I got a bit carried away with this, but it was fun, so have some cute Christmas birdflash!
This was definitely not working. Not working at all. Wally had been so sure that he could pull off hosting the family Christmas this year, that he could handle having the celebration in his tiny new apartment, but he was dead wrong. So wrong that it was five o'clock on Christmas Eve, and he had all of two presents wrapped, badly, and a half-decorated tree. Aunt Iris was going to kill him. She was going to be so smug if she came in here and nothing was ready, and Wally knew for a fact that she and Barry would show up early tomorrow just to say “I told you so.”
At the moment, the apartment looked like an elf threw a tantrum in it. The tree was up, with string lights piled at the base–he had gotten distracted halfway through–and about three ornaments on the branches. Wally was working on wrapping up some gifts for the family, but they looked like a toddler’s disaster, and he hadn’t even started on the baking. He wasn’t ready to admit defeat yet, but the whole extended family would be piling in here tomorrow, and absolutely nothing was going right; He knew that if he didn’t get help, this was never going to happen. Wally sighed in frustration and pushed the wrapping he was struggling with away.
“Time to call in backup,” he muttered to himself. He dug through the piles of paper to find his phone, hitting the first number on speed dial: Dick Grayson. If anyone could fix this mess without letting his family know, it was Dick. Of course, he’d hold it over Wally forever, but it was a fair trade to avoid death-by-glare from his Aunt Iris. The phone rang for only a few moments before Dick picked up.
“Hey, Walls,” Dick greeted. “What’s up?” Wally jumped right in, no opening line.
“I may or may not have agreed to host the family Christmas this year,” Wally said sheepishly, “and it’s not going well.”
“Right,” Dick chuckled, and Wally could almost hear him grinning down the line. “So you need me to come over and fix it for you.”
“I’ll be over in ten,” Dick said, laughing again quietly, and hung up the phone before Wally could thank him.
Ten minutes later, as promised, Dick was at his apartment door. Wally figured he must have taken the zeta beams to get over so quickly, which would have seemed a little over the top if he wasn’t desperate. In light of that, he might have opened the door a bit too quickly when Dick rang the bell. He hadn’t realized he was still wearing his old batman pajamas, and now this was more than a little embarrassing.
“Have you been wearing those all day?” Dick asked.
“Um,” Wally started, intelligently. Dick grinned at him and invited himself in, pushing past Wally to survey the room. His gaze swept past the unopened baking ingredients on the counter, the unplugged Christmas lights and the unraveling streamers on the tree, and finally landed on the tip of the tree where the star should be.
“Wally,” he said, sounding baffled, “Why is there a throwing star on top of your tree?”
“It was all I could find,” Wally answered, and shrugged.
“How could that possibly be the only thing you could find? You don’t even use weapons!”
“I think you left it here once? I don’t know.”
“We can fix this…” Dick hummed, planting his hands on his hips and narrowing his eyes at the tree as if it had offended him. After a moment of glaring, he whirled around and rubbed his hands together, grinning. “Alright. To start, get dressed. You look like a hobo.”
“Gee, thanks,” Wally muttered. Dick shrugged.
“It’s true. Plus, they don’t exactly fit properly, do they?” He raised his eyebrow, giving a pointed look to where the patterned pajama pants hung definitively too low on Wally’s hips.
“Oh.” Wally’s cheeks reddened and he tugged at the strings, trying to tighten them up. “I’ll be back.” He shuffled off into the bedroom, leaving Dick to sort through his mess and figure out how to make it better.
Wally returned, showered, with jeans and a red turtleneck on. He’d found an especially ugly Christmas sweater, but had decided to save that for his family to have a laugh at tomorrow. When he came back out of the bedroom, he found Dick sifting through his stack of wrapped gifts.
“You wrapped these?” He asked, voice muffled from being half under the Christmas tree. “They look like a squirrel nested in them.”
“You’re the worst friend ever,” Wally grumbled halfheartedly. “Did you come over here just to insult me?”
“I came over here to help you make this place look great,” Dick said, pulling himself out from under the tree, “Insulting you is just a bonus.” He grabbed a few of the gifts and piled them on the table, starting to pull off the wrapping paper. Wally noticed that he’d worn a pair of his nicer jeans. That seemed a little odd for helping a friend decorate his apartment, but he wasn’t complaining. He could definitely appreciate the view.
“Were you going to stand there and stare all night, or were you going to let me teach you to wrap?” Dick smiled at him over his shoulder. Wally blinked, realizing he’d been looking for a beat too long. Oops.
“Right. Yup. Coming,” Wally said, shaking himself out of his thoughts and heading over to the table. Dick had rolled open the wrapping paper and was already attacking it with scissors, cutting a piece to fit the box of chocolates Wally had bought for Iris. He launched into explaining how to crease the paper so it folded nicely, like how Alfred had taught him, but all Wally could focus on was how nice his hands looked as he started folding.
“How many Christmas lights did you think you needed?” Dick laughed, holding up the strings upon strings of lights Wally had bought.
“I’m guessing too many?” Wally grimaced.
“You live in an apartment, Walls. This is definitely too many.” Dick grabbed a few strings and handed them to Wally, piling them into his arms. “We’ll make it work, don’t worry. Do you want to string these up on your balcony?”
“Yeah, that’ll look nice,” Wally mused. “Can you put some on the tree? Aunt Iris wants everything to have ‘Christmas Glow’.”
“No problem. Christmas Glow it is!” Dick turned around and grabbed another string of lights to start wrapping it around the tree. Wally took his own lights out to the balcony to string them up, leaving the door open a crack so he could hear what Dick was doing inside. Halfway through hanging the lights, as the snow began to fall, Wally heard quiet Christmas music wafting from the apartment. He stole a glance inside, smiling to himself at what he saw.
Dick was humming along to the carols as he decorated the tree, dancing a little, and looking unreasonably soft in his sweater. He seemed to have found the old box of ornaments that Jay and Joan had given Wally when he announced he was hosting the party this year, and he was doing a fantastic decorating job, in Wally’s opinion.
Wally let him be for a moment, finishing up the lights on the balcony before leaning against the doorway to watch. He thought it was kind of cute, watching his best friend dance across his living room, lit by the glow of the Christmas tree. Just as he was about to interrupt and start on the baking, Dick turned around and caught his eye. He was startled for a second, barely, before he smirked, sent Wally a wink, and moved back to set one last ornament on the tree.
The wink left Wally reeling. He’d definitely been interested in Dick for a while now; he’d noticed it about a month ago, but hadn’t bothered to do anything about it. It was almost Christmas, so he was busy, and he was sure Dick wasn’t interested anyway. He figured he didn’t want to screw up the friendship they had going, either way, but now he wasn’t so sure. Had Dick been flirting with him? Is that why he’d come over so quickly? Why he’d worn the nice jeans? Oh man, Wally was an idiot. He was huge, major idiot and he needed to fix that…Right after they finished decorating.
By the time they finished, the apartment was transformed. It had taken another hour–just enough time for Wally to come up with a little plan–and it looked gorgeous. The Christmas tree, with a real star on top, lit the living room with a soft white glow, and the lights on the balcony glittered off the falling snow outside. Presents lay wrapped beautifully under the tree, and it all left Wally grinning at Dick as they stood in the doorway to the kitchen.
“This is perfect, D,” he said, stepping out to give a twirl around the room and take it all in. He dug one last thing out of the box by the tree as Dick watched, and pulled it behind his back.
“I told you we’d fix it up,” Dick answered. “Your Aunt will love it, and I won’t tell anyone that it was mostly me who pulled it together.”
“You’re the best,” Wally gushed. Then he smiled and sidled back up to where Dick was standing. “But… we forgot one thing.” Dick frowned, glancing at the set up.
“We did?” he asked, confused. Wally hummed happily.
“Mistletoe,” he announced, taking it from behind his back and holding it up above them. Dick blinked at it, then blinked at Wally, and a blush crept across his cheeks.
“You’re such a dork,” he said.
“Shut up and kiss me, nerd,” Wally told him, leaning closer. Dick didn’t need any more convincing. He pulled Wally close, one hand on the back of his neck and one hand on his cheek, and pressed their lips together. It was what Wally would have loved to call a Christmas miracle, if Dick ever gave him the space to breathe again.
When they finally pulled apart, they were both breathless and grinning. Wally had his hands curled in Dick’s sweater, and Dick had his wrapped around Wally’s shoulders.
“Wally,” Dick said, eventually, “we still have to do the baking.”
Wally laughed so hard at that that he was nearly breathless again, and his eyes glittered with mirth as he looked at Dick.
“Merry Christmas, Dick Grayson. I think I love you.”
Dick shook his head and pulled him close again, and Wally dropped the mistletoe. They didn’t get the baking started for long time, after that.
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
blakekathryn
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