Archive of Our Own ^beta

He could do this.

He could so do this.

All he had to do was knock on the door of the townhouse, wait for his boyfriend’s aunt to answer, make polite conversation, ask her an extremely important question and-

Okay, maybe he couldn’t do this. It wasn’t like he’d been standing outside for ten minutes debating the merits of just dramatically melting into a pile of human goo on the doormat rather than just knocking on the door. He wouldn’t do something like that, after all he was Dick Grayson, eldest son of one of the world’s richest men.

“Dick?”

The familiar voice pulled him out of his reverie and he turned around to face Iris West, aka Wally’s aunt, aka the woman he had come to see. She had one earbud in her hand and the other still in her right ear, her hair was tied back and her running shoes still had a sheen of mud on them from whatever track she had been running on.

“Iris! Hey! What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Iris smiled questioningly as if Dick wasn’t completely insane for asking such a redundant question.

Sometimes, Dick imagined Maggie, the stern woman who had been assigned to train him in talking to the media. He hadn’t appreciated her much when he was only fourteen and stepping more into the public eye. At the time he thought she was too strict because who cares if he randomly went off topic and started talking about animals or fairies, or started rambling about cute people in his classes. Maggie would always tut dramatically and grimace at his tangents as she reminded him to ‘ Keep everything relevant to the conversation so you can look more mature and put together ’. He pictured her looking on in despair as Iris passed him to unlock the door to her house. He knew the exact face she would be pulling as he embarrassed himself and the exact tone of voice she would use as she muttered about his lack of composure.

“Of course,” he nodded, “Sorry,” he shook his head, “It’s been a bit of a mad morning. Can I come in?”

Iris pushed the door open and slipped her shoes off as she waved for him to follow her further into the house.

“You know you’re always welcome here Dick. Do you want a coffee? Barry just bought this new machine and it makes the most delicious drinks.”

He followed her through the hallway and into the kitchen, his eyes nervously tracking across the walls and catching on the photos of the Allen-West family. There was a photo of a young Wally, ice cream around his mouth, laughing as Iris beams next to him. Another photo showed Barry and Wally on the first day of Wally’s internship, both of them standing outside STAR labs with sunglasses on. It was a reminder that it wasn’t just talking to Wally’s aunt and uncle but rather his pseudo-parents who had been there for him throughout every important moment in his life.

“Dick? Coffee?”

He looked up and spotted Iris with a mug in hand and a fond smile, as if she was used to people being distracted when she asked if they wanted coffee. Knowing the company she kept and their general proclivity for being in a rush he wasn’t too surprised.

“Yes, please,” he paused, then, “I thought Barry didn’t drink coffee since his metabolism burns through the caffeine too quickly.”

In recent years he had become overly-familiar with heightened metabolisms and had gotten quite a few useful tips from Iris about how to accommodate for a speedster’s diet. One of the many tips was ‘alcohol doesn’t work, coffee doesn’t work, if you want them to get a buzz find one of the aliens on the Justice League and make an enquiry’ (which he had done several times).

“Oh, he doesn’t. Our old one broke and he felt guilty.”

She didn't need to ask before she started spooning sugar into his drink. He had been with Wally long enough for his boyfriend’s family to know how he took his coffee. Which was great. He loved Wally's family. He loved that he was so close to them. It just made it feel like there was a lot of pressure in getting their approval.

“You were right. This coffee's amazing,” He sipped at his mug, watching idly as Iris made herself a coffee as well.

“I know, right?”

He could do this. He just needed to get it over with. He just had to ask one small question and all his stress would be for nothing.

“So, how about the weather lately? Global warming is no joke.”

Iris raised one unimpressed eyebrow and set her mug down softly.

“Dick, I love you, and I like to think we're friends outside of my husband and my nephew, but I have to ask why you're here. You and Wally live in a different state to us, so unless you've suddenly caught the speedster bug, it's a bit strange that you're in Keystone asking about the weather.”

“I used my Dad’s private plane to fly here,” he confessed sheepishly.

“Well, I’m flattered that my son in law flew a private plane to talk to me about the weather.”

Iris’s laughter filled the air as Dick nervously stared into the depths of his coffee mug. He could taste the bile in the back of his throat more than the taste of his drink. He refused to succumb to the nausea that was threatening to strangle him though.

“Actually, Iris, that’s why I’m here.”

He wasn’t quite brave enough to look up at her but he could easily imagine the placement of her eyebrows crawling up her forehead. The same look of amused disbelief was one she often gave Wally when he video-called her each week with an update about their lives, it was also the same look that he’d seen her shoot Barry a million times when he showed up late to family dinners because work ran late.

“You’re here to talk about the weather? I’m not exactly a weather girl, Dick.”

“I know,” he quickly defended, “I more meant the first part, about being your son in law?”

He glanced up at her and found her mouth slightly agape with her eyebrows pinched. She gently rounded the bench to stand next to him and picked up his hand carefully in hers.

“Did you and Wally have a fight? Because my nephew loves you and I’ll talk to him if you want me to.”

He almost cried from how supported he felt by her. Before Wally the only maternal figure in his life were the mums of his friends that he only saw in passing when he went to his friends’ houses. When he’d first met his boyfriend’s aunt she’d wrapped him in a hug and insisted he call her Iris. She’d text him as often as she’d text Wally and she’d always supported him no matter what.

“We didn’t have a fight. Actually, things have been really good lately.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ve probably heard from both him and Barry, but Wally stepped out of active service last month.”

“Barry said that it was because he wanted to focus on himself a bit more.”

“Yeah, he’d been using the extra time to treat me and take me out and it gave me an idea.”

He hated how hopeful his voice sounded as he looked towards Iris.

“What sort of idea?”

Dick reached into his bag and pulled out the small ring box from inside the depths of one of the pockets. He flicked it open as he heard Iris gasp in response to the white gold ring that sat inside.

“I’m going to propose - tomorrow,” He barged on, his nerves steeling themselves as he made eye contact with the woman in front of him. “Wally isn’t close with his parents, but he is close with you and Barry and it would mean a lot to him - and me - if you gave us your blessing.”

Iris’s hands moved from hovering above his to hovering above the ring box than to covering her mouth and then back to the ring box as if stuck in shocked loop.

“Iris?” He spoke her name gently as if he wasn’t meant to disrupt the quiet speculation of her examining his request.

“What?” She looked up at him, shook her head and looked back down at the ring again. “Of course you have my blessing! Dick! I can’t believe this!”

Suddenly, he was being tackled in an overly familiar West-pattented hug. He tucked his head into her shoulder and imagined for a moment that it was his mother wrapping him up in her arms. He could barely remember what she looked like let alone what it felt like to be hugged by her but in the last few years when he thought about how it would be if she was still around he envisioned Iris and her warm strong hugs.

“You really give me your blessing?” He asked shyly, face still pressed into her shoulder.

Iris pulled back harshly and held him by his shoulders, a serious, determined expression pulling at the muscles on her face.

“Richard Grayson. I give you a million blessings. You are possibly the best man in the universe for my nephew. You are going to marry the hell out of him.”

Dick chuckled wetly and wiped away the few tears that had managed to escape. He opened his mouth to make a joke but before he could Iris’s eyes widened.

“Oh! Oh! I’ve got an idea! Wait here!”

She ran out of the room in the direction of the hallway and after a minute she returned with a shoebox which she placed neatly on the bench next to the ring box. She picked up the box with the ring so that she could continue admiring it before vaguely gesturing at the shoe box.

“Those are yours.”

He frowned, but pulled the box towards him and opened it to reveal a pair of red candles and a small card with slanted handwriting on it.

“Iris? What are these?”

“Those are the candles that my mother had at her wedding which she lit during their wedding dinner. She gave them to me and my brother. Rudy had them lit at his wedding dinner, Barry and I had them lit at our wedding… and now it’s you and Wally’s turn.”

He picked them up in awe. They’d been melted down to what was no doubt half of their original size and their were wax drops on the side of the candles where they had clearly been worn down.

“Why are you giving them to me now? Shouldn’t you wait until the wedding?”

Iris lifted a judgemental eyebrow and handed back the ring box.

“I know the two of you and I have no doubt that you will accidentally get married in Vegas or you’ll elope and run off to France. If I give you the candles now then maybe you can have them lit for whatever fancy way you have planned for proposing.”

“Thanks,” he smiled. “I was thinking maybe at dinner tomorrow night.”

She hugged him again quickly and sent him another serious look.

“You better call me as soon as he says yes.”

–

Okay. Focus

Speed.

I am Speed.

One winner. One speedster. I eat losers for-

“You better not be quoting Cars in your head right now.”

Wally’s eyes widened and he looked over at Barry who was running beside him. It was only a mere moment before Barry surpassed him, quickly followed by Bart. He leaned forward to try and keep up but he knew it was no use. In terms of speedsters, he would never be the fastest of the three of them. It was one of the few reasons he went into retirement. He knew that even as fast as he was he would never be able to keep up when they needed him to.

He didn’t have a choice though. Their plan to stop The Reach was dependent on their combined speed trails being big enough to siphon off the energy from the Magnetic field disruptor, however he already knew from his calculations that they would need his speed trails as well for their plan to work.

When he had called Barry that afternoon, seeing the speed trails on the news, he had expected some sort of update about what was happening, not a desperate plea to join them in defeating The Reach. He had thought about saying no for a fraction of a second, of just going home and cuddling with Dick but then he remembered that he couldn’t ignore the people that needed him.

So, he was in the Antarctic running in circles and slowly realising what the others hadn’t figured out yet. The plan wasn’t going to work. Yes, energy was being siphoned away from the MFD but not towards their combined speed trails like they had planned. The difference in velocity between his trail and Barry and Bart’s was too big creating too much potential difference for the chrysalis to redirect its energy onto their combined trail. Instead, the difference in speeds was going to force the energy onto only one of their trails.

“Hey, Barry,” he yelled, hoping in earnest that his uncle would be able to hear him over the comms link.

“Yeah, kid? Feeling tired already?”

They both knew that they were getting to the end. Bart and Barry had been running for almost thirty minutes when Wally had shown up and he was only meant to be there to push them a little further. They all knew he wasn't fast enough to really help but they hoped that he would provide enough of a trail to achieve their goal, and at their calculations the combined energy should be enough in a few more minutes

“Nah. I was just wondering if you ever put in that update to connect to civilian phones.”

He could already feel the tension licking at his feet, reaching out for him, stealing his focus. He needed to focus. He needed to run faster.

“Barry did that a few weeks ago!” Bart chimed in. “Why? Did you forget to hang out the washing? Need to call Dick to say sorry?”

“Something like that,” he responded shortly before tapping at a point on his waist to switch over to the other comm link and listened as it connected to Dick's phone. He could imagine his boyfriend on the other end, doing chores around the flat they shared, probably wearing a hoodie that he stole from him. When he answered his voice was warm and happy as it always was when he spoke to Wally.

“Hey baby.”

He smiled, happy to hear the familiar voice even as he started to feel the electricity overwhelming him. The lightning was flicking across the edge of his vision, trying to distract him.

“Hey, I think I'm going to be a bit late home tonight.”

He caught the sound of his uncle realising what was happening as he pushed his muscles to push a little harder, to give himself a little more time. As a speedster, the one thing he almost always had was extra time and usually, he used it to do dumb things that didn’t matter, like eating a second serving of food, or messing with a bunch of seagulls. He was starting to wish that he used more of his spare time with the people he loved, with the man he loved.

“That's alright, I've been using my day off to cook some of your favourites.”

Hearing the smile in Dick’s voice made him feel slightly more solid for a moment, but it didn't last long. He was beginning to feel like he was transparent as if the air was passing through him.

“I've got to go soon, alright?” He tried not to let his voice shake as he lost feeling in his arms. “I just wanted to say I love you so much, you're the best thing to ever happen to me. I'll see you soon and I love you.”

“I love you too, you sap.”

Wally laughed, wanting desperately to be able to feel the ground beneath his feet again.

“I think I have to go now,” it was so bright he had to shut his eyes. He didn't want to shut them. He knew if he did that he wouldn't be opening them again. “See you later.”

He didn't hear Dick's response. He didn't hear anything.

–

In some countries death is a long affair. Bodies are uncovered every few years and cleaned and changed. Other nations celebrate death, there are parades and colours and drinking. Some cultures bring death to their homes, sleeping in the same room with the body for a week as they say goodbye to their loved ones, cherishing their dead as they couldn't in life.

Dick wasn't given a choice about his boyfriend's death being a short event. There was no body to bury, or illness to blame. There was a knock on the door and Wally's uncle with a tear-streaked face. The funeral was four days later, an empty oak casket with a picture he'd picked out sitting on top surrounded by flowers that someone else had bought. He'd been the one to call Wally's friends from work and college, to call his family to tell them - Barry had been the one to come up with the cause of death and the one to explain it all away when they had to.

(A spontaneous decision to go to the Antarctic. He'd gone missing in a blizzard. No one had found him. It had been sub-zero temperatures. Presumed dead.)

Iris had been the one to choose the other three pallbearers aside from him, Barry and Rudy. He'd refused to do the eulogy when he was asked to. Instead, Iris read it with Barry at her side, Wally's college friends making speeches through tear-filled eyes. His friends from the league held a separate memorial. He was invited, but he didn't go. He wanted to blame them and say that they killed him, that it was superheroes and vigilantes who made his boyfriend save the world, but he couldn't.

At the reception after the funeral, he watched as people formed queues to speak to Wally’s parents. Tim kept coming around with a napkin full of different treats to try and bribe him into eating, but he'd spit them out as soon as his little brother had turned back around. Cass and Damian kept trying to cheer him up, switching between hugging him and trying to make him laugh, whilst Jason shared anecdotes trying to distract him.

He didn’t pay attention to any of it. In his mind, it was all happening in a daze. He just kept his eye on Barry and Iris on the other side of the room. They stood by themselves in the far corner - isolated in their grief. He lost sight of them for a minute as the crowd pushed in between them and disrupted his view. When the room cleared a bit he found Barry watching him.

Dick lifted the cup of orange juice that one of his siblings had pushed into his hands and he watched as the couple he’d once wanted to call his in-laws did the same. The three of them had been Wally’s family. They’d been connected by a bright smile and ginger hair and now there was nothing but history tying them together. Dick had loved history at one point. Wally always thought it was boring.

–

“Babe, we do not need another throw pillow!”

Dick tried to look serious as he pointed his finger at the red-heads chest but he knew the both of them could hear the laughter in his voice.

“There is no such thing as too many throw pillows,” Wally stuck his tongue out and pulled out another cushion from the cardboard box.

When they’d agreed to move in with each other they hadn’t anticipated how many double-ups of everything there would be - especially the small things. They had about 9 throw pillows between them and 5 blankets. It was frankly a little ridiculous, especially because neither of them wanted to get rid of the pillows they’d bought into the relationship.

“Oh yeah?” He picked up one of the cushions and held it aloft above his head, his boyfriend instantly matching his stance.

“Yeah, babe, yeah.”

Their pillows met with a harsh thud sound. Dick jumped onto the couch to give himself a height advantage - something he usually didn’t have when it came to Wally. He swiped at his partner’s shoulder but then he got slapped around his knees and he fell back onto the couch, his head landing on top of the pile of pillows that they’d unpacked. Hardly a second later Wally was crawling on top of him, knees either side of his hips, pillow tossed to the side as his hands cupped the back of his neck pulling him up to meet him. Dick dropped his cushion to the side as he fisted his hands in the back of Wally’s shirt, making sure there was no space between them as he hooked a leg around the back of Wally’s.

Dick couldn’t stay in the apartment; not when it constantly reminded him of the other person that was meant to be there with him. That first night, when Barry had knocked on the door with a sorrowful gaze and warm arms, he hadn’t slept, instead, he’d sat on the couch, his phone in hand, waiting for a text from a dead man. The rest of that first week he’d switched from staring at the spaces where Wally was meant to be to staring at the dining table, still set with plates and cutlery and candle holders.

When his family had arrived in town - most of them staying at an apartment Bruce bought - Dick had watched as they encroached in his space. He watched as Tim made the bed. Wally hated making the bed, he insisted that it was the same whether the sheets were neat or if they were rumpled. He watched Damian pull out Wally’s favourite mug and push it into his hands. It was a paw patrol mug he’d picked up at a charity sale because the dog in the police uniform looked like him apparently. He told his youngest brother that he wasn't drinking because he wasn't thirsty, not because it was the wrong mug.

He didn’t say anything as they helped him get dressed for the funeral or as they started throwing out expired food from the fridge and pantries. He only said something when Jason grabbed the candles on the table. They’d been left behind long after the rest of the table had been cleared, a last testimony to what was meant to happen that night. He had screamed and yelled and he had fallen to his knees in his father’s arms as he begged for them to leave the candles alone. He couldn’t remember why he was so desperate. He knew he had to give them back to Barry and Iris and that they couldn't live on his table forever, but the idea of removing them made his chest squeeze painfully to the point where nothing would have been able to hold him up if he didn't fall into his father's arms.

He hadn't had the words to tell them about the box on the window sill that had a ring in it. Duke had been the one to find it two days after the funeral. He'd sat down beside Dick on the bed where he'd been watching Barry pulling Wally's clothes out of the wardrobe to sort through. Duke had tapped him on the arm and opened his palm to reveal the box. Dick hadn’t had any words, so he'd just taken the box and leaned against his little brother.

It was in that moment that he realised how much his brother had grown. In the last eight months since he'd been able to see him in person he'd shot up so they were almost the same height and he could tell from the broadness of his shoulders that he was going to grow even more in the next few years. Duke's shoulders had broadened and only lingering acne and slightly rounded cheeks showed that he was still in his teenage years and not the same age as him.

“Were you proposing or him?” Duke asked gently, keeping his voice hushed so they wouldn't be overheard.

“I was,” Dick whispered, leaning his head on his brother's shoulder.

They watched as Barry pulled out a couple of hoodies and a jacket from the wardrobe. Dick thought it was too soon to be going through his clothes, but Wally's father had insisted that they wanted anything that belonged to their son. Iris had gotten into a screaming match with Rudy about not even wanting anything of his when he was alive, but eventually, grief and exhaustion had won out and they agreed to let his parents take all of his belonging's, after all it was them who were the next of kin and not Dick or Iris. So, Barry was going through everything so that they didn't have to.

“Is this yours or his?” Barry held up a blue hoodie and gestured to it vaguely.

“It's Wally's.”

“Walls', have you seen the new hoodie I bought yesterday?”

One of his friends from the commercial law course that he'd taken in his second year of college had taken him out the day before. Her name was Donna and surprisingly she knew all the hottest places to get comfortable hoodies for cheap, which also meant that he bought home a new jumper about once a month. His latest find was a soft blue one about two sizes too big. He could've sworn that he'd left it on the dining table and he'd seen it there that morning before he'd left for work.

“Wally? Are you here?”

He'd texted him on his way home and the ginger had responded saying he was spending the evening in but there was no sign of him. He peered into the entry way and spotted the familiar grey trainers that Wally usually wore had been abandoned there. He frowned to himself, opening his phone to pull up his boyfriend’s contact as he walked into their bedroom only to stop when he spotted the man sprawled out on top of their duvet. He'd clearly stolen the comfortable hoodie for warmth and was curled around a pillow.

He snapped a photo quickly before crawling onto the bed. He tucked himself around the ginger man and nosed his way along his neck.

“Hey, darling,” Wally whispered sleepily as he grabbed Dick’s arm and pulled him closer.

“Hey, that's my hoodie.” He tugged on the fabric too make his point.

“You can have it back later.”

Dick had laughed at the time knowing that it was a lie. He had rarely managed to claim back any of the clothes that Wally had borrowed from him. He couldn’t complain much, however, considering he stole just as many jumpers and shirts from his boyfriend.

Barry moved to put the hoodie in the open suitcase he’d been given by Rudy but Dick reached his hand out before he could place it in.

“Actually, could I keep that one?”

Barry nodded softly and handed it over. Thankfully he and Duke were nice enough to ignore as Dick smelt the neck of the jumper, inhaling the familiar linen and coconut scent. They were also nice enough to hug him tight as he started crying into the hoodie.

As Duke finished tidying the bedroom he had asked Dick what he wanted done with the ring. He’d stared at the box in his brother’s hand and turned away. It hurt to look at the reminder of not just what he had lost but the night he had lost it. In the end, Duke had agreed to take it with him and to keep it safe. For what? Dick didn’t know.

–

His family had to leave after another week. He was half relieved that he could finally be left alone with his thoughts and half desperate to ask them to stay so he wouldn't ever have to be alone. His police department had given him two weeks of leave which he'd added on all of his holiday and sick leave on top of. It gave him an extra couple of days before he was meant to put on his uniform and act like everything was normal.

Wally had loved the uniform. He thought it made him look hot and he'd told him so a few times even as Dick had shoved him away laughingly.

He opened his wardrobe and examined the hangers with his ironed shirts and slacks. They hung almost alone in the cupboard - the rest of his clothes in drawers and on shelves. He didn't believe in hanging up all his shirts and jumpers, but Wally did. It made their clothes fit in perfectly. Wally took the majority of the hanging space whilst Dick took the majority of the drawers.

Dick closed the wardrobe.

He slid his way to the kitchen, opening first the fridge, then the pantry in his quest to find something edible. There was a lot of food. Too much food. He wouldn't be able to eat it by himself but his sister had insisted that he needed food so he'd allowed her to buy and stock his kitchen with food that he wouldn’t eat.

He turned to a cupboard that held plates and moved some of the crockery around until he found a secret stash of chocolate bars that he’d hidden there once when he was trying to sneak treats from Wally. He stuck one in his mouth and then his eyes caught on a bottle he'd put back there. Champagne. The type of drink you only have to celebrate. He’d bought it to celebrate a promotion for Wally once upon a time, but then it had fallen through and he'd hidden it not wanting to remind Wally about the missed opportunity.

Well. Things shouldn't remain hidden.

He grabbed the bottle as well as the rest of the chocolates and went back to their bedroom. He had four more days before he had to look anyone in the eyes and he was determined to not remember those days at all even if the only way was with a bottle of champagne and whatever loose bottle of beer he could find in the fridge.

–

His hands were… detailed? They were detailed! He could see all the lines on them and everything. Man, whoever put his hands in high definition was really smart. It was like he was in a movie. He liked movies. Cartoon movies were the best. Like, imagine just drawing all day as a job. He wasn’t good at drawing - especially hands. His hands looked weirrdddd.

He flipped them to look at the back of them, and all of the detail left. They became wavy and smooth and did he have too many fingers? When did that happen? It wasn’t nice. He moved them down to his side so he didn’t have to look at his badly drawn hands. Woah. Dude! There was sand underneath his hands. It was soft and it spilt between his fingers and onto his bare knees. The sand felt cold against his skin. Why was it so cold? Why was he only wearing shorts?

It was a birthday. Someone’s birthday! It must’ve been one hell of a party. His tongue felt like a bee had stung it. His tongue wasn’t usually like that. He remembered there was drinking. No. He was drinking. He was always drinking. This time it had been a bottle of gin. Wally had loved gin. Wally! It was his birthday! But he wasn’t here. That’s why he’d gone drinking. To celebrate.

It was pretty quiet out there. Seagulls. Sand. some clouds. Bells chiming. Were there usually bells? Oh. The bells were coming from his pocket. His phone teleported into his hands and he picked it up. There were green circles, a red circle and a smiling picture staring at him. He blindly tapped at the screen and suddenly there was a voice talking to him.

He groaned and flopped back onto the sand to get away from the voice but somehow it followed him.

“-ick, Dick? Dickface are you there?”

That voice was familiar. It was his brother. He had so many brothers.

“I’m here!”

“You’re not at your apartment though.”

“Nah,” his tongue rolled around his mouth, “I’m celebrating.”

“Celebrating what? Your co-workers said you quit a few months ago and your neighbours said you went out this morning and haven’t come back.”

“‘M celebrating Wally’s birthday. He’s twenty-five today.”

The voice on the other line sucked in their breath loudly. It made him want to cry. Why would he cry? He was celebrating. Why wasn’t Wally there to celebrate?

“Wally’s gone, Dick.”

Whoever was on the other side was a mind reader because they answered the question he forgot to ask. He didn’t want Wally to be gone. It wasn’t fair. Why did everybody else get to live with the loves of their lives but he didn’t.

“I know it’s not fair. Why don’t you tell me where you are and I’ll come see you.”

“I’m at the water.”

“The water?”

“Yeah, you know. The water with the sand. It’s soft.”

H liked the beach once upon a time. They were saving to go to the beach for a week. No they'd been saving for longer than that.

“Dick, what lake are you at? Do you remember?”

“The one just outside Keystone,” he mumbled. “It's nice.”

“Alright, I'm on my way now. Why don't you tell me about what you can see there that's so nice?”

He lifted his head. It was dark. The water was glowing? refracting? Reflecting the moonlight. it was calm and still. It reminded him of that movie Wally liked - the one with the girl with lots of dads and the singing.

“The water is clear,” he told the voice on the phone. “It's shiny.”

“Yeah? Is there anything else you can see?”

There was. There was a person on the other side standing up. They had a dog? He wanted a dog. Their apartment didn't like dogs.

“There's a guy?”

“What does he look like?”

He was tall. And slim. Maybe? He was far away. He… he had red hair? Like Wally?

“It's Wally.”

He pushed himself up onto shaky legs.

“What's Wally?”

“On the other side of the lake. He's here. It's his birthday. He's here! Wally! Wally!” He screamed the name as he ran towards him, into the water.

“Wally! I'm here! Fuck, Wally!”

It was too deep for him to keep running so he started swimming with desperate uncontrollable movements. He just had to get to the other side. He just had to make it to Wally.

“Wally! Wall-” water rushed into his mouth mid-yell and he had to stop in his movements to spit it out.

His jumper was soaked and heavy and it made his arms slow. His arms normally weren't so slow. Wally was never slow. Wally was waiting for him on the other side. He started kicking to get some movement, pushing his arms forward when he could.

He was close. He could see Wally. Wally? Where did he go? He stopped to take a breath but there was water? He spit it out. Wally wasn't there anymore. Neither was the shore. He was alone. He was tired.

He just …

He wanted to stop for a moment.

He…

He couldn’t stop. He had kids. His siblings. They couldn't have a dead brother. He had a dead boyfriend. It wasn't great. Life wasn’t great.

He needed to roll onto his back. He did. He spread out his arms like a starfish. He breathed through everything that was going to tell him to sink. The sky was clear with only a few stars. It was like that movie. The stars are the kings of the past. Wally liked that movie. Dick didn't. It was too sad. Wally liked a lot of movies. It was his thing - their thing. Sunday movie nights cuddled up on the couch. That would never happen again.

He floated. And he floated. And he was a starfish underneath the stars for like a year. And then someone was yelling his name. It was the voice. The one from his phone. What happened to his phone?

“Dick? Where are you? I swear to God if you're dead I'll never forgive you!”

He wanted to respond but the last time he'd opened his mouth there was too much water.

“Dick please, you're my big brother! I need you!”

Brother? It was his brother? Fuck. They couldn't see him like this. They shouldn't see him like this. One time. One time he'd come home drunk as a teenager and Cass had been so freaked out that he'd had to apologise for weeks afterwards. He couldn't freak her out again.

“Dick! Are you out here?”

He couldn't let them find him dead. He rolled off his back and splashed his hands as he pushed himself to the surface.

“I'm here!” He gasped out and suddenly everything was loud.

There was a lot of splashing and swearing and someone was grabbing him and pulling at him. His feet were hitting the ground and he was vomiting water. His little brother was beside him, shivering and wet.

Roughly, he threw an arm around Jason.

“You look cold Jaybird.”

Someone was laughing. It wasn't him or maybe it was. That's what a celebration was meant to be, wasn't it? Laughter.

–

It had been a year since Wally had died. Or, it had been 11 months and four days since Wally died. He knew since he had been counting each and every day since he’d lost the love of his life. If he was slightly more dramatic he would be carving tally marks into the wall to count the time passing. He wasn’t dramatic though, he was simply lying in his bed and waiting for the sun to rise high enough to motivate him into getting up.

He’d quit his job after only a few months. He didn’t tell anyone that but he had a feeling his dad knew because occasionally he would send him large sums of money to continue living off of.

His arm hung over the side of the bed (His side. He never went on Wally’s side of the bed.) and brushed against the increasingly familiar feeling of the neck of a glass bottle. Motivation indeed. He picked up the bottle and tilted it to either side. He heard the soft sound of liquor moving and brought it up to his lips. It spilt half into his mouth and half onto his neck and chin. It was cold and soothed the headache that was pushing at his mind.

He dropped the bottle down beside him and shoved his legs past the covers until his feet met the floor. He stumbled to the kitchen, his eyes catching on the pile of plates that were left on the bench after days of ignoring them.

Breakfast. Probably. He was seemingly out of eggs and bread and orange juice. Breakfast could wait. Maybe he could have a slightly early lunch? He had some ham and a packet of chips. He could probably do something with that.

He pulled out the food in question and a bowl but paused when he heard a knock on the door. Dick thought about ignoring it but then he heard the knock again but slightly louder. Groaning, he set down the bowl and shuffled down the short hallway to the front door. He pulled it open just as whoever was on the other side knocked again and found himself face-to-face with someone he hadn't seen in a long time.

“You haven't been answering your phone.”

“I wasn't interested in talking to you.”

He turned and walked back to the kitchen. Roy followed him, closing the door softly behind him.

He hadn't spoken to Roy since before Wally's Death. Before that, they only spoke occasionally. It did help that Wally and Roy were friends outside of him and they talked just as much as Dick and Roy did. Without Wally, it felt like there was no reason to speak to any of their mutual friends. Like it was a betrayal that Dick got the opportunity to speak to their friends when Wally would never be able to.

Without Wally, with the drinking, it felt like he shouldn’t talk to Roy, let alone anyone else.

“You know, Lian’s been asking about you. You’re her favourite uncle.”

“Wally’s her favourite uncle.”

It was an immediate response, and it was something he and Wally had jokingly argued about many times. Lian, Roy’s daughter, was a bundle of joy and they used to love babysitting her.

“Okay,” Roy held his hands up. “You’re her second favourite uncle. She’s five, and she thinks you hate her because you haven’t seen her in a year.”

He had seen her at the funeral. It was the only time he had smiled that week because she had asked him why all of the music was so sad; she’d insisted that Wally would want happy music and she was right.

“I don’t want her to see me like this,” Dick mumbled, picking up a pinch of ham between his fingers and stuffing it into his mouth.

“Depressed, or drunk?”

Dick pressed his lips together and refused to respond. Roy’s eyes narrowed and he tugged the package of ham towards himself and shoved it back on the bench. It narrowly missed a row of wine glasses and landed in front of a stack of papers.

“Look, Dick, you know why I got clean?” Roy asked roughly.

Dick didn’t respond, he only crossed his arms and looked off into the distance. He knew. They all knew. It had only been a year after they’d dated that Roy had started drinking more and more and then it went from drinking every day to using anything he could get his hands on, whether that meant pills or needles it didn’t matter. Then he got kicked out by his father. Then he’d dropped off of the face of the earth for a while. The next time Dick heard from him it was the middle of the night, Roy was crying, he was telling him that he had a daughter and that he really needed his best friend there with him. He was on a flight the next morning, sometimes taking Lian for days on end as Roy took himself to meeting after meeting as he tried to get sober.

“I got clean because Lian needed me to and I wasn’t going to make her watch me die.”

He watched as his friend looked to the side, avoiding eye contact sharply. The implied was obvious. Dick needed to get clean for the same reason.

“I need you to stick around because I need you. Lian needs you. Your siblings need you.”

“I’m not trying to get myself killed,” Dick rolled his eyes.

He wasn’t. He just felt so much pain every day that he remembered that Wally was gone. Drinking numbed that a little.

“Wally wouldn’t want you to cope like this.”

The gymnast’s jaw locked as he finally looked at the ginger man.

“Wally doesn’t get a choice about how I cope because he’s gone. He’s gone and I’m here and if I’m not drunk when I get home I have to look at his side of the bed and remember that he’s not coming back.”

The truth behind it all. The truth was some days he wished Wally had been murdered. He dreamed sometimes that there was a body in the casket when he had lowered it because maybe if there was he wouldn’t constantly be looking around him hoping for a miracle. Barry had told him once that it was a possibility that Wally wasn’t completely gone and since then he’d been holding on to an increasingly fleeting sense of hope. If Wally was gone then maybe he could just move on as well. Maybe he wouldn’t still be sleeping on one half of their bed waiting for him to come home even as he drank himself into oblivion.

“Wally doesn’t get a choice but you do. Is this seriously how you want your siblings to think of you?”

Dick dropped his eyes down to his feet and thought for a moment. Before, when his world hadn’t ended, he would go home as often as possible and if he couldn’t go home he would video call or text or send funny memes to his siblings. After, when the world had gone dark, he saved his messages for when he could remember to reply to old ones from various siblings, usually weeks after they had sent them. Eventually, their messages had thinned out and he only watched as the rest of them talked on the group chat.

“I don’t want to be in pain all the time. I don’t want them to see me like this.”

“And they won’t,” Roy replied with a steady gaze. “Come with me to a meeting. You can sit in the back row and just listen and then after that you can decide what you want to do.”

The meeting was held in the church that Wally used to jog past on his evening runs. One time, Dick had bought flowers and waited outside that church and when Wally had run past he’d given him the flowers. They’d kissed under the streetlamp there and walked home with their hands intertwined.

He didn’t tell Roy that. Instead, he’d followed him up the stairs and into the church. There were already a few people inside, most of them already sitting in the pews at the front of the room, some of them milling around. None of them paid attention to him but it still felt like he could feel them staring at him, buzzing like flies that had just found their next meal.

Roy led them to a pew slightly further back, sliding in first whilst Dick ducked his head. It felt as if a signal had gone off to the masses around them because suddenly the others who were still talking or standing were also pushing back into their own seats.

Someone stood up to talk, thanking them for being there, something about new faces, something about bravery. He didn’t feel brave. He was an alcoholic ex-cop who was the son of a billionaire - he felt like he had succumbed to a destiny he hadn’t signed up for.

Another person stood up. Sandy? Her husband was abusive. She had to cope. She was three months sober. Then Rick. Contractor. Seventeen months sober. Joseph. He’d had a really bad week. Still five years sober. Tyler. Eighteen. Four months.

“Hi, my name is Roy Harper, and I am three and a half years sober,” he was standing at the front of the room, his hair tied back loosely and his smile nervous. “I’m not actually from around here but I needed a meeting so, here I am. I was an addict, opioids, alcohol, the works. Then my daughter was born and I knew I needed to stop. I relapsed when she was around one and she almost got taken away from me. Now, instead of finding a dealer or picking up a bottle I come here.”

“Welcome Roy,” someone called back to him.

“Recently I started seeing someone new. Someone who didn’t see me at my worse. I mean I knew them then but they didn’t know what was happening - we weren’t close. Now, I’m terrified of what will happen if I relapse again, or if they realise how bad it can get because for me there’s no coming out of that space. I’m trying to focus on what I can control though, which is my mental state, and right now there’s nothing which puts me at risk of hurting myself like that.”

“Thank you for sharing with us Roy.”

Roy nodded and made his way back to sit next to him. Dick narrowed his eyes at his friend and whispered roughly,

“You’re seeing someone new?”

Roy raised his eyebrows at him as if he was shocked by his surprise as if Dick was meant to already know that there was someone new in his life. Maybe he was meant to know that and he’d forgotten it at some point. He really was a bad friend if he couldn’t even remember when something big changed in their lives.

“Yeah,” Roy whispered back. “I really like him, so does Lian.”

Dick blinked back the tears that were threatening to prick his eyes and looked back to the front. He missed the little girl that had once been part of his life. Babysitting her used to be something he and Wally looked forward to. It had been something the two of them spoke about covertly as they thought about their future when they imagined a house with a large backyard, a dog and maybe a child of their own playing with Lian.

The person from the start of the meeting stood up again thanking people for speaking and,

“Would anybody else like to speak before we finish for the night?”

He didn’t know what possessed him to stand up and walk to the front of the room but he had a feeling that it was related to the memory of Wally asking what sort of dog they should get together.

“I live a couple of blocks from here,” He started. “I used to live there with my boyfriend and we used to walk past this place sometimes when the meetings were happening and I always thought it was good that people had this place to come to when things got dark.”

He watched as everyone listened to him. None of them looked disinterested or angry. It was a look of understanding. It was the same look he’d been given for the last year.

“My boyfriend died last year, on the night I was planning to propose. I started drinking after the funeral when all of my family had gone home and I haven’t stopped, partly because I haven’t wanted to and partly because I don’t know how to.”

He took a deep breath and steadied himself, he needed to push on.

“I was drinking this morning when Roy, my best friend, barged into my flat and told me that I was coming to a meeting with him. I didn’t want to be here but I think that I needed to be. Thank you guys for letting me be here.”

–

“My name is Dick. I’m a retired police officer, and I quit drinking three weeks ago.”

It was the cliff notes version of everything that currently represented him but it would have to do.

-

“Hi, I’m Dick. I quit drinking five weeks ago. I think most of you were here that night. My friend - Roy - barged into my flat and told me he wasn’t leaving unless I came down here with him and cleaned myself up. I think it’s worked mildly if the fact that my neighbours have stopped wrinkling their noses at me is any indication. Currently, I am looking for a job - preferably one that is not going to push me back towards old habits. So, if anyone has any suggestions, I’ll be in the back row.”

His therapist was the one to suggest that he look for a job and she was the one to make the comment about finding one that wasn’t going to be destructive. She said it would help keep him busy and from thinking about the things that had driven him to drink. She was probably right even if Dick didn’t want her to be.

-

“Hi. My name is Dick and I quit drinking two months ago. I don’t have much to say today, my job’s been going well, I had dinner with some friends yesterday. It feels like maybe life is on track, but that makes me feel so guilty because Wally died less than two years ago -”

-

“Recently, a friend sat me down and told me to think a little harder about why I started drinking. I thought they were a dick but I also thought that I wasn’t an alcoholic so,” he paused as a few people laughed nervously. “I think I started drinking because I was grieving, but I kept drinking because it was easier then remembering all of the things that had gone wrong. I started going to therapy a few months back and the biggest thing that I keep getting told is that I need to start remembering what it was like before I lost Wally - which was back when I was a teenager. So, my therapist then suggested that I try separating myself from all of the memories I made with Wally. The only way for me to do that right now is to leave Keystone I think.”

-

“Hi. My name’s Dick, and I’m an alcoholic. In a few days I’m moving so this will probably be the last time I see a lot of familiar faces. I’m really thankful for all of you for pulling me through this, some of you straight up following me home to make sure I don’t fall off, and I think if Wally were here he’d be grateful I had all of you these last few months.”

-

Bruce was relatively confident that he wasn’t out of touch with what normal people decided to do. Sure, he was one of the richest people in the world, but he had a good understanding of the cost of things and how they affected people who didn’t have a custom hot rod collection. He could never comprehend why people didn’t just use a moving company.

“I can pay for a moving company you know?”

His oldest son rolled his eyes at him as he lifted the other end of the couch.

“We don’t need a moving company. I’m only taking, like, six boxes of stuff.”

“You’re also taking a couch, a bed, a mattress, a dining table and chairs and a coffee table,” Bruce huffed as he walked backwards through the door frame. “I could just buy you new versions of all of this stuff if you wanted.”

“If you’re too old to lift the couch just tell me, old man. I could’ve called Jason or Tim.”

“That’s ageist,” Bruce snarked as he walked through the next doorway and into the stairwell.

Dick rolled his eyes again good naturedly and called ahead that Bruce had reached the steps. It was a cool Wednesday in August and his oldest son was officially moving out of the apartment he’d been living in for the last three years.

Bruce had been surprised when he had gotten the call asking for his help with loading his belongings into the moving truck that Dick had hired. When he’d first moved in he had refused any help from him insisting that he and Wally had it covered and he could come to the housewarming party instead. Bruce had been offended but he’d accepted it. He hadn’t considered Dick moving out in depth at all. He’d suggested it after Wally had died, he’d mentioned that his childhood bedroom was still empty and that Bruce would always miss him, but Dick had insisted that he stay in his and Wally’s apartment.

On the call Dick had mentioned putting himself first, changing his outlook on life and that to do that he had to leave Wally behind. Bruce wanted to disagree because when he lost his parents it had broken him but it had also made him stronger always having them with him, but then he remembered that Dick had been the child to change his outlook on life and he was the one who made him start to prioritise himself so that he could be there for his children.

“Careful of the corner Dad,” Dick tutted as they navigated the bend in the stairwell.

It had been a long time since he’d heard his oldest son teasing him and looking like he was full of life. It was a welcome change.

“You be careful of your corner,” Bruce grumbled in return as he shifted the weight in his hands.

He wasn’t dumb. He knew the change was because of him getting sober.

“Hey Dad, how’s work going?”

“Work is incredibly boring as always, although I think Lucius is mad at me because he keeps hiring the most annoying people.”

“Actually annoying? Or do they just not understand your dad-jokes?”

“My jokes are excellent, alright,” Bruce huffed. “What can I do for my oldest child?”

“Well, your favourite child would really appreciate it if you transferred him a bit of money.”

That was what caught his attention. Dick tried avoiding asking for hand-outs if he could avoid it and it was a point of pride that the young man paid for most of his things without help from his father.

“Why?” Bruce set his pen down on his desk and listened to the sound of his son breathing on the other end of the line. “Did you break your TV again?”

“No? Roy came over yesterday and we spoke and, well, there’s this retreat that he suggested which I think might be good for me.”

“Retreat?”

“Yeah, it’s to help you focus on yourself and detox from everything going wrong in your life.”

Dick sounded nervous as he explained and Bruce’s suspicions were instantly doubled.

“I’ll pay for it all, just send me the name of the place and I’ll transfer them the money.”

“That’s really not neces -”

“Dick, if I’m sending you to a rehabilitation centre then I’m going to check it out first.”

His son had taken a sharp breath as if he hadn’t realised that Bruce knew what he was referring to. Then he heard as the young man let out a small sob.

“I’m so sorry Dad. I didn’t want to -”

The finally managed to get the couch out of the building and Bruce sighed in relief as he spotted the moving truck. He and Clark had sparred in the red sun room a few days before and his muscles were still protesting most of his movements. The Kryptonian man could still pack a punch without supernatural steroids running through his veins.

“You know you could just move back home,” Bruce huffed as he lifted his end up and into the truck. “The house is starting to feel a little empty.”

Tim had gotten his own apartment close to Gotham University, Jason was still finishing his undergraduate degree in Canada, Cass had dropped out and was travelling the world and Duke was just about ready to graduate, in less than a year he’d only have one child still living at home.

“Dad, I’m not moving back home,” His son rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “Honestly, I would’ve thought you’d start adopting more kids by now.”

Bruce shrugged and climbed up to drag the couch into the depths of the van.

“I’m alright with the brood of kids I have now. At this point, I’m just waiting for some grandchildren to start popping up.”

Dick wrinkled his nose at the implications of him or his siblings being old enough to have their own kids. To him it didn’t feel all that long ago that they were all living under one roof and stealing things from each other’s rooms.

“I don’t know about that but I think Jay said he’d been texting someone knew who already has kids.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes and hummed before jumping down from the bed of the truck to go and retrieve more furniture pieces from the apartment. Everything was starting to feel as if they had crested the hill of the world feeling like it was against them.

-

It was officially Thanksgiving week. Which meant Cass had flown in from her latest travel destination (Tim recalled a vague mention of islands in the pacific?), Jason had flown down from Canada, Stephanie and her mom had freed up their calendars and Dick, Tim and Duke were ordered to move back into the manor for the week.

Generally, most people assumed having so many people in the manor would make it cramped but in reality it was comfortable and felt like his childhood had once more been brought back. It also helped that Tim was back at the manor pretty much every week if not every day. He couldn’t say for certain how often Duke and Dick dropped in but he had a feeling it was probably just as frequent.

It meant that as he made his way to the second living room (the one on the same floor as their bedrooms which had a long stretching couch that curled around on both ends into a U shape) he was horrified to find Cass sitting on his seat.

“You’re sitting on my seat.”

Cass had her legs folded underneath her and a bowl of chips in her hand. She raised one arches eyebrow in response and crunched loudly on a chip. Tim frowned and moved to stand in front of her with his hands on his hips. Ever since he was a toddler, that had been his seat. Dick sat in the dar corner, Jason laid out on the other side, Tim got the couch cushion closest to Dick, Cass got the middle, Duke was beside Jason and Damian squeezed in next to whoever he was least mad at, usually Dick.

“Timothy just leave her. There aren’t assigned seats. It’s a couch.

“Shut up Jason,” Tim snarked. “I always sit here. Cass knows that.”

Cass tilted her head and shrugged before grabbing another chip. Tim glared at her and sat down roughly next to her on her seat. He knew he was being petty but he also knew that his older siblings were messing with him on purpose.

Typically Dick would be there to back him up or at least to get them to admit that there was an unofficial seating chart that they were messing with. However, the older boy was nowhere to be seen. He’d disappeared that morning to ‘check on something’ - Tim wanted to call him out on the suspicious activity but Damian had glared at him when he started to mention it. They were all still on eggshells around the man. They knew that the last year and a half had been hard on him. He and Jason had talked about it frequently about the bottles each of them had found when visiting him in Keystone, about the lack of contact. They also knew that him moving to Bludhaven was meant to be a sign of him healing.

Still, whenever he went off by himself or took too long to respond to a message it made him worry. What if he fell off again, what if he forgot why he wanted to live.

“Why is Cass in Tim’s seat?”

Tim turned and found his oldest sibling standing oddly in the doorway. He had half of his body hidden behind the wall and kept looking behind him as if there was something there. That didn’t matter though -

“Exactly!” Tim pointed at their sister who only smiled sweetly at him.

Dick turned a questioning look to Duke and Damian who were both sitting on the floor and had been looking at something on Damian’s phone.

“Jason and Cass are messing with Tim,” Duke explained quickly.

“Timothy is an easy target,” Damian added.

Their older brother smiled before shuffling slightly and looking behind him again.

“What are you hiding?” Jason asked the question they were all thinking.

“Nothing.”

None of them looked impressed.

“Okay, so my therapist said that maybe I’m lonely and I should try to find someone new to spend some time with…”

Tim made desperate eye contact with Damian who had the same look of shock and horror that he assumed was on his face. There was no way that their brother who had just spent a long time processing and dealing with his grief had found someone knew to date.

“If there is a ginger behind that door I will shoot you.”

Dick glared at Jason but finally stepped fully into the doorway, the only part of him not showing was his arm which was still behind the wall.

“My girl is not a ginger,” Dick tutted before pulling arm through to reveal…

A leash?

At the end of the leather cord a bouncing puppy stumbled into the room and there was a collective coo from the gathered siblings.

“This is Haley, she’s only two months old and she’s a Pitbull and she was born with only 3 legs.”

He didn’t get a chance to say anything else before Damian scooted himself in front of the dog and started patting it, not far behind him Cass had vacated her seat to cuddle the puppy. Tim immediately scooted over and into his seat even as Jason rolled his eyes.

“She’s adorable,” Damian declared seriously.

-

Barry didn’t interact with Bruce too much on missions, for one thing, their crime-fighting styles weren’t compatible. Barry was all about speed and quips and confusing his opponents as he fought them. Bruce, on the other hand, used intimidation and silence to create the most chaos possible.

Aside from the fighting styles they were also at odds when it came to tackling their children. When Wally had gained his powers, Barry had tackled it with full transparency and had since been completely honest with his family about everything. Bruce's identity was still unknown to all of his children. Barry could understand but he still didn’t accept it, especially when it meant that Wally had to lie to his boyfriend.

When Wally and Dick got together it had meant that Bruce and Barry had to spend a lot more time together. Mostly out of costume at events hosted by the boys but also in costume where they had a new found comradery where they found themselves rolling their eyes at the same thing or looking to the other when they heard something that the two of them had talked about before.

When their other team members had noticed how well Barry seemed to notice their mysterious part-time team mate suspicions had been raised and the two of them had decided to spend fewer missions together and to not interact unless they had to.

Which was why Barry knew that Bruce was going to be suspicious about him asking for help. He’d managed to corner the bat-dressed man in one of the kitchens of the watchtower whilst everybody was out. Somehow, Bruce’s scowl deepened at the sight of him.

“I need to talk to you,” Barry muttered, keeping an eye out for anybody who could be lingering to listen to their conversation.

Bruce grunted.

“I’ve found these energy patterns,” Barry gestured at the air in front of him as if he could show the patterns in the middle of the room. “I think you should take a look at them. Soon.”

Bruce’s mask furrowed at the suggestion, but he nodded his head.

“Lead the way,” He ordered gruffly.

They ended up in Barry’s rooms in the watchtower. It was bare with only the basic necessities inside: a bed, a small set of drawers and a desk and chair. The desk had a projector screen which Barry turned on as soon as Bruce had shut the door behind them. He brought up his latest findings - a world map with several clustered points on it.

“I first got pinged with these high energy readings at the start of the year, but I didn’t think much of it because it was like a lot of other energy spikes we see. Then it happened again and again and again. Sometimes the spikes are days apart, sometimes weeks.”

Bruce stepped closer and pinched his fingers to zoom in on one of the clusters on the map.

“What’s the pattern then? These are all spread out, there’s no connection with the timing?”

“No. I only found the pattern last night by accident.”

He pressed his lips together and tapped at the desk until the map of the globe appeared spherically in front of them and all the dots disappeared, then he tapped on the hologram again and the first dot appeared. It was just above Brazil, and it blinked red for a moment before becoming solid and then the second dot blinked into life. Barry and Bruce watched as the globe in front of them spun and the dots blinked into life. As the globe spun around there seemed to be areas where more dots appeared than others but in total, there had to be at least fifty.

“These are all the energy spikes in the order that they appeared,” Barry explained.

“They’re going in concentric circles,” Bruce muttered. “What’s their centre?”

Barry tilted the hologram until it showed the spot he wanted it to.

“The Antarctic. Specifically…”

He heard Bruce take in a sharp breath as he zoomed in on the spot which showed a tag for the last time it was mentioned in a report.

“Specifically, where Wally went missing.”

Bruce hummed, looking quickly to the door before pushing his mask back to run his hands through his hair.

“What do you think is happening?” The billionaire asked.

Barry swallowed harshly as he leaned on the table.

“Aren’t you meant to be the detective? You must have an idea.”

“I do,” the other man agreed, “But, you’re a forensic scientist, you know how the evidence is leaning just as well as I do or you wouldn’t have asked me here.”

“The energy spikes are connected to Wally in some way. Either it’s a sign that Wally is still alive and trapped in some sort of flat dimension where his actions only send through waves to us.”

It was what he was hoping for and what he was hoping Bruce would confirm for him.

“Or…” His companion prompted.

“Or…” He took a deep breath and stared at the spot on the map where he’d last seen his nephew. “It’s something else. A villain trying to trick me, a coincidence maybe. Or it could just be Wally leaving. His energy finally dissipating after all this time.”

He didn’t want to think that everything that had been filling him with hope was a sign of death rather than life but he couldn’t ignore it. That was why he had asked Bruce for help rather than talking to Iris about his theory. He didn’t have it in him to tell his wife that there was a chance their pseudo-son was alive only to rip that away from her.

Barry turned as he felt a hand squeeze his shoulder and found a set of determined blue eyes watching him.

“The only way to find out is to collect more evidence.”

Barry could tell that it was Bruce Wayne, the friend and father he had gotten close to, rather than Batman that was speaking to him. It was partially the lack of added gravel in his voice and partially because the man had the same look on his face that he’d had on the day of Wally’s funeral.

“We should go back to where he was last seen and look for anything out of place. If he is some sort of pocket dimension then maybe by getting up to speed you’ll be able to sense him. If that doesn’t work then we’ll get you to start running in the same path as the energy spikes and see what you can find.”

Without any preamble Bruce was back to Batman, his face full of hard lines and overt seriousness. His mask slid back on as he opened the door and started marching towards the Zeta tubes, Barry only a half a step behind him.

-

The snow was almost blinding in its purity. There was no wind or colour to distract them from the stark cold that bit at any of their skin that was left exposed. There was no evidence of what had happened there almost two years beforehand.

Bruce watched as Barry looked around their area, seemingly checking for something that could point to the man they were looking for despite the area being depressingly empty.

“Let’s turn on the comm links,” Barry sighed as he trudged back through the snow. “I’ll get up to speed and run the same route from when he disappeared.”

Bruce nodded and switched over to a private channel.

“Check in once a minute, I’ll watch the monitor to see if there’s any energy pulses whilst you're running.”

The other man hardly waited for him to finish speaking before he launched off in a burst of red leaving trails of lightning behind him. A second later a whirlwind had started not far from Bruce causing a high-suctioning wind to pull at him. He stamped his boots harder into the ground and pulled out a handheld monitor, pointing it towards the red and white vortex.

“Anything on the monitor?”

Barry’s voice came through slightly tinny and distorted through the comm link but Bruce could still hear the frustration in his voice. He looked down and the monitor was still blank. He knew that if he was in the other man’s position he would probably be much more difficult to deal with, if one of his children went missing in front of him and there was nothing he could do he would raise hell on earth until he found justice.

“There’s nothing.”

Barry groaned on the other end of the comm link and suddenly the vortex grew stronger as he increased his speed.

“Wait -”

“Barry? What’s going on?”

There was a break as the other man failed to respond and the wind grew as he seemingly picked up speed once more.

“I can hear him!” Barry yelled through the comms. “It’s like I have to go at the right speed! I-”

He cut off suddenly and Bruce watched on, his spine uncomfortably tensed as he waited.

“Bruce!”

The red clad man skidded to a halt in front of him, kicking up snow in his wake.

“Barry, what’s going on?”

“He’s there, running. I can catch a glimpse of him occasionally but he’d going too fast.”

“So what do we do?”

“If we miss the chance now his route will change and we’ll be chasing him all around the world,” Barry huffed. “I can’t get up to the speed he’s going at let alone the speed he needs to be running at to escape the force he’s stuck in.”

“So, he needs to speed up?” Bruce asked. “We need to motivate him.”

Bruce turned and dug through his utility belt until he found the old phone he kept there. It didn’t have anything on it except for voice notes that his children, his family had recorded throughout the years. The phone was meant to be for him, in case he got injured out in the field, so that he would be able to pass with his family with him; however, he had an idea that could help them get Wally.

“Play the first voice note in the recording app and start running,” Bruce instructed gruffly.

Barry barely questioned the order before he jabbed his finger into the play button and took off.

Bruce could clearly hear the tinny sound of his son’s voice coming through the comms as Barry picked up more and more speed.

‘Hey Dad! I’m just calling to let you know that I’m running late. Me and Wally got caught in a bit of traffic coming out of the airport.’

He could see flashes of red through the snow and for a half a second it looked like there was more than one flash running, but then the second figure was gone.

‘He, uh, he told me he loved me a couple of days ago, and he bought me this plant and asked if I wanted to move in with him. I said yes, obviously.’

Bruce had about three saved voice messages from Dick but that one was his favourite because he could still hear the giddy excitement in his voice that he lost more and more of the longer he was an adult.

‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this now. We were going to make an announcement when we got home but it’s just so exciting, you know? And I figure you’re probably anxiously waiting by the door for us and imagining we’ve been kidnapped or something so this is also to remind you to breathe, we’re almost there.’

The second figure was coming more and more into focus as Dick’s voice carried on and it almost looked as if Wally was running alongside his uncle once more.

‘Wally says hi by the way. He’s driving and not eavesdropping at all,’ Dick’s voice laughed loudly as he poked fun at his boyfriend. ‘You are totally eavesdropping, but I love you anyway.’

That was all it took for the snowstorm that had been building around Barry to collapse as he fell to the ground next to a very tired-looking Wally West. The beaten-up old phone continued playing the rest of the message into the cold Antarctic air even as the three men stared at each other in disbelief.

–

It was Dick’s one day where he could sleep in. His one day. And his dog, who he loved and cherished and would never trade for the world, just had to wake him up.

It wasn’t that he was a lazy person, because he wasn’t, if anything most people agreed that between his ADHD and exceedingly positive temperament, he had way too much energy and was overactive. It was just that for his current job as a gymnastics coach, he was often awake at five to drive over to the gym for morning sessions before school, and then he had paperwork and then he had evening sessions which would run well past when he wanted to be there. On Thursdays however, the gym was always closed and both he and his gymnasts got a well-earned sleep-in.

Haley disagreed.

She’d shot up from her spot on the bed, lying half on his knees, and had started barking as she’d raced towards the door. Her claws clipped harshly against the wooden flooring as she started jumping and barking even louder. Dick could hear her using her one front paw to scratch at his front door and he groaned in annoyance.

Either she desperately had to go, or he had a guest, either way, he needed to drag himself out of bed before she destroyed his apartment. Get a dog they said, it would be great they said. They obviously didn’t consider his sleep.

He shuffled through his apartment, barely remembering to grab a shirt as left the warmth of his bedroom. The clock in his living room said it was barely seven in the morning, which was far too early to be awake on his day off. He grabbed Haley’s lead and nudged her away from the door so he could clip it onto her collar before opening the door to find a heavily pregnant Iris West waiting patiently.

“Iris,” He blinked. “What are you doing here?”

He stepped aside to let her pass him and watched in amusement as she waddled to his living room and sat on his armchair.

“I got woken up by Barry this morning,” she huffed. “Saying that we need to get you and go into space because of a conversation he had with Batman.”

Her explanation didn’t clarify any of the questions that were circling around inside his brain. It didn’t help that when he turned to close the door he found Barry standing there in his full uniform that only showed the grimace covering the lower half of his face.

“You need us to go to space to talk to Batman, Barry?”

“No,” Barry grumbled. “Batman will be there but you won’t be talking to him.”

Dick could feel his eyebrows raising steadily upwards as the red-clad man walked past him and picked up his dog.

“Right. I should get dressed then?”

“I mean the watchtower will be empty so your pyjamas should be fine, but also the nearest Zeta tube is in the middle of the city so you have to risk all your neighbours seeing you like this.”

Barry gestured vaguely to Dick’s torso. He glanced down as he pulled the bottom of his shirt away from him and found that in his rush to grab something to cover up with he had grabbed a lime green top with a faded print of the live-action Cat in the Hat plastered over it. Tim had gotten it for him as a joke but it was surprisingly comfortable if horrific to look at.

“I’ll get changed. Can you feed Haley?”

Barry nodded, turning towards the kitchen as Dick wandered back to his bedroom. He never really put too much thought into superheroes, or at least not more than the average person. Sure, Wally had been a hero and Barry was one but it didn’t affect him too much. He never wanted to meet any other heroes or do more than become a police officer because he didn’t see it as necessary.

He quickly changed into jeans and a hoodie, grabbing his phone and keys to stuff into his pocket as an afterthought. In the living room, he found Barry ushering Iris off the couch whilst Haley watched. Iris wobbled a little and Dick rushed to her side to grab her arm so he could steady her despite her irritated huffs.

“We should probably go now,” Barry commanded. “The dog has to stay here.”

Dick frowned but nodded as he led the way to his front door. Ever since he’d adopted Harley he had brought the dog with him practically everywhere and he hated the idea of leaving her alone at the apartment.

“Do we have to?”

Barry winced apologetically and nodded.

“No pets in space. Superman’s rule, not mine.”

-

Space was stupid. Mainly because Barry wouldn’t let him take photos, partly because Wally had always promised to take him there and now he was here with his Uncle and Aunt instead of him. Iris seemed to agree although that seemed to be mainly because there was nowhere for them to sit down when they stepped out of the zeta tube.

“Space is stupid. Where’s Batman?”

They both turned to Barry who pulled his cowl off with a sigh and ran his hand through his hair. Without the mask keeping him at a distance Dick could see the dark lines under his eyes and the stressed creases that folded in on the sides of his mouth.

“He’s this way,” Barry gestured down a hallway that had bright lights highlighting every corner.

Iris sighed deeply and grabbed onto Dick’s arm to steady herself.

“You owe me a foot massage after this,” She grumbled to her husband as she turned to the hallway. “Lead the way.”

They shuffled down the hallway, Barry leading the slow pace whilst Iris huffed about carrying twins whilst her husband did dumb stuff like drag her to space. Dick hummed along to her complaints and assured her that speedsters were always going to be dumb. Barry didn’t seem to mind the insults being thrown at him as he led them down several corridors until they reached what could only by a medical wing. There was a few bigger rooms with x-ray machines and areas that looked like they were for surgeries and finally a number of rooms without any windows for them to look in from the hallways and blank white doors with security panels next to them.

“He’s in here,” Barry murmured waving at blank door number eight.

Iris frowned heavily and nodded as Barry thumbed the correct code into the security panel and watched as the door slid open to show a hospital bed. And batman. And wally. Wally who was in the hospital bed. Wally who raised his arm, and smiled, and hugged Iris as she collapsed in his arms. Wally who died almost two years ago and was murmuring his name and -

“Wally?”

The man laughed and lifted his other arm that wasn’t holding onto his aunt.

“Come here.”

Dick didn’t need to be told twice as he rushed around the hospital bed. His palm cupped the side of the ginger’s face and his thumb caressed the freckles that he’d almost forgotten lay on his cheek. His eyes were a vibrant green that softened the longer they looked at each other. Then, it was Wally that was holding his face as the tears started to fall and refused to stop.

Their lips pressed together in a facsimile of when days were easier and they never had to worry about burying each other. Both of them kept trying to talk but between the tears and the kisses and the trauma of leaving each other it was hard to make out what each of them was saying. At one point they pulled apart for long enough for Wally to explain brokenly, " Speed force, Barry, Missed You-"

-

Dick took Wally home after two weeks of him lying in the hospital. He wasn’t hurt, Barry had assured him, he was just exhausted from running for so long. Almost two years, he pointed out, was a long time to run. Neither of them minded since Dick had been given clearance to stay in the watchtower with him and between the two of them they had taken over Wally's room and forced it into a more comfortable space. Most of their time in the hospital wing was spent catching up.

(“We have a dog now?”

“Tim moved out of the manor?

“Duke got a girlfriend?”

“You quit your job?”)

It was weird watching Wally walk around his new apartment, not knowing where the plates were kept or which drawer in the bathroom had spare toothpaste in it. It was a space that Dick had never intended to share, let alone with Wally but he managed to fit himself between all the spaces that he had left. They had to buy him new clothes and new I.D’s and explain to so many people the cover story that Batman had come up with. (He managed to survive the freezing cold. He was found but with amnesia and the blizzard stopped them from declaring his presence until finally they managed to get him on a ship but since he was declared dead rather than missing they didn't think to declare him alive.)

For some reason Wally was particularly twitchy about the fact that Dick had met Batman in space, but he was twitchy about most things that he’s missed out on whilst he was gone. None of it mattered though because Dick had Wally back and Wally had Dick and both of them refused to be separated again.

After Wally moved back in, Dick knocked on Iris’s door, asked for the candles she’d given him two years beforehand, comforted her as she cried and rushed home.

It didn’t matter that his boyfriend was there as he set the candles in their holders on the dining table or that he watched them be lit. It didn’t matter that they were far too fancy for the pizza that Wally had ordered or that he hadn’t swept the floor as he kneeled on one knee. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have the box on him as he pulled the ring out of his pocket. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t prepared a speech or that Wally didn’t even let him ask before he tackled him with a kiss pressed hard against his mouth.

All that mattered was that Wally let him slide the ring onto his finger and they promised to always be by each other’s sides for as long as they both may live.