deep in his chest, and sinks down without warning.
"Fuck," Dick hisses, because he's so, so tight, and his cock's warm and leaking against Dick's belly, and his hips've fall open seamlessly. Now his arms are sliding around Dick's neck; now he's pressing open-mouthed kisses to Dick's forehead.
"Why do always fight so hard," Wally says hoarsely, rocking forward in a way that makes the air go out of the room, "against the things you want so much?" When Dick's hands twitch high on his ribs, Wally reaches down and covers them with his own. Braces his weight as he moves, and Dick was already close, already seeing white-
"Let yourself have this," Wally breathes, the graceless composition of his limbs cutting a perfect form, giving wings to the fierce, furious emotion rising in Dick's chest. "Just this one thing. Please."
Dick slides his hands down to Wally's hips and grips them like handles, like they were formed to fit his palms. Then he fucks up into Wally in hard, severe strokes, cataloging everything for future reference-every small sound, the pale column of his throat, the faint sheen of sweat on his face and neck and beading on his shoulders. The way he gasps like he can't get enough oxygen, and the way his red hair sticks to his forehead as he stares down at Dick through heavy, hooded eyes.
"Please, Robbie," Wally whispers once more, and it's done.
The force of it washes over Dick like tidal rhythm: a glittering ocean too brilliant to look into. It's going snowblind; it's the way dawn flashes off the Gotham skyline as if striking gold instead of glass.
There are a few moments of white noise, wetness on his belly and the jackrabbit pulse of a body stretched out on top of his own. When Dick comes to, they're both lying back on his bed, sticky and sated, panting like hungry speedsters.
So, that was good, Dick means to say.
"So. That was good," Wally says. Dick huffs out a laugh and presses his face into a warm, freckled neck.
"I meant to ask," Wally says hesitantly, after they've cleaned up. "Do you think I could crash here tonight? It's way awkward back at the apartment."
Dick snorts. "Mi casa, su casa," he says, pulling back the covers. Then he reaches over and draws Wally toward him, kisses him like it's nothing, like it's something he's allowed. As natural as a heartbeat.
Wally's flushed and sleepy-eyed when he pulls away, but still manages to crow, "Great! I'll move my stuff over tomorrow."
"Because giving you the couch for a night or two is the same asking you to move in," Dick says, wrinkling his nose.
Wally throws himself back on the bed, arms out, blissfully relaxed. "Like you'd make me sleep on the couch."
Dick looks down at him, something tight and warm expanding in his chest. Like I'd ever let you leave, he thinks, and only manages to hide half of his smile.
Wally cracks open one eye and looks up at him imperiously. "Go to sleep, Grayson. It's like two a.m., and you've gotta cook me breakfast in the morning."
"Yeah, that's not happening," Dick says, sliding in next to him. Wally immediately tangles their limbs together in a hopeless jumble, and Dick-well. Dick runs a mental inventory of the kitchen. He could probably manage an omelette.