you’ll always be that sunburn on me

On the worst day of your life, the sky above Central City split open in red and gold.

You were in the basement archives of the Central City Museum when the alarms started screaming. The storage wing was supposed to be secure against fire, flood, theft, and most ordinary forms of metahuman disaster. That was what the trustees said during fundraisers, anyway, usually while standing near glass cases full of artifacts that had survived wars, dynasties, and colonial looting only to be entrusted to a building with questionable wiring and a gift shop shaped like a lightning bolt.

You had been cataloging damaged objects from the last superhero incident when the lights flickered once.

Then again.

Then the room bent.

There was no better word for it. The walls did not shake. The floor did not crack at first. Reality folded inward like someone had gripped the edges of the world and pulled too hard. The archive shelves stretched long, then snapped back into place. A bronze helmet on your table aged green and copper and green again in the space of a second. Your phone flashed through dates too quickly to read.

You heard yourself breathe in.

You did not hear yourself breathe out.

The air turned electric. Every hair on your arms lifted. Somewhere above you, people shouted. Somewhere much closer, something bright and violent punched through the ceiling.

Lightning hit the floor in front of you.

It should have killed you. You had enough time to know that. You saw the white-gold flare, smelled ozone and burning dust, felt the impossible heat open in the air, and understood in the small, clear part of your mind that survived panic that your body was standing directly in the path of something it could not endure.

Then a hand caught your wrist.

The world stopped.

Not slowed. Not quieted. Stopped.

A shard of ceiling hung in the air six inches from your face. Papers floated around you, frozen mid-whirl. The red emergency lights held between flashes, staining everything in a suspended pulse. Your breath was halfway out of your chest and would not move.

The only thing alive in the room was the man holding your wrist.

He was dressed in red. That was your first thought, stupidly ordinary against the impossible. Red suit, gold lightning, hair like copper under the emergency lights, face smudged with soot and blood at his temple. You knew who he was in the vague way everyone in Central City knew who he was. The Flash. Wally West. Hero, menace, headline, beloved civic hazard.

Except he was looking at you like you were not vague to him at all.

His grip tightened around your wrist. His eyes moved over your face with such raw relief that your fear briefly lost its shape.

“Oh, thank God,” he breathed.

You stared at him.

He said your name.

Not a question. Not a guess. He said it the way someone said a prayer after surviving the answer.

Your stomach dropped. “How do you know my name?”

Wally’s expression changed. Grief crossed it so quickly you might have missed it if the whole world had not been holding still around you. He looked older than the photos you had seen of him, not much, maybe a year or two, but exhaustion had carved something sharp into the brightness of his face. There was blood on his mouth. His suit was torn at the shoulder. One of his hands was trembling.

“You’re early,” he said.

“For what?”

His smile broke before it became anything useful. “For me.”

The ceiling moved half an inch.

Wally looked up sharply. The lightning around him flared, throwing gold across the frozen wreckage. You felt the air press against your skin, time straining to resume.

“Listen to me,” he said, too quickly now. “You’re going to get out of here. Captain Singh is going to ask you what happened, and you’re going to tell him the truth.”

“The truth is that the Flash knows my name and the ceiling froze.”

“Yeah.” His mouth twitched with something too wounded to be humor. “Maybe soften the delivery.”

“Wally.”

His eyes snapped back to yours.

You had not meant to say it like that. You had not meant to say it at all. His name came out frightened, intimate, shaped around a future you did not have.

For one impossible second, he looked ruined by the sound.

Then he reached for you.

You should have pulled away. He was a stranger wearing a hero’s face, standing in a broken second, blood on his lips and your name in his mouth. Every reasonable instinct in your body should have rejected his touch. Instead, you stood there as his fingers brushed your cheek with devastating care.

He touched you like he had done it before.

He touched you like he was trying to remember how it felt.

“Don’t let me run from you,” he said.

Your throat tightened. “What does that mean?”

The ceiling gave another inch. Sound rushed back in at the edges of the room, a low roar dragging the world toward motion.

Wally caught your hand, lifted it, and pressed his mouth to your knuckles.

It was not a flirtation. It was not charming. It was the saddest kiss you had ever received, and it lasted barely long enough to become real.

Then he pushed you behind him, and the world exploded.

You remembered speed after that. A blur of red. Gold lightning. His arm around your waist. Heat, then cold, then the brutal slap of the evening air as you landed on the sidewalk outside the museum, sirens wailing around you. People screamed. Glass rained down behind police barricades. Someone wrapped a blanket around your shoulders. Someone else asked if you were hurt.

You looked down at your hand.

Your knuckles still tingled.

By the time you looked up, Wally West was gone.

Displacement

Six months after the museum basement, Wally West ran into you again by accident.

For him, that was all it was.

For you, it was the second time the fastest man alive had ruined your day.

It was good coffee, too. It was a splurge for you, from the place that was twice as expensive as every other coffee shop in the area. That was the part you resented most in the first three seconds before you looked up and saw him standing in front of you with two empty cups, one horrified expression, and the kind of face that made women with coffee spilled on them forgive the spill as a reflex.

“Oh my God,” he said. “I am so sorry. I swear I usually have better hand-eye coordination. Like, professionally better. Historically better. Statistically, this is an outlier.”

You stared at the brown stain spreading across the tops of your shoes.

He continued, “I can buy you new ones. Or pay for cleaning. Do people clean shoes? That sounds fake. I can Google it. I can also stop talking, which is probably the strongest option on the table right now.”

You looked at his face.

The effect was immediate and deeply inconvenient.

You knew him.

You knew the slope of his nose, the line of his mouth, the warm copper of his hair. You knew the way his eyes went soft around your name before he said it. You knew what his hand felt like around your wrist. You knew what his mouth felt like on your knuckles.

Except this Wally was not wrecked. He was not bleeding, older-eyed, or standing in a frozen disaster with lightning tearing apart the world. He was bright and sheepish and painfully alive under the warm lights of a Central City coffee shop. His hoodie was yellow. His sneakers were red. He had whipped cream on one knuckle and no idea who you were.

Your heart forgot how time worked before you knew what kind of lightning could split a life in two.

“Are you okay?” he asked, smile dimming. “Did I burn you?”

“No,” you said.

“Okay. Good. Good, that’s good. Your shoes may never forgive me, but skin is the priority.”

You should have laughed. He was trying for it. Everything about him seemed designed to pull humor from disaster before anyone could panic. His mouth tilted hopefully, as if he had spent his whole life learning that a grin was useful armor.

Instead, you said, “Do I know you?”

Wally blinked. “I feel like I’d remember that.”

Your throat felt tight. “Would you?”

Something flickered across his face. It was small, almost nothing, but for the first time since he had crashed into you, he looked less like a man apologizing over coffee and more like a hero who had heard the wrong note in a familiar room.

“I’m Wally,” he said carefully.

“I know.”

His eyebrows rose. “Cool. Usually flattering. Slightly ominous in context.”

You gave him your name.

Nothing happened.

That was the cruel part. No lightning. No recognition. No break in the air. He only smiled, warm and easy, and repeated it once as if he were testing the shape of it.

It sounded nothing like the way he had said it with blood on his mouth and the world falling apart around you.

You hated him a little for that.

“Well,” he said, recovering with a speed that felt unfairly on-brand, “since I ruined your shoes and possibly your morning, can I replace the coffee I also ruined? I promise the second attempt comes with at least forty percent less property damage.”

You looked down at your shoes again because his face was too much.

“I’m late for work.”

“Right. Museum, yeah?”

Your gaze snapped up.

Wally froze.

For half a second, neither of you spoke.

Then he pointed weakly at the lanyard around your neck. “Badge. Your badge says Central City Museum. I am observant in a normal, non-creepy way.”

You looked down. Your badge was turned outward, your name and department visible under the museum logo.

For him, it was an explanation.

For you, it was a warning shot.

“Right,” you said.

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“No, totally fair. I did just attack you with coffee.”

You stepped around him, careful not to brush his shoulder. “Have a nice day, Wally.”

“You too,” he called after you. Then, because apparently he was incapable of letting a moment end gracefully, “And seriously, about the shoes. I’m good for it. I have a job. Several, depending on how you define tax fraud.”

You did laugh then, unwillingly, once, and hated him more for making it happen.

When you glanced back through the window, he was still watching you with his head tilted, as if trying to figure out why a stranger’s almost-smile felt like something he had been waiting for.

Afterimage

The next time Wally West entered your life, he was two months ahead and bleeding on your fire escape.

You were not proud of the noise you made.

To be fair, it was two in the morning. You were asleep. There was a thunderstorm shaking rain against the glass, and your apartment was on the fifth floor. A person appearing on your fire escape under those conditions deserved whatever unflattering sound came out of your mouth when you woke to knuckles tapping against the pane.

Wally waved weakly through the window.

He was bleeding.

You sat upright so fast your blanket tangled around your legs. For one disorienting second, your mind tried to reconcile too many versions of him at once. Coffee-shop Wally, grinning and careless. Museum Wally, bloody and heartbroken. This Wally, soaked to the skin, one hand pressed to his ribs, looking almost embarrassed to be dying outside your apartment.

You opened the window.

Rain blew in immediately.

“What the hell?” you demanded.

“Hi,” he said. “Funny story.”

“You’re bleeding on my fire escape.”

“Yeah, that’s the less funny part.”

You grabbed his arm and pulled. He could have made it easy. You knew that even if you did not yet understand the full physics of him. He could have been inside before your hand closed around his wrist. Instead, he let you haul him awkwardly through the window like a normal person, all long limbs and wet fabric and a pained hiss when his side hit the sill.

He landed on your bedroom floor and looked around.

“Huh,” he said.

You stood over him as he dripped rainwater onto your rug. “Huh?”

“Your room is different.”

Your blood went cold.

Not nice. Not small. Not messy. Different.

As if he had seen it before.

As if he had seen another version of it before.

Wally seemed to realize what he had said at the same time you did. His eyes lifted to yours, and the boyishness drained out of his face.

“You know this room,” you said.

His mouth parted.

“You know me.”

He did not deny it.

Not coffee-shop knew you. Not flirted-over-ruined-shoes knew you. This Wally knew where you kept your books. This Wally had seen your bedroom before. This Wally looked at you and forgot, for half a second, that you might not be the same you who had let him in last time.

“When are you from?” you asked.

The question should have sounded insane. Instead, after the museum basement, after the frozen ceiling, after his mouth on your knuckles and your name in his mouth, it felt like the only one left.

Wally pushed himself up against the side of your bed, one hand still pressed to his ribs. “What’s the date?”

You told him.

He closed his eyes. “Damn it.”

“Wally.”

“Two months ahead,” he said. “For me. I’m two months ahead of you.”

Your apartment seemed too small around the answer. Rain tapped hard against the window. The yellow light from your bedside lamp made him look almost human, except for the faint static crawling over his skin and the way the air shimmered around him like heat over pavement.

You grabbed the first-aid kit from your bathroom with hands that shook only after you turned away.

When you came back, he had managed to unzip the top half of his suit. There was a long, ugly cut along his ribs, already healing too quickly at the edges. You crouched beside him, opened the kit, and tried not to think about the fact that his body knew how to recover from things that would have put anyone else in an ambulance.

“You should go to a hospital.”

“Speedster metabolism.” He gave you a strained smile. “By the time they get a doctor in, I’d be healed and starving enough to eat the tongue depressors.”

“Do not try to be charming while bleeding.”

“That wasn’t trying. That was medical trivia with charm.”

You pressed gauze to his side.

He inhaled sharply. His hand shot out and caught your wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to stop you. The contact flashed through you: his hand in the museum, his mouth on your knuckles, his voice telling you not to let him run.

Wally’s gaze dropped to where he was touching you.

He let go immediately.

“Sorry,” he said.

You kept the gauze in place. “What happens?”

His face tightened.

“With us,” you clarified, because apparently you had reached a point in your life where that was the simpler question. “What happens with us that you know my apartment?”

Wally leaned his head back against the bed. For once, he did not have a joke ready. The absence of one felt worse.

“We become friends,” he said.

You waited.

His smile was faint and pained. “You learn when I’m lying by omission.”

“That fast?”

“You’re really annoying about it.”

You pressed harder against the wound. “You broke into my apartment bleeding from the future.”

“Technically, I knocked.”

“Wally.”

His eyes found yours.

There was too much in them. That was the recurring problem with him. Present-day Wally had too little history with you. Future-Wally had too much. Neither version seemed capable of standing in front of you without making your chest ache.

“We don’t have the whole story,” he said softly. “Either of us. I remember things you haven’t done yet. You know things about me I haven’t told you yet. The Speed Force is…it’s looping something around us, and I don’t know why.”

“Can you fix it?”

Wally looked away.

That was answer enough.

You taped the gauze down in silence. His breathing steadied under your hands, but the room did not feel calmer. If anything, the quiet made him more dangerous. Wally West moving was a spectacle. Wally West not moving was intimate in a way you did not know how to defend against.

When you finished, he looked down at the bandage, then back at you.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For bleeding on my rug?”

“For all of it.” His voice thinned. “For whatever version of me you met first.”

You thought of lightning. His hand on your cheek. The unbearable tenderness of his mouth against your hand.

“He was sad,” you said.

Wally swallowed. “Yeah?”

“He looked at me like losing me had already happened.”

For a moment, the only sound was rain.

Then Wally said, very quietly, “That sounds like me.”

You did not know what to do with that.

So you set the bloody gauze aside, sat back on your heels, and made the first rule before time could take anything else from you.

“No using things I haven’t told you yet.”

Wally’s eyes sharpened.

You held his gaze. “If you remember things we do later, that doesn’t mean this version of me has agreed to them now. You don’t get to assume I want something because another version of me wanted it. You don’t get to skip ahead.”

His expression shifted with every sentence, the charm falling away piece by piece until only the man underneath remained.

“That sounds fair,” he said.

“No,” you said. “It’s necessary.”

Wally nodded once.

The air between you changed. It did not get less charged. If anything, the boundary made the charge worse because he understood it, because he did not argue, because he looked at you as if the rule hurt and relieved him at the same time.

“Okay,” he said. “No skipping ahead.”

You believed him because some part of you already knew that trusting Wally West would hurt, and that it might be worth it anyway.

Echo

The first time future-Wally appeared in your apartment without bleeding on anything, he was standing in your living room at dawn.

You found him because you had woken to the sound of your kettle turning on.

For a few seconds, your half-asleep mind tried to make the noise ordinary. Pipes, maybe. A neighbor. The old radiator knocking awake even though it was barely cold outside. Then you remembered you did not own a kettle with an automatic setting, and your body went still beneath the blankets.

You reached for the baseball bat beside your bed.

By the time you stepped into the hallway, future-Wally was already looking at you.

He stood in the dim blue-gray light near your kitchen counter, hair damp from rain that had not fallen in your timeline yet. His suit was scuffed but intact, mask pushed back, one hand braced beside the stove as if he had needed the counter to keep himself upright. The kettle clicked off behind him.

He looked at the bat in your hand.

His mouth twitched. “That’s new.”

You tightened your grip. “For me, or for you?”

The almost-smile vanished.

“For me,” he said.

That should have comforted you. It did not. Every time he knew something, the room tilted. Every time he did not, it hurt in a different direction.

He looked away from you and toward the mug sitting beside the stove. It was one of yours, chipped along the rim, a museum gift shop mug with a faded print of an ancient coin on the side. You had bought it years ago because it had been mispriced and ugly enough to make you laugh. Wally touched the handle with one finger, then drew his hand back before he could pick it up.

You noticed.

“You know that mug,” you said.

His eyes closed.

“Wally.”

“I know where you keep the tea,” he said, and his voice was too rough for something so small. “I know which mug you use when you can’t sleep. I know you hate when people leave spoons in the sink, but you do it all the time when you’re upset. I know there’s a blanket in the bottom drawer of your TV stand because you always say the couch is colder than it looks.”

Your hand lowered slightly around the bat.

He laughed once, without humor. “I also know I’m not supposed to know any of that yet.”

The apartment felt suddenly too full. Too lived-in. As if another version of you had already walked through it with him, already made room for him, already let him learn the quiet things nobody learned by accident.

“Are we together where you’re from?” you asked.

Wally’s face changed.

The answer was there before he refused to give it.

“I’m not allowed to answer that,” he said.

“You’re not allowed?”

“You made rules.”

“I made one rule.”

“You make more.” His mouth softened around the words, fondness slipping through before he could stop it. “You get very specific when you’re angry.”

You should not have liked knowing that. You should not have wanted the shape of those future arguments, the proof that you knew him well enough someday to be furious with precision. Instead, you stood in your own hallway with a baseball bat in your hand and felt jealousy move through you for a version of yourself who had already survived his closeness.

Wally looked at the bat again. “You should put that down before I say something stupid and deserve it.”

“You usually deserve it?”

“More often than I’d like.”

You leaned the bat against the wall, but you did not move closer. He watched the choice as if he understood every inch of distance between you and hated himself for recognizing it.

“What are you doing here?” you asked.

“I don’t know.” His eyes flicked toward the window, where early morning pressed pale and thin against the glass. “That’s a bad answer. I was running, and then I was here.”

“Running from what?”

He smiled faintly. “You’re going to hate the pattern.”

“Wally.”

“Consequences,” he said.

The word landed heavily.

He rubbed a hand over his face. For the first time, you saw how tired he really was. Not sleepy. Not bruised from one fight. Tired in a way that looked worn into him, like his body had healed too many times around the same wound.

“You need to listen to me,” he said.

You folded your arms. “Historically, that has not gone well.”

“I know.” His gaze came back to yours, sharp with urgency now. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If I show up and tell you not to go somewhere, don’t listen unless I tell you why.”

You stared at him.

He took one step toward you, then stopped himself. The restraint looked physical.

“Don’t let me turn fear into instructions,” he said. “Don’t let me make your choices and call it protection. I promised you I’d stop doing that.”

Your throat tightened.

“When?”

His face twisted.

“Later,” he said.

“That is a terrible answer.”

“It’s the only one I can give without making it worse.”

You almost laughed at that because the damage was already impossible to measure. Your kitchen smelled like hot water and ozone. Your mug sat untouched on the counter. Wally West stood in front of you like a man haunting a home he had not yet been invited into.

“Did you keep the promise?” you asked.

He looked at you for a long moment.

Then his expression broke.

“I’m trying,” he said.

That was when you understood that trying was not the same as succeeding.

Lightning crawled over his shoulders. He looked down at himself, jaw tightening, and you knew he was about to vanish because every version of him left before you could ask the question that mattered most.

You said his name anyway.

He looked up.

For half a second, the grief on his face became unbearable.

“Don’t let me run from you,” he said.

Then he was gone.

The kettle sat cooling on the counter. The mug stayed empty beside it.

You stood in the hallway until the dawn had finished brightening your apartment, thinking about promises made in a future you had not reached and broken by a man who still looked at you as if he were trying to save you from loving him.

Friction

Wally West was jealous of himself.

He tried to hide it, which was funny for about five minutes and then awful for much longer.

You saw it the first time future-Wally appeared in your kitchen while present-Wally was standing three feet away, eating cereal from a mug because you had not done the dishes that week. One second, present-Wally was talking too quickly about a fight with Mirror Master that had somehow involved a duck boat, three confused tourists, and a churro stand. The next, lightning snapped across your kitchen tile, and another Wally was there.

This one looked exhausted.

He was wearing the suit, mask gone, hair damp with sweat. There was ash on his cheek. His gaze swept the room, found you, and softened so intensely that present-Wally stopped mid-sentence.

“Oh,” future-Wally said.

Present-Wally’s spoon lowered. “Oh?”

Future-Wally glanced at him, then winced. “This is a bad one.”

“You think?” present-Wally asked.

You gripped the edge of the counter. “When are you from?”

Future-Wally looked back at you. “Two months after the fire escape.”

“I hate that that made sense to me,” you said.

He smiled, and the familiarity of it hurt.

Then he stepped toward you.

Present-Wally moved first.

It was barely a movement, more instinct than decision. A blur of red-gold, and he was between you and himself, shoulders tense. Future-Wally stopped immediately. Something passed between them that you could not read, except that both of them looked wounded by it.

“Relax,” future-Wally said softly. “I’m not here for that.”

“Then what?” present-Wally demanded.

Future-Wally’s eyes flicked to yours.

You knew before he said anything that the answer belonged to a version of you who had already lived something this kitchen had not reached.

Present-Wally knew it too.

His jaw tightened. “Right.”

“Wally,” you said.

Both of them looked at you.

You closed your eyes. “That is horrible.”

Future-Wally laughed once, tired and fond. Present-Wally looked like he wanted to punch him, which would have been more satisfying if the logistics had made any sense.

The future version did not stay long. He never did. That was another cruelty you started cataloging without meaning to. Future-Wally appeared like grief given a body, dropped an impossible warning, looked at you as if the sight of you were water in a desert, and vanished before you could decide whether you were angry or relieved.

This one was worse than the version of him who had stood in your kitchen at dawn and told you not to trust warnings without explanations. That Wally had still been trying to warn you against himself. This one looked like something had snapped between then and now. Like fear had finally taught him to ignore his own warning.

This time, he only said, “Don’t go to the museum gala next week.”

You stared at him. “Why?”

“Because I asked you to.”

Present-Wally made a sharp sound. “Absolutely not.”

Future-Wally’s face twisted. “You don’t know what happens.”

“No, I don’t, because you’re doing the dramatic, cryptic time-traveler thing instead of using your words like someone who has met another person before.”

“You think I haven’t tried?”

“I think you’re scaring her.”

Future-Wally flinched.

The kitchen went quiet.

He looked at you again, and the grief was back, older than the rest of him. “Please,” he said.

You hated that most. Not the warning. Not the fear. The please.

Then lightning crawled over his body. He looked at present-Wally. “Don’t make the choice for her.”

Present-Wally’s anger faltered.

Future-Wally vanished.

The cereal mug cracked in present-Wally’s hand.

Neither of you moved for a long moment. Then Wally looked down, cursed, and set the broken mug in the sink.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he said.

“You say that a lot.”

“I break a lot of things.”

You leaned back against the counter. “I’m going to the gala.”

Wally nodded immediately. “I know.”

“You don’t get to tell me not to.”

“I know that too.”

“Even if he is you.”

“Especially if he’s me.”

That made something in your chest loosen, which was unfair because you were still angry. Wally looked at you with his hands braced on the sink, eyes too bright, mouth pressed into a line as if he was physically holding back every terrified thing he wanted to say.

Then, because he was Wally, he ruined the solemnity of the moment.

“For the record,” he said, “I hate future me.”

You blinked.

“He’s got this whole tragic cheekbone thing going on. Very annoying. Very effective. I feel manipulated by my own bone structure.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself.

Wally’s face changed at the sound. He looked hungry for it, then immediately guilty for wanting anything from you while the air still smelled like lightning.

You crossed your arms. “Are you actually jealous of yourself?”

“Yes,” he said at once. “Deeply. In a way I’m not proud of but am choosing to be honest about for personal growth reasons.”

“Wally.”

“He knows things,” Wally said, the humor thinning into something true. “He looks at you like he knows what it feels like when you let him stay.”

Your breath caught.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. The man could probably count your heartbeats. He looked away anyway, giving you the mercy of pretending he had not.

“Do I?” he asked.

Your voice came out softer than you intended. “Do you what?”

“Make you happy?”

The question hurt because he was trying to sound casual. He was very bad at it.

“Sometimes,” you said.

Wally nodded. He absorbed that like it was more precious than a yes.

Then he asked, “Do I hurt you?”

You did not answer quickly enough.

His face fell in careful increments, hope withdrawing before he could embarrass either of you with how much it mattered.

“That’s what I thought,” he said.

“Wally, I don’t know what happens.”

“Neither do I.” He looked at his hands. “But I know myself.”

The memory hit him twenty minutes after the other Wally vanished.

One second, Wally was standing in your kitchen with his hand wrapped in a towel because he had managed to cut himself cleaning up the mug he had broken. The next, his face went blank. Not empty. Elsewhere.

You watched his fingers loosen around the towel.

“Wally?”

He blinked once. Lightning crawled over his knuckles and died there, trapped under his skin.

“I remember this,” he said.

Your stomach tightened. “The mug?”

“No.” His eyes lifted to yours, and whatever he saw made him look away again too quickly. “You. Standing there. Asking me if I’m going to keep punishing myself for choices I haven’t made yet.”

“I haven’t said that.”

“I know.”

The silence after that felt worse than the words. You could see him trying to put the memory down carefully, like something sharp he had found in the dark. He did not tell you what came before it. He did not tell you what came after. He only pressed the towel harder against his palm and breathed through whatever future had just crossed his face.

You hated that he was trying to protect you from it.

You hated more that he was probably trying to protect himself.

The gala happened three days later.

You went because you were stubborn, because future-Wally had warned instead of trusted, and because you refused to let any version of the man you were falling for start making your choices for you.

Present-Wally went with you because he was stubborn too, and because he had taken to hovering near your life with the restless restraint of someone trying very hard not to become a cage.

He wore a suit.

That felt important in a way you did not want to unpack. You had seen him in the Flash suit, in hoodies, in your apartment with blood on his skin and rain in his hair. You had never seen him like this, dressed in dark red with a gold tie and his hair combed back until it gave up halfway through the evening. 

He looked handsome enough to be irritating, which you told him as soon as he arrived.

His grin flashed. “I’ll take it.”

“You would take anything as a compliment.”

“From you? Mostly.”

His eyes dropped, not quickly enough to be subtle, taking in the deep burgundy dress you had chosen because it almost matched his suit, and the gold at your ears that echoed his tie. The grin softened into something less practiced. “You look beautiful.”

Your mouth forgot what it had been about to do.

Wally noticed. Of course he noticed. His smile tilted, gentler now, a little nervous around the edges. “Sorry. Was that too much?”

“No,” you said, and hated how honest it sounded.

His gaze flicked once more over the line of your dress, then came back to your face like he had made himself return there. “Good,” he said, smile going crooked. “Because I’ve been trying not to say it since you opened your door.”

You rolled your eyes and turned away before he could see too much.

The Central City Museum gala was exactly as unbearable as you expected. Donors smiled beside exhibits they did not understand. Champagne moved through the room on silver trays. Half the city’s wealthy philanthropists pretended not to stare at Wally, whose identity was public enough that people felt entitled to his attention and famous enough that they lowered their voices when he turned away.

For the first hour, nothing happened.

For the second, you almost relaxed.

That was when the ancient clock in the west gallery began ticking backward.

Wally heard it first.

You knew because his entire body changed before the room did — smile gone, shoulders tense, hand already finding your elbow. Then the lights flickered, and everyone else finally looked up.

“Stay behind me,” he said.

You gave him a look.

His mouth tightened. “Sorry. Stand wherever you want, preferably somewhere that puts my body between yours and the explosion.”

“Better.”

The glass cases rattled. Somewhere, someone screamed. Above the east hall, the clock began to chime and forgot when to stop.

Then every reflective surface in the gallery filled with lightning.

Wally pushed civilians toward the exits faster than human panic could understand. He was motion and command, red-gold arcs flickering under the cuffs of his suit because he had not changed, because there was no time, because there was never enough time with him.

You were halfway to the staff corridor when the rupture opened.

It did not look like the one from the museum basement. This one was narrower, almost beautiful, a vertical wound of white light splitting the air beside the ancient clock. You felt it pull at you. Not your body exactly. Something deeper. Memory, maybe. Possibility. The parts of you that had already touched Wally out of order.

You reached for the wall.

Wally shouted your name.

The world lurched.

A hand closed around yours.

For one dizzy second, you thought it was present-Wally. Then you looked up and saw the older eyes.

Future-Wally.

His grip was desperate. “I told you not to come.”

You should have been afraid.

Instead, anger hit first.

You slapped him.

The sound cracked through the gallery, sharp enough that even the rupture seemed to pause.

Future-Wally’s head turned with it. He froze, one hand still wrapped around yours, red blooming faintly on his cheek.

Across the room, present-Wally stared.

You pointed at the future version of him. “You do not get to appear in my kitchen, ask me to obey you without explanation, and then look betrayed when I don’t.”

Future-Wally’s jaw worked.

“You promised,” you said, and you did not know where the words came from until they were already out. “You promised you’d stop doing this.”

Both Wallys went still.

You felt the sentence settle into the wrong place in the timeline.

Future-Wally looked devastated.

Present-Wally looked like he had been shot.

The rupture screamed.

Future-Wally released your hand and shoved you toward his younger self. Present-Wally caught you immediately, one arm around your waist, his body braced between you and the white light.

“Get her out,” future-Wally said.

Present-Wally’s eyes burned. “What did you do?”

Future-Wally smiled without humor. “Loved her badly, apparently.”

Then the rupture swallowed him.

Heat Lightning

After the gala, Wally disappeared for four days.

Present-Wally. Your Wally, though you had not let yourself think of him that way until he was gone long enough for fear to make language honest.

You told yourself he was busy. Central City had disasters the way other cities had weather. You told yourself he was working with Barry, or the Titans, or the League, or whatever impossible network of people handled a Speed Force rupture when it started aiming itself at one woman’s life.

By the second day, you were angry.

By the third, you were scared.

By the fourth, you opened your apartment door and found him sitting in the hallway with his back against the opposite wall, knees drawn up, hair a mess, a paper bag from your favorite takeout place beside him.

He looked up at you.

“I didn’t want to knock if you were sleeping,” he said.

Your heart hurt so violently you almost closed the door in his face.

Instead, you stepped into the hallway. “You have superspeed.”

“Yeah.”

“You could have checked.”

“That felt creepy.”

“You have come through my window bleeding.”

“That was emergency creepy. Different category.”

You stared at him until his attempt at a smile collapsed.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For which part?”

“All the parts currently available to me.”

That was such a Wally answer that it made you furious all over again.

You crossed your arms. “You disappeared.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to do that because a future version of you scared you.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to decide I’m safer if you’re gone.”

His eyes lifted to yours. “I know.”

The hallway went quiet. Somewhere behind a neighboring door, a television laugh track rose and faded. Wally looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. He looked young, too, painfully young compared to the version of him who had stood in the gala rupture and taken your slap like he believed he deserved it.

You hated that you understood him.

You hated more that understanding did not make the hurt vanish.

“I needed to know,” he said. “If staying away fixed anything.”

Your throat tightened. “Did it?”

“No.” He huffed a laugh and rubbed both hands over his face. “It made me useless and annoying. Barry threatened to sedate me with a sandwich.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It was a big sandwich.”

You did not want to smile. Your mouth did it anyway, traitorous and small.

Wally saw. The relief on his face was immediate and too much.

You opened the door wider. “Come in before my neighbors start enjoying this.”

He stood, grabbed the bag, and followed you inside.

For a while, you ate dinner on the floor because your coffee table was covered in museum paperwork and Wally seemed more comfortable there anyway. He finally told you what he knew. The rupture had attached itself to both of you during the basement incident from your past and his future. Or maybe his past and your past. The language kept failing. 

The important part was that the Speed Force was folding moments around an emotional anchor.

You looked at him over your noodles. “An emotional anchor.”

Wally winced. “That’s the term Barry used.”

“That sounds fake.”

“Most of my life sounds fake.”

“And I’m the anchor?”

“Maybe.” He looked down at his food. “Maybe we both are.”

You absorbed that slowly.

The apartment felt warm around you. Rain tapped softly against the windows, less violent than before. Wally sat across from you in sweatpants and an old Keystone City hoodie, socked feet stretched under your table, chopsticks held too carefully in hands that could break the sound barrier.

He was trying so hard to be still.

The realization moved through you like heat.

You set your food aside. “Do you remember things?”

He froze. “What?”

“From later.”

He did not answer immediately. You watched the rule pass behind his eyes, followed by something worse than guilt. 

Recognition.

That was answer enough.

You looked down at his hands, curled carefully against his own knees like he did not trust them to reach for you. “Is that what you’re doing?”

His voice came out quieter. “Doing what?”

“Waiting for me to become someone you have memories of.”

Wally looked away.

“I don’t mean to.”

“I know.”

“I’m trying to keep it clean.”

“It isn’t clean, Wally.”

His laugh came out rough. “Yeah, I’m getting that.”

The silence between you stretched thin. 

“Some,” he said at last.

You looked back at him.

“I remember some things,” Wally said. “Not all the time. It’s not like watching a movie. It’s worse than that. It’s little things. I’ll know where you keep the spare blanket before I’ve ever seen you take it out. I’ll reach for a mug you haven’t bought yet. Sometimes you’ll say something, and I’ll remember missing it before you finish the sentence.”

Your throat tightened.

He laughed once, without humor. “There are jokes I know I’ve heard from you, but I don’t know when you tell them. There are arguments where I only remember my own side, which is probably exactly as useless as it sounds.”

His fingers flexed against his knees.

“Sometimes I remember your hand in mine,” he said. “Sometimes I remember letting go.”

“Wally.”

“I know.” He closed his eyes. “That’s the problem. I know too much and not enough, and none of it belongs to me yet.”

The last word did something awful to you.

Yet.

He opened his eyes again, and the restraint in them looked almost painful. “That’s why I can’t answer you the way part of me wants to. Because I remember wanting you before I earned it.”

Wally looked at you then. Really looked. The air between you tightened, not with lightning this time, but with all the ordinary danger of wanting someone who was trying to be good.

“You can ask me to leave,” he said.

“I know.”

“I probably should.”

“Probably.”

He swallowed. “I don’t want to kiss you because future me already got to.”

Despite yourself, your mouth twitched. “Got to?”

“Bad phrasing,” he said immediately. “Terrible phrasing. I mean—” He exhaled, the joke falling away. “I want to kiss you because I want to. Right now. And because you want me to. Not because time already filled in the blank.”

You moved closer before fear could talk you out of it. Wally went very still.

“I’m not kissing you because someday I might love you,” you said.

Something flickered across his face, too quick to name and too honest to miss.

“Okay,” he said.

“I’m not asking you to know the ending,” you said. “I’m asking you to stay in this part with me.”

For once, Wally West did not have a quip ready in a heartbeat.

You leaned in slowly enough that he could move away. He did not. He watched you like every inch was a choice he refused to steal. When your mouth touched his, he exhaled so softly it almost sounded like pain.

Wally kissed you and, for once, did not try to beat the moment to the finish line.

It was almost funny, how careful he was. Wally West, who could outrun time, holding himself still with one hand braced beside your head and the other curled loosely at your waist, as if touching you too quickly might send both of you into another century.

When he pulled back, his smile was crooked and ruined around the edges.

His hands did not tighten. That somehow made it worse. They hovered near your waist, fingers flexing with all the things he was not letting himself take, restraint trembling through him while his eyes dropped to your mouth.

You closed the distance this time.

He let you.

You tasted takeout sauce and mint and the faint electric edge that always seemed to cling to his skin. You kissed him harder, and Wally made himself stay with you second by second, letting you set the pace until your hand slid into his hair and pulled.

He groaned.

The sound went straight through you.

His hands found your waist then, careful even with the urgency in them.

“Tell me if I’m moving too fast,” he said.

You laughed breathlessly against his mouth. “That is a terrible thing for you to say.”

“I know.” His forehead tipped against yours, smile flickering helplessly back to life. “I realized it after I said it.”

You kissed him again because he was ridiculous and because you wanted him so badly your body felt bright with it. Wally’s hands tightened. In the next second, he lifted you into his lap like it cost him nothing. Then he froze beneath you, eyes wide, like he had surprised himself more than you.

“Was that okay?”

You looked down at him, at the flush high on his cheeks, at the effort written into every line of his body.

“Yes,” you said. “That was okay.”

Relief flickered across his face. Then you rolled your hips once, and relief became something much less composed.

“Jesus,” he breathed.

You smiled despite yourself. “Still jealous of future you?”

“Currently trying very hard not to think about that guy.”

“Good.”

You kissed him again, deeper this time, and felt him give under you in increments. The fastest man alive, and he let you slow him down with your hands in his hair and your body settling warm over his. His fingers slipped beneath the hem of your shirt, then stopped against your skin.

You pulled back. “Wally.”

His eyes lifted to yours.

“You can touch me.”

The words hit him hard. You saw it in his face, in the way desire moved through him and dragged reverence with it. His hands spread against your waist, warm and broad, thumbs stroking once over your skin like he was learning you for the first time because he was.

He did not say, I know.

He did not say, I remember.

He said, “Like this?”

Your chest tightened.

“Yes.”

His hands moved with aching care, up your sides, over your ribs, pausing when your breath caught. He watched your face for every answer you gave him, the spoken ones and the ones your body offered before language. When he drew your shirt up, he waited until you lifted your arms. When his mouth found your throat, he went slow enough that the scrape of his teeth made your thighs tighten around him.

“Wally,” you whispered.

His breath shuddered against your skin. “Yeah?”

“Bedroom.”

For half a second, you thought he might short-circuit.

Then he stood with you in his arms.

The world blurred.

Your back hit the mattress before you finished gasping. Wally was over you, one hand braced beside your head, already apologizing.

“Sorry. Sorry, that was—”

You caught his face and kissed him quiet.

He melted.

There was no other word for it. Wally West, all lightning and restless motion, softened over you when you kissed him like you wanted him there. His weight settled carefully between your thighs, and the hard line of him pressed against you through layers of clothing. Your body answered before you could think, hips lifting, friction dragging a gasp out of both of you.

Wally dropped his forehead to your shoulder. “I’m trying to be respectful.”

“You are.”

“I am also having several disrespectful thoughts.”

You laughed, breathless and wanting. “Good.”

His mouth found yours again, and after that, the room became touch.

He undressed you slowly because you asked him to. He kissed each inch of skin as it appeared, not with polished confidence, but with attention that made your hands shake. His mouth moved over your collarbone, the swell of your breast, the soft skin beneath. When he took your nipple into his mouth, your back arched, and his hand flattened against your spine to hold you without trapping you.

“Tell me,” he murmured against your skin.

You tangled your fingers in his hair. “Don’t stop.”

He obeyed like the words mattered.

By the time his hand slid between your thighs, you were slick and aching, your breath uneven in the quiet room. Wally looked up at you from where he had kissed a path down your stomach, hair mussed, eyes dark, mouth swollen from yours.

“I want to taste you,” he said.

Heat rushed through you.

He pressed a kiss to the inside of your thigh. “Present tense. Right now. Because I want to. Because you want me to, if you do.”

Your heart twisted so hard it almost hurt.

“Yes,” you said. “I want you to.”

Wally’s eyes closed for a moment, like he needed the words to settle.

Then he lowered his mouth to you.

The first slow drag of his tongue made you gasp. 

He paused immediately, arms looped beneath your thighs and palms spread over your hips, holding you open against his broad shoulders while his eyes flicked up to check your face. 

You nodded, and he did it again, slower this time, learning your pleasure with a focus that made your entire body burn. 

He was good. Of course he was good; he was responsive and eager and almost unbearably patient once he understood that patience made you shake.

Your thighs tightened around his shoulders. Wally groaned against you, the vibration dragging a broken sound from your throat.

“Please,” you managed.

He did it again.

The pleasure built with devastating precision, not rushed, not taken from memory, each stroke chosen because of the way you reacted beneath him. When he slid one finger inside you, he watched your face. When he added another, he waited for the soft yes you gave him before curling them just right.

Your orgasm hit slowly and then all at once, a wave of heat and release that made your hands clutch at his hair. Wally held you through it, mouth gentle as you came down, his hand easing away only when your body stopped trembling.

He kissed the inside of your thigh.

Then your hip.

Then your stomach.

When he climbed back up to you, his mouth was wet, his eyes bright, and something in his expression looked dangerously close to awe.

You pulled him down and kissed him.

He made a sound into your mouth that told you exactly how close he was to losing the last of his restraint.

“Condom?” you asked.

Wally nodded too quickly. “Wallet.”

“Your wallet is in the living room.”

He vanished.

A gust of air hit your bare skin.

He reappeared beside the bed with his wallet in hand and his hair even worse than before. “Sorry. Practical use of powers. Very sexy. Extremely romantic.”

You laughed so hard you covered your face.

Wally’s smile broke open, helpless and bright, and for one second, there he was. Your Wally. Young and nervous and trying, not future grief, not Speed Force omen, not a superhero, just a man standing half-undressed beside your bed with a condom wrapper in his hand and hope all over his face.

“Come here,” you said.

He did.

You pushed his hoodie up, and he let you pull it over his head. His body was lean and warm under your hands, muscle shifting beneath freckled skin, old scars silvering faintly across his chest and ribs. Your fingers drifted over his side, casual and curious.

Wally went still.

Not tense. Not exactly. More like something in him had skipped ahead without the rest of him.

You drew your hand back. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he said too quickly, then softer, “No. You didn’t.”

But his eyes had gone distant, fixed on some point over your shoulder, as if he were listening to an echo you couldn’t hear.

You covered your hand with his.

“Stay here,” you whispered.

His gaze lifted.

“With me,” you said.

His throat moved. “I’m here.”

When he pushed into you, he did it slowly, jaw clenched with the effort of restraint. You felt every inch, the stretch, the heat, the way his breath broke when your body took him. He stopped once he was fully inside, trembling above you.

“Okay?” he asked.

You wrapped your legs around his waist. “Okay.”

He kissed you before he moved.

Maybe that was what undid you most. Not the speed. Not the strength. The kiss. The fact that he stayed close, forehead brushing yours, mouth finding yours again and again as his hips began to move. He built the rhythm carefully, letting you pull him deeper, letting your hands guide him, letting the present teach him what the future had no right to give.

The bed creaked softly beneath you. Rain whispered against the windows. Wally’s breathing roughened as he drove into you, still controlled, still careful, but losing the battle by degrees.

You wanted him to lose it a little. You wanted to see what wanting looked like when he stopped being afraid of arriving too soon.

“Wally,” you gasped. “Harder.”

His eyes searched yours. Whatever he saw there broke something open.

He gave you harder.

The shift stole the breath from your lungs. His hips snapped into yours with more force, one hand locked around your thigh, holding you open for him while the other braced beside your head. Pleasure sparked hot and bright through your body. You clung to him, nails dragging down his back, and he groaned your name like it belonged to him only because you had handed it over.

Your second orgasm rose faster, pulled tight by the angle of his hips and the desperate sound of his voice against your throat.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. I’m here. I’m right here.”

You came with his name in your mouth.

Wally followed seconds later, shuddering hard above you, his face buried in your neck as he held himself still and let the pleasure take him.

You felt the last, helpless rhythm of him, the way his body went taut and then loose, the way his breath broke warm against your skin. His hand found yours beside your head and held on like he needed the anchor.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. His heartbeat hammered against yours. His skin was damp and hot. The room smelled like rain and sex and lightning.

Then Wally lifted his head, eyes hazy and dark, his mouth soft from yours. “Don’t move,” he murmured, then immediately winced. “Not in a weird way. In a responsible-condom-disposal way.”

A laugh slipped out of you, breathless and wrecked. “You are unbelievable.”

“I know. I’m devastatingly practical.”

He pulled away carefully, jaw tightening like even that was too much sensation, and tied off the condom before dropping it into the trash by your bed. When he came back, he did not rush. He stretched out beside you slowly, one hand finding your waist like he was asking permission to return.

You answered by turning into him.

Wally softened all at once, a quiet exhale leaving him as he gathered you closer with a care that made your chest ache, as if the shape of you against him were something he wanted to learn in the right order. His arm settled around your back, his palm warm between your shoulder blades, and your cheek found the damp curve of his chest.

For a while, there was only the rain against the window and the uneven slowing of his breath. His fingers moved absently over your spine, tracing nothing you could name. You felt his mouth press once to your hairline, then linger there.

Eventually, he lifted his head.

His expression was open in a way that scared you more than any rupture ever could.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you whispered.

His thumb brushed your cheek. “Like what?”

“Like losing me already happened.”

Pain flickered through his eyes.

Then he kissed you, soft and present.

“Okay,” he said. “Then I’ll look at you like you’re here.”

Static

You woke to the smell of lightning.

For one soft, disoriented moment, you thought it came from the Wally beside you. Present-Wally. Your Wally. His arm was still heavy across your waist, his chest warm against your back, his breathing slow and even in a way you had not known he was capable of. Morning light filtered through the curtains in pale strips, touching the rumpled sheets, the clothes abandoned near the foot of the bed, the faint red marks his mouth had left at your shoulder, and the scratches you left along his back.

Then the air snapped.

Wally woke instantly.

His body went from sleep-warm to alert in less than a second, arm tightening around you before he seemed to remember himself. He loosened his grip, but he did not move away.

You knew before he said anything.

“It’s him?” you asked.

Wally’s jaw brushed your shoulder when he nodded.

Lightning flickered again, not in the bedroom, but somewhere beyond it. The hallway. Close enough to hear. Far enough that the other Wally had chosen not to come in.

That choice made the room feel colder.

Present-Wally sat up slowly. The sheet slipped to his waist, and for one painful second, he looked exactly like what he was: young, half-dressed, frightened, and still trying not to let fear tell him what to do. He reached for his clothes.

“You don’t have to go out there,” you said.

His mouth curved without humor. “Yeah, I do.”

You caught his wrist before he could stand.

He looked down at your hand, then back at you.

“Don’t let him make you hate yourself,” you said.

Wally’s face softened.

“I’ll try.”

You almost told him that trying had not saved the future version from anything. Instead, you let him go.

He pulled on his sweatpants and left the bedroom without turning on the light. You sat up, sheet held against your chest, and listened through the half-open door.

The hallway outside your bedroom was quiet for a moment.

Then, present-Wally said, “You’re getting worse.”

Future-Wally laughed softly.

It was a terrible sound.

“Good morning to you too.”

“You can’t keep doing this.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I know that too.”

You slipped out of bed and found Wally’s discarded hoodie tangled near the foot of the mattress. It was soft, warm from being trapped beneath the blanket, and it smelled like him. You pulled it on before stepping carefully toward the doorway.

From the shadows at the end of the hall, you could see them.

Present-Wally stood near the living room, barefoot and tense, shoulders squared like he could physically block the rest of the apartment from himself. Future-Wally stood by the front door. He had not crossed into the hall. His suit was torn worse than before, the red darkened in places you did not want to identify. There was a bruise along his jaw and blood at his hairline, but it was his expression that made your stomach twist.

He looked at the bedroom door as if it were both a holy ground and a crime scene.

Then his eyes found you.

The future version of Wally West went very still.

You suddenly felt aware of everything: the hoodie hanging loose around your thighs, your bare legs, your sleep-warmed skin, the tender aches in your body from the night before. Nothing about you was indecent, not really, but the intimacy of being seen like this by a version of him who looked as if he had already lost you made your throat tighten.

Future-Wally looked away first.

“Sorry,” he said.

Present-Wally’s hands curled into fists. “Don’t.”

“I said sorry.”

“No, you said it like you were apologizing for remembering.”

Future-Wally’s mouth tightened.

The room held its breath around them.

“You shouldn’t be here,” present-Wally said.

“I know.”

“Then why are you?”

Future-Wally’s gaze dragged back to him. “Because this is where I always lose.”

The words moved through the apartment like a draft.

Present-Wally stared at him. “What does that mean?”

Future-Wally looked past him, not at your body this time, but at your face. His expression changed again, and you hated how much of it you were beginning to understand. The hunger to reach for you. The fear of what reaching had done. The grief of standing outside a room where he had once been happy and knowing happiness had become part of the evidence.

“It means this is the part I keep trying to save,” he said.

Present-Wally’s voice dropped. “Or the part you keep trying to erase.”

Future-Wally flinched as if he had been struck.

You stepped fully into the hall.

Both of them looked at you.

You kept one hand curled in the hem of the hoodie because you needed something to hold on to. “Tell us what happens.”

Future-Wally’s face shut down.

“No.”

“Wally.”

“No.” His voice cracked on it, then steadied badly. “I tell you, and it changes how you walk into a room. It changes how he looks at every door. It changes the choice before you even get to make it.”

Present-Wally moved closer. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Future-Wally laughed once, sharp and broken. “I am the only one here who knows what happens when I don’t.”

“Then say it.”

The older Wally’s eyes went bright.

For a second, you thought he might.

Instead, he looked at present-Wally with something close to pity.

“You think restraint makes you different from me,” he said. “You think because you asked, because you waited, because you let her choose, you can’t still be the reason she ends up in that basement.”

Present-Wally went pale.

“That’s enough,” you said.

Future-Wally closed his eyes at the sound of your voice.

“I know,” he whispered.

“No, I don’t think you do.” You stepped closer despite the way present-Wally shifted, as if every instinct in his body wanted to stop you. “You keep coming here to warn us, but all you’re doing is turning yourself into proof that everything goes wrong.”

Future-Wally opened his eyes.

There was so much pain in them that your anger almost failed you.

Almost.

“You told me not to let you run from me,” you said. “This is you running, Wally. You’re just doing it in circles.”

His mouth parted.

Lightning sparked beneath his skin, wild and unstable.

Present-Wally glanced at it. “You need to leave before the rupture pulls you again.”

Future-Wally did not seem to hear him. He was still looking at you.

“You said that to me before,” he murmured.

“When?”

His smile broke. “After.”

The word hit the hallway strangely.

After what?

You knew he would not answer.

He stepped back toward the door, body already starting to blur at the edges. Present-Wally reached for him, but future-Wally shook his head.

“Don’t come after me.”

“You know I will,” present-Wally said.

“Yeah.” Future-Wally looked at him then, and for the first time, you saw the resemblance clearly. Not the face. The fear. “That’s the problem.”

Lightning gathered around him.

You moved before you thought better of it.

“Wally.”

He looked at you one last time.

You wanted to ask if he had loved you. You wanted to ask if you had loved him. You wanted to ask what kind of future could turn the man from your bed into the ghost at your door.

Instead, you said, “I’m still here.”

Future-Wally’s expression crumpled.

“I know,” he said.

Then he vanished.

The silence after him was worse than the lightning.

Present-Wally stood in the middle of your living room with his back to you, head bowed, shoulders shaking once with a breath he could not quite control. You crossed the space slowly and touched his arm.

He turned into you immediately.

For a while, neither of you spoke. He held you carefully, almost too carefully, his face buried against your hair. You felt his heartbeat racing against yours, too fast to be normal, too human to be frightening.

“I’m scared,” he said.

You closed your eyes.

“I know.”

His arms tightened. “I don’t want to become him.”

You thought of future-Wally’s face when he looked at your bedroom door. You thought of promises made later and broken earlier. You thought of the way every version of him kept trying to save you by taking choices out of your hands.

“Then don’t,” you said.

Wally laughed once, soft and miserable. “Just like that?”

“No.” You pulled back enough to look at him. “But start there.”

His eyes searched yours.

You touched his cheek. “Start by staying.”

So he did.

Threshold

The rupture peaked under the museum two days later.

Some part of you had known it would end where it began, beneath the storage wing where the air still smelled faintly of smoke and ozone no matter how many cleaning companies the museum hired. The basement had been closed for repairs since the incident six months ago. That was the official version, anyway. Time had made the truth harder to file.

You stopped trying to conjugate it.

By then, neither of you was pretending the future could be avoided by looking away from it. Wally had spent the last forty-eight hours with Barry, with sensors, with maps of temporal fractures spread across your kitchen table, with three empty pizza boxes stacked beside a notebook full of equations you could not read. He had slept for ninety minutes on your couch and woken with lightning under his skin, one hand reaching for you before his eyes opened.

He did not apologize for it.

You did not ask him to.

Wally’s Titan comm lit up on your kitchen table, a temporal-fracture warning flashing across the screen. He was on his feet before the first pulse finished. 

“Museum,” he said.

You were already standing by the door.

“You don’t have to come,” he said.

“Yes, I do.”

He looked like he wanted to argue.

He didn’t.

That told you how bad it was.

He got you there fast enough that the city smeared into light and sirens. By the time your feet touched pavement again, police had already blocked off the street outside the museum. Wally did not slow until he had carried you past the barricade and through the broken service entrance, stopping only when the stairwell down to the archive cracked open ahead of you. 

Faint gold light pulsed below the floor like a heartbeat. The lower archive was almost unrecognizable. Shelving units had twisted into impossible shapes. Artifacts flickered through different states of decay, bronze shining new and then ancient, paper turning to dust and back again. In the center of the room, the rupture spun open, white-gold and hungry.

Future-Wally stood in front of it.

He looked worse than the last time you had seen him.

The blood and bruising were almost familiar by now. It was the rest of him that made your stomach drop: the scorched tear in his suit, the broken arcs of lightning crawling over his skin, the way his edges blurred every few seconds, as if the room were struggling to hold him in place.

He turned when present-Wally entered, and relief crossed his face before he saw you beside him.

Then the relief curdled.

“You brought her,” he said.

“She insisted,” present-Wally answered.

Future-Wally laughed, bitter and exhausted. “Yeah. She does that.”

You stepped forward. “Tell us how to close it.”

Future-Wally looked at you for a long moment.

Then he said, “I can reset it.”

Present-Wally went still beside you.

“What does that mean?” you asked.

Future-Wally’s mouth tightened. “I can go back to the first rupture and stop the tether from forming. You never get pulled in. The timeline stabilizes. You won’t remember any of this.”

The room seemed to tilt.

Present-Wally said, “And neither will I.”

Future-Wally did not answer.

That was answer enough.

Lightning cracked overhead. You felt Wally’s hand brush yours, then stop, waiting for permission even now. You took his hand and held it in yours.

Future-Wally watched the movement like it hurt him.

“You don’t know what happens if we don’t,” he said.

“You keep saying that,” you replied. “You keep warning me about pain like I haven’t already chosen any of this.”

His face twisted. “I watched you die.”

The words slammed into the room.

Present-Wally’s grip tightened around your hand.

Future-Wally looked at him. “That’s the part you don’t remember yet. That’s the part I’ve been trying to outrun. The rupture takes her because it’s attached to us. At least, that’s what I thought. Every time we chose each other, it got stronger, and I thought if I could make her hate me early enough, maybe it would let go.”

Your chest ached.

“You idiot,” you whispered.

He flinched.

“You absolute fucking idiot.”

Present-Wally let out a strangled laugh that had no humor in it. “Yeah. That tracks.”

Future-Wally looked between you both, frantic now. “You think this is romantic because you don’t remember holding her body.”

“No,” present-Wally said, voice shaking. “I think it’s wrong because you do.”

The rupture screamed louder. Wind tore through the archive. Papers flew around you in a cyclone of half-burned records and impossible dates. Future-Wally staggered toward the light.

“I can fix it,” he said.

Present-Wally moved.

For a second, the room filled with nothing but speed. Red and gold crashed against white. The two versions of him blurred together, then apart, lightning striking lightning. You shielded your face as they fought, not with hatred, but with the horror of two griefs trying to occupy the same body.

Then present-Wally broke through.

He grabbed future-Wally by the front of his torn suit and slammed him back against a warped shelving unit.

“You don’t get to call erasing her a rescue,” he said.

Future-Wally’s face crumpled.

“I can’t lose her,” he whispered.

Present-Wally’s voice broke. “Then stop making the choice for her.”

The rupture pulsed.

You felt it then. Not as science. Not as something Barry could name on a whiteboard or Wally could outrun if he found the right angle. You felt it in the pull beneath your ribs, in the way every impossible thread in the room stretched toward the same terrified center.

Wally.

Not just the one holding your hand. All of him. Every version that had reached backward. Every version that had tried to turn grief into strategy. Every version that had seen the ending and decided the only way to love you was to get there first and tear it apart before you could choose him.

The rupture was not feeding on the two of you loving each other.

It was feeding on him trying to undo it.

The light split open.

Possibility poured through in pieces: the loop, the museum basement, Wally’s hand on your wrist, his mouth on your knuckles, coffee on your shoes, blood on your bedroom floor, his mouth between your thighs, his voice saying he was here. Future-Wally crying over a version of you who had died because he tried to hold the timeline together with his bare hands.

And under it, through it, around it, an opening in the lightning.

Not a reset.

A release.

“Wally,” you said.

Both of them looked at you.

You held out your hand to the younger one.

Present-Wally came to you instantly, but not too fast. Even then, he remembered. Even with the world ending, he let you see him choose to cross the distance.

“The tether is not the problem,” you said.

Future-Wally stared. “What?”

“You’re pulling it tight.” You looked at the rupture, at the light bending toward every version of him that had tried to outrun grief. “You keep trying to control where it ends.”

Present-Wally’s hand slid into yours.

You squeezed once. “Let the moment finish.”

Present-Wally’s eyes met yours.

For one breath, the world narrowed to the warmth of his hand and the terror in his face. He did not understand all of it yet. Maybe neither of you did. But he trusted you anyway.

Across the rupture, Future-Wally went very still. Understanding, slowly and terribly, spread across his face, as if he had finally heard the thing he had been running from. 

“You want me to let go,” he said.

You shook your head. “I want you to stop holding on so hard that it breaks.” 

His mouth trembled around something too damaged to be a laugh. “If you’re wrong—”

“She might be,” present-Wally said.

The answer stunned him into silence.

Present-Wally looked at you. His face was pale. Afraid. Honest.

“We might be wrong,” he said. “But I’m not erasing you to make myself feel brave.”

The rupture opened wider.

For a terrible second, you thought that meant failure.

Then Future-Wally lowered his hand.

The lightning around him faltered.

All at once, you understood: the rupture had never been a wound trying to swallow you. It had never been trying to pull him apart. He had been holding it open, a fist clenched around the timeline, refusing to let the moment finish.

Future-Wally looked at you one last time, grief-stricken and impossibly young beneath all that ruin.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he stepped into the light.

For one second, everything happened.

You saw him as the light took him: Wally laughing too loudly with coffee splashed over his hand; Wally bleeding on your bedroom floor; Wally standing in your kitchen like he already knew where every mug belonged; Wally kissing you with rain still damp in his hair; Wally watching you sleep like the sight of you breathing was something he did not trust to last.

Then, the memories broke darker.

Wally running through lightning with your name caught in his throat. Wally reaching the museum too late. Wally holding a version of you who did not move. Wally tearing the timeline open with his bare hands because grief had convinced him that love was something he could fix if he only ran fast enough.

At the center of it all, Future-Wally stopped running.

The light collapsed.

Still

One week later, Wally West knocked on your door.

You knew it was your Wally before you opened it. You did not know how. Maybe you had learned the shape of his presence without lightning around it. Maybe you had learned the difference between a haunting and a homecoming. Maybe you had spent a week listening for footsteps that never came, and hope had finally learned his rhythm.

When you opened the door, he was standing in the hallway with flowers in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

His hair was a mess. His jacket was half-zipped. There was a faint bruise on his jaw, already yellowing at the edges. He looked nervous enough to run and stubborn enough to stay.

No lightning.

No future grief.

No borrowed intimacy.

Just Wally.

“Hi,” he said.

You looked at him for a long moment. “Hi, Wally.”

His shoulders dropped like your voice had unmade the end of the world.

“I brought replacement coffee,” he said, lifting the bag slightly. “And flowers, because apparently when you want to ask someone if you can start over, those are recommended. These are not apology flowers, though. Or they are. Actually, they might be. I panicked at the florist.”

You leaned against the doorframe. “You panicked?”

“The florist was very intense. She asked what message I wanted to send, and I said, ‘Sorry about the time shenanigans. And about my alternate self,’ which, in hindsight, was not helpful.”

You laughed.

Wally’s mouth softened.

For once, he did not rush to fill the silence after. He stood there and let the sound settle between you.

“Do you still remember too much?” you asked.

His fingers tightened around the flowers.

“Some,” he said. “Less every day. Barry says that’s probably good. The timeline is correcting around him letting go, apparently, which is a very Barry way to say my future-self finally stopped making everything worse.”

“And what do you say?”

Wally looked at you, open and scared and so careful it made your chest ache.

“I say I remember enough to know I don’t want to use any of it to skip ahead.”

Your throat tightened.

He held your gaze. “I’d like to know you in order, if you’ll let me.”

Outside, somewhere far off, thunder rolled over Central City. For once, it sounded only like weather.

You stepped aside.

“Yes,” you said.

Wally exhaled shakily.

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Wally.”

He smiled then, slow and bright and disbelieving, as if every version of him had been waiting at the edge of this moment and only this one had been allowed to enter it.

“You can come in,” you said, and this time there was no future hidden inside the invitation.

He crossed the threshold like he had all the time in the world.

Okay. You work with the Avengers. You have stood in rooms with people who could level buildings. You have completed extractions in active combat zones. You have done things that required considerably more nerve than walking across a gym floor and asking one man what your problem is. You can do this. You are doing this. You're going.

You go.

Across the gym, Bucky is having a separate but related crisis.

Say it, he thinks. Sam said say it. Sam said just say it, James, stop making it weird, it cannot possibly get weirder than it already is, so just — 

He watches you stand up straighter, watches you set your jaw the way you do when you've made a decision. He watches you start walking toward him, and every single prepared sentence he's spent four days constructing evaporates completely.

He straightens up, putting his shoulders back. He breathes out once through his nose.

Say it.

You stop in front of him. He's looking at you. You're looking somewhere around his collarbone because his face has always been the problem, the weight of it, and you can't look at it directly right now.

"I've been meaning to ask you something," you start.

"I need to tell you something," he says at the same time.

You both stop. He gestures, slightly, with one hand. You first. You shake your head. You first. He nods once, like accepting a mission parameter. Then there is a brief silence in which he appears to be locating something inside himself that doesn't come easily.

"I think about you," he says. "A lot. More than — " he pauses, seems to decide that more than is a road he doesn't know how to finish, and reroutes. "You're the first thing I think about in the morning. Most mornings."

You stare at him. Your brain does a fast, wrong translation.

"I'm sorry," you say.

Something moves across his face. "What."

"I'm sorry," you repeat, to his collarbone, "for whatever I did. I've been going over it and I can't figure out what, but clearly something — "

"That's not — " he stops, and tries again. "I wasn't saying that as a bad thing."

"Right," you say, in the tone of someone who absolutely does not believe that.

He looks at the ceiling for a moment and then looks back at you. Bucky plants his feet straight.

"When you're in a room," he says, slowly, carefully, like he's translating from a language he's still learning, "it's quieter. In my head. It's been loud for a long time and when you're around it — stops. That's not something that happens to me."

You are quiet for a moment.

"Is it the mug?" you say.

Bucky blinks. "What."

"I used your mug. The grey one. I washed it but maybe I put it back wrong or — "

"This isn't about a mug," he says, with great patience.

"The obstacle course?"

"No."

"I beat your time."

"I know."

"By four seconds, I know that probably — "

"I don't care about the obstacle course," he says. "I've never thought about the obstacle course. Please." He exhales, trying to find the thread again, somewhere. He does, and pulls on it. "I gave you my rifle," he says.

You go very still.

"I've never given anyone my rifle," he continues. "I want you to know that. I need you to know that, actually, because I think — " he stops, rebuilds. "I gave it to you because I wanted to. Because I trust you with things that matter to me."

The silence stretches long enough to be uncomfortable.

"Did I scratch it?" you say quietly.

"What — " he closes his eyes for just a second, before opening them. "No. You didn't scratch it. It's fine. You were — your shots were incredible, that's the — " he stops again.

Bucky's three sentences away from where he wants to be and he can't seem to close the distance. He looks at you. You're looking at the floor, tracing the edge of a panel with your eyes, and he's looking at the ceiling again, at the flickering light in the far corner that no one has fixed.

There are approximately four feet between you that feel considerably larger than that. He tries one more time.

"I like you," he says. Just that, flat and direct and stripped of all the scaffolding because the scaffolding isn't working. "I like you and I don't — I'm not good at this. I know I'm not good at this. But I needed you to know that the way I've been — it was never — it was always — " he stops and looks at you. "It was never a bad thing, what I feel. It's not a bad thing."

Something small and white walks into the gym. You both look down.

Alpine surveys the situation with the expression of a creature who has found two people being unnecessarily complicated about something very simple.

Swalks in a slow deliberate figure of eight between your legs, purring at a volume that seems unreasonable for her size. Something in your face does the thing it does when you're not performing anything.

"Oh," you say softly. "Hi. Hello, who are you?"

Alpine headbutts your hand with considerable force. You make a small sound. You are now entirely focused on the cat, which means you are no longer focused on your own hands, your own shoes, the specific floor panel you've been staring at.

So, you’re certainly not focused on Bucky, which is the only reason you miss what happens to his face when he watches you with her.

He crouches down.

"Hey, baby," he says, to Alpine, in a voice about forty percent softer than anything you've heard from him, and Alpine abandons you immediately to climb onto his knee. He lets her. He runs his hand down her back and she presses into it.

He exhales, quietly, and then — because he's down here, because it's a different angle, because he's spent weeks looking at you from across rooms and corridors and ridgelines but not like this, not close and low and quiet — he glances up.

The thought arrives before he can stop it. He'd looked at you from many angles. Across briefing tables, through scope lenses, from the other end of long corridors. But this one — you close, and soft, and unguarded, not knowing he's looking — this one was different. This one he thinks he'll carry for a while.

You reach down to pet Alpine. He catches your wrist.

Not hard — barely anything, just his fingers closing gently around it. You go still, and he turns your hand over slowly, pressing his lips to your palm. Quiet and certain. The way he does everything when he's actually sure of it.

You look at him.

He's already looking at you. That same look, the one that's been there for weeks in the corners of rooms and the edges of missions. Except now there's nothing between you and it. And there’s no misconception or misunderstanding. It’s just his face, open in a way you've never seen it, and the understanding of what you've been seeing this whole time settling into place all at once.

"I like you too, Buck," you murmur. Your eyes move over his face like you're still learning it, this version of it, the one he's been keeping underneath everything else. "I was scared I'd disappointed you. That's — that's why I couldn't look at you. I thought you were angry and I couldn't figure out what I'd done and I just kept — " you stop, almost laughing a little. "I kept waiting for it to get worse."

Something in his expression shifts — not pain exactly, but close to it, the specific kind that comes from understanding something too late.

"No," he says, quietly. "Never that."

Alpine climbs off his knee and sits between you both with the air of someone who has successfully managed a very difficult negotiation and would like to be acknowledged for it.

In the doorway, Sam stops walking, with Steve, two steps behind him, stopping also.

They stand there for a moment, looking at the scene across the gym — Bucky on one knee, your hand in his, Alpine between you, the particular quality of the quiet from this distance —

"Is he — " Steve starts.

"No," Sam says immediately.

"Sam, he's on one knee — "

"He's petting the cat, Steve — "

"He was petting the cat, now he's holding her hand — "

"That's not a proposal, that's a — "

"You told him to go talk to them and now he's on one knee holding their hand, Sam — "

"I told him to confess," Sam says, with great emphasis, "I did not tell him to propose, those are two entirely separate conversations that I very clearly delineated — "

Steve turns to look at him with an expression of profound betrayal. "You said you had it handled."

"I did have it handled. Look at them, Steve. It's handled."

Steve looks. The gym is very quiet from here. Bucky is saying something low that they can't hear, and you're laughing — actually laughing, the real one, not the polite one — and Alpine is sitting between you both like she planned the entire thing.

Something in Steve's face settles.

"...okay," he says, after a moment.

"Thank you."

"You're still an idiot."

"Absolutely," Sam agrees, and neither of them moves toward the exit yet, standing there a little longer in the doorway, not wanting to be the thing that breaks it.

$ tag @twentytomidnight @froggibus

$ vi dont-shoot-your-shot.txt (v1) dont-shoot-your-shot-v2.txt

"I'm only doing this because I'm in a bind," You say with as much staunch petulance as you can muster. Though, the surety of your statement is somewhat diminished by the fact that you seem rather comfortably seated on the spread of Lobo's massive thighs.

And, were any passerby to linger and watch the two of you in the comfort of his quarters, they would see him in a half-state of undress, his vest pooled around the span of his hips.

And the look that he settles upon you as he stares up to you from where you've taken rather insistent seat upon his lap.

His expression is lazy, luxuriating. Almost unfocused, except for the way that his hands are insistent to hold around the width of your waist.

"Wouldn't wantcha to fall over, babe," Lobo breezed—and then to add insult to injury, ground his hips against you.

"Whoops, my bad—got a little excited. Haven't had someone drink my blood in a while."

The smile that spread across his lips, though, indicated that there was no mistake committed.

But you couldn't exactly call him out on it, considering the dangerous precipice you were in. Considering the fact that you were trying to focus on the steady thrum of his pulse, trying to will your own desire from making display in the junction of your legs.

If Lobo were to spot that—even to feel it against him—well, then there would be no coming back from it.

As he cocks his head at precarious angle so that you'll be able to better drink from him, you can tell. He loves this. The fact that you've had to proverbially crawl to his doorstep and ask for a cup of sugar in your time of need.

Some sugar. He's so massive that you have to adjust your seating on him, pressing the heel of your palm against the tack of his pec to balance yourself.

This affords you the chance to feel the undeniable, metronomic pace of his heart. Reminds you of the blood that soars through his veins—he's so warm he's practically scalding—

"Well?" He asks, interrupting your brief reverie, giving you cause to look up to those blood-red eyes that lance through you. "This ain't no peep show—"

His hips make fluid, bucking movement into you and you have to smother the noise that you instinctively make. His hands clench around you, sinking into the flesh, immobilizing you with the scorch of his palms.

"—And touchin'll cost ya extra." He displays those menacing teeth for you to take reckoning of. And all you do is silently watch the way that his own canines could give your own a run for their money.

You swallow. When you speak, you hope that you appear far more confident than what his antics have undone you to.

"I can't drink your blood if you keep talking." Is what you finally muster up, but it does little to stymie the smug grin on his face.

"Oh—"—He holds up his hands in mocking display, giving you a chance to admire how all of his muscles flex. Damn him that it's a mouthwatering show of excellent physique.

"—My bad," Lobo apologizes in a manner that doesn't sound apologetic at all, "Go ahead then. Bite me."

It doesn't exactly sound like that's all he's referring to. But you can't look a gift throat in the mouth, so to speak. So all you do is affix a final scowl that he seems impervious to, and then lean down to close the distance.

Usually, you have to go through the effort of calming down whoever you take blood from. But for Lobo, you won't make that consideration. All you do is huff a curt exhale on his pulse, look at the way his carotid marks the meter of blood that hums through him. If he chuckles at the sensation, you blatantly ignore it.

And it reminds you of your purpose: you allow your mouth to spread wide before you cross the meridian and sink your teeth into him.

The give of his skin is much more resilient than others; your canines do heavy lifting as you work through. But when you're rewarded with the piquance of his blood, it's as if your mind goes blank.

The flavor, iron in tang and mellow in quality, seems to erode all and any coherent thought. And all you can focus on is providing yourself with more.

It's like no blood you've ever tasted—he is the last of his kind. You suck, desperate to commit more of him to your tongue as you make a needy swallow.

This is why you're not quite aware of the way that his hands are sidling down your hips, settling on the curve. You remain pointedly ignorant to the way that he grinds against you, though something arises with poignant need.

All you're aware of is the way he tastes, the way that you suck more of the life out of him. The way that he groans under you, lustful and wanton. The way that he rocks under you, obvious in his intentions.

You make another swallow and decide to permit yourself some time to breathe: he doesn't seem to be going anywhere. As you ascend to straight-backed sitting, you're aware that you're lightheaded, that your mouth must be smeared with his blood.

But all you can focus on is the way that he looks at you like he wants to do some biting of his own. You only have the span of an instant to appraise him before you feel the heft of a palm over you—rubbing at the junction of your legs, bringing something to life. And the moan that escapes you as he works his hand is too quick to smother.

But the way that you grind into the heel of his palm is all voluntary. You don't shirk your gaze when those crimson eyes dart up to meet yours. You want him to know this was deliberate.

"Why don't we take a break, huh?" Lobo asks, his hand working at the flesh of you, making an open-mouthed groan tumble free. "Think we oughta take care of some other shit first."

This is all he's able to vocalize before you take matters into your own hands and kiss him. After all, you might as well let him taste taste exactly how intoxicating he is to you.

Your tongue is deft against the flat of his, needy in the way it scrapes against him. He swallows the groan that you make as his hands knead at you, working you out of your clothes.

His teeth catch your bottom lip, hard enough to draw blood—when his tongue licks at the full of it, lapping it up—you shudder.

"You taste pretty good too," Lobo husks, and then he claims your mouth again. Works you out of your shirt as you search to find handfuls of him to grab in desperate measure. His tongue slides against the back of your teeth, while his hands work at the button of your pants, eager to find the promised land.

When he pulls back to break the kiss, you don't realize how starved you are for air. You realize belatedly that you don't care.

"How's about this," He leans forward with malicious intent, a throaty laugh made into the crook of your neck, "Why don't ya let me take a bite, and then we can get back to me?"

With the way that he mouths around your pulse, awakened by his hard work—you can't resist the prospect.

banner and dividers made by me :)

taglist: @colonelfish @just-peachy-babe @thescrawler @i-gotta-go-so-much-bigger @bestmannequin2018 @cassiecasluciluce @mortisetspei @lettucel0ver @paankhaleyaaar @lala131lsjsl @infinictus @bozosprout @bubbletae7 @inkievoid @moonchxrm @timetothirst @luvmailing @spanishshipper @plasticeel @astronomicalwanderlust

The mattress shifted again beneath you, the movement subtle enough that it might have gone unnoticed by anyone else, but after dating Bart Allen for as long as you had, you had become unusually sensitive to disturbances. Mainly because, when they were coming from him, they felt less like ordinary movement, and more like someone attempting to contain a small electrical storm inside a human body.

Your eyes remained closed as you curled deeper beneath the blankets, one arm tucked beneath your pillow while warm morning sunlight slipped through the gaps in the curtains and painted soft bars of gold across the bedroom floor. The apartment was quiet apart from the distant hum of traffic outside and the occasional creak of old pipes somewhere in the building, and for a few precious seconds you thought you might be able to drift back into sleep.

Then a hand smoothed across your back.

The touch was gentle enough that it barely registered at first, warm fingers gliding carefully along your back before disappearing again. A moment later it returned, lingering slightly longer this time, and despite yourself you felt your shoulders relax beneath the blankets.

"Babe." Bart's voice was low, though not because he was tired. He sounded like someone making an enormous effort to remain calm in the face of extreme adversity.

You responded by pulling the comforter a little higher around your shoulders.

The mattress dipped as he shifted positions. Then it dipped again. Then again. Even with your eyes closed you could practically picture him, unable to settle into a single spot for longer than a few seconds as restless energy buzzed beneath his skin.

"Babe," he tried again.

A groan escaped you before you could stop it.

For a moment there was silence, and you thought perhaps he had finally accepted defeat.

Then you felt his forehead press against your shoulder.

You cracked one eye open.

Bart was half draped across the bed beside you, his cheek squished against the blanket and his arms folded beneath his chin as he stared at you with the expression of a man who had been stranded on a deserted island for several years. His hair stuck out in every direction, still messy from sleep, and there was a faint flush in his cheeks that always appeared whenever he had been sitting still for longer than his body considered reasonable.

"How long have you been awake?" you mumbled.

His expression darkened and became almost solemn, "Thirty-two minutes."

You stared at him. Bart stared back.

The sheer seriousness with which he delivered the statement made it difficult to determine whether he genuinely considered this a crisis.

"Thirty-two whole minutes?" you asked.

"I know."

The words left him with such heartfelt suffering that you almost laughed.

"That's terrible." You played along with his anguish, shaking your head slightly before a hand came up to rub your eyes.

"It is terrible," he agreed immediately. "I've already reorganized the kitchen cabinets twice."

You blinked. "What?"

"The spices are alphabetical now." His lips quirked into a small smile, his eyes on you and much wider (and more awake) than just seconds before.. like he knew to fake being sleepy while waking you up.

"You alphabetized the spices before eight in the morning?" You questioned, shifting slightly under the blankets and his weight, readjusting so now his cheek was squished against your arm.

"I ran out of spices." The room fell quiet at that, Bart's eyes flicked toward the window. Then toward the bedroom door. Then toward the window again.

The look was familiar enough that you immediately knew where this conversation was heading.

"No." You narrowed your eyes in a way that should have served as a warning, but you knew he wouldn't take it as such.

"I didn't even ask yet!" Bart defended helplessly.

"You were about to."

His entire face brightened at that, "So you do know me."

You groaned, flipped, and buried your face back into the pillow.

A second later his weight settled carefully across your back, not enough to crush you, just enough to make it impossible to escape while he wrapped his arms around your waist.

"Babe," he mumbled into your shoulder.

"No."

"I just need to run a few laps."

"No."

"It'll take like ten minutes."

You turned your head a bit and raised an eyebrow at that, "You said that last time."

"Okay, but that one accidentally became forty-five."

"Because you ended up in California."

"In my defense, California was already there."

You could hear the grin in his voice after your face had already buried itself back into the pillow.

The worst part about dating Bart Allen was that he could say genuinely ridiculous things with such complete sincerity that arguing with him often felt impossible.

The second worst part was that he was currently warm and comfortable and wrapped around you like an oversized blanket despite being physically incapable of relaxing for more than five consecutive minutes.

"I just need to get some energy out," he continued, his voice softening as his face tucked into the side of your neck. "Just a few laps up and down the East Coast. Maybe stop in Maine. Maybe Florida. Grab a bagel somewhere. I'll be right back, I swear."

"You are describing a road trip." And as if he knew you would logically protest, he peppered your neck in gentle kisses before you could even start talking.

"It's not a road trip if I don't use roads." He mumbled against your skin, this time, you could feel the grin.

"You are not running to Florida for breakfast, we can literally go down the street."

"I could be back before your next sentence."

You turned your head enough to look at him.

The hopeful expression waiting for you was almost painful to witness.

Bart wasn't trying to leave because he was bored of being here. If anything, that was what made the situation so ridiculous. He loved mornings like this. Loved staying tangled together beneath blankets, loved the quiet intimacy of waking up beside someone he adored.

His body just, unfortunately, happened to contain enough energy to power several small cities.

For a long moment he simply looked at you, trying very hard to appear patient despite the fact that every muscle in his body seemed ready to launch him through the nearest wall.

Then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss against your forehead.

"Babe," he whispered softly, and a little pathetically. "Please."

You sighed, causing his eyes to widen, and the grin arrived before you'd even spoken.

And somehow, despite knowing exactly how this would end, you found yourself laughing into your pillow as Bart celebrated a victory he technically hadn't won yet.

← MLIST. ᝰ.ᐟ edawgz 2026.

Wally West:

Wally’s buzzing, the energy that lives under his skin surging through his veins like lightning. He bounces around on the balls of his feet as the two of you circle the mat.

You get a couple jabs in, all playful with no real intent behind them. Wally jabs back, kicks out at you, spins so he’s standing behind you. The energy crackles and burns under his skin. You spin, punching out at him. Wally catches your wrist and blocks. 

He goes to throw a punch, that familiar lightning bubbling up inside of him. It’s a split second too fast, a tad too strong and yet, he doesn’t react fast enough to stop it.

His fist collides with the side of your jaw. You hit the mat. Hard.

Wally drops to the floor with you, panic surging in his chest when you don’t open your eyes. He taps your face, “baby? Baby, look at me.”

You don’t move, limp in his arms, head lulled to the side. He cups your cheek, thumb smoothing over the spot where he hit you. 

“C’mon, c’mon.” Tears burn at his eyes as he pulls you into his lap, arms under your legs and shoulders, ready to pick you up. “Don’t do this to me, sweetheart.”

And just before he can lift you up, your eyes are fluttering open and Wally’s breathing a sigh of relief. The tears he was holding back slip from his eyes, hot and heavy on his freckled cheeks.

“Thank god,” he tugs you into his chest, burying his face in your shoulder.

“Wally?” You groan, rubbing the side of your face, “did you—you knocked me out.”

“I’m so fucking sorry, doll, I didn’t mean—“

You lean in, pressing your lips to his, swiping at his tears with your thumb. “I know, Walls.”

“I love you, I—I’d never ever hurt you.”

“Wally,” you clasp his face between your palms, “I’m okay. It’s okay.”

He breathes a sigh of relief, relaxing under your touch. “I think I’m done with sparring for like, forever now.”

You giggle slightly. “Such a drama queen.”

Dick Grayson:

A million thoughts race through Dick’s head when his fist collides with the side of your face. He’s at your side in an instant, catching you when you stagger back and helping lower you to the mats.

You rub at the side of your face, laughing humorlessly. “Nice one.”

Dick, unfortunately, doesn’t see what’s so funny about the situation. His lips are drawn into a frown, brows creased together as he examines you for any signs of injury. 

His hands are all over you, cupping your face, tilting your head every which way to make sure he hasn’t accidentally maimed you. He’s never intentionally gone for your head during sparring, never once did the thought ever cross his mind. Your wires just got crossed.

He threw a jab and you ducked and before he knew it, his fist had connected with your face.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he says finally. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I really didn’t mean to.”

You shrug, “we’re sparring, Dick. It was bound to happen eventually. Let’s keep going.”

“You’re taking at least a five minute break first.”

“What? I’m—” You pause, words dying on your tongue when you feel a hot trickle of blood drip from your nose. Swiping it on the back of your hand, you quiet your voice, “...fine.”

“Yeah, fine.” He shakes his head, jumping to his feet to grab a towel.

He presses it carefully to your face, pinching the soft part of your nose. You lean into his touch, the stinging in your face that radiated to your nostrils suddenly making sense now.

“Dick,” you say quietly, voice muffled by the blood-stained towel.

He looks at you, eyes stormy.

“It’s okay, I’m not upset with you.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you look like you’re five seconds away from crawling into a hole and dying?”

He sighs, “because—fuck, I hurt you, sweetheart, and I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

You rest a hand over his, “I guess I need to punch you in the face so that we’re even, then.”

Something sparks behind his eyes. You shake your head a little too quickly, stars blossoming in your peripheral vision.

“No,” you say. “Absolutely not.”

Barry Allen:

Barry has always hated sparring. He hates the brutality of it, hates how cocky his usual sparring partner—none other than Hal Jordan—gets. Most of all, he hates hurting people that don’t deserve it, even if it is just for practice.

He’s never hated it more than he does right now, watching his fist connect with your face. 

He watches it all in slow motion. The jab he intended to throw towards your shoulder, your attempt to dodge it, the unfortunate mix up that leads to his knuckles colliding with your cheek. 

Barry’s catching you before you even have a chance to stumble back, hands soft on your hips, keeping you upright. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”

Time speeds up again, you rub at the aching spot on your face. 

“I really didn’t mean to, I swear, I was aiming for your shoulder and—”

You spin in his arms to face him. “Barry.”

His head is hung low, eyes teary and ashamed. You reach up to cup his face, “Barry, look at me.”

He glances up, looking like a kicked puppy. “I hurt you…”

“I’m fine, Barr.”

He shakes his head, the image of his fist colliding with your face replaying in his mind. His hands tighten on your hips, head falling into the crook of your neck.

“I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.” Barry kisses gently at your shoulder, “I’d never hurt you on purpose.”

You sigh, knowing you’re not going to get anywhere anytime soon. “I know, Barry. I know.”

You hold him for a while, letting him cry into your shoulder. 

Booster Gold:

The sound of his fist hitting the underside of your jaw echoes in Michael’s ears. The sound of you hitting the mat follows, loud and hard and something that’ll probably never leave the back of his mind.

His brain short circuits. He freezes. For all the times you’ve sparred, he’s never managed to even land a hit on you before, let alone one this hard. He watches you hit the mat, watches you bounce then draw yourself back into a sitting position.

You look up at him from the ground, wiping a trickle of blood dripping from where you bit your lip. You rub at your aching jaw, the spot that’s sure to hurt for the next week minimum.

Booster’s neurons start firing again. He steps towards you, reaching a hand to help you up and you flinch. Something cold floods his chest, even after you clasp your hand around his and let him haul you to your feet.

You’re afraid of him now. 

“I-I’m so sorry, are you—” All of that usual bravado is drained from his voice like the colour from his cheeks. “Are you okay?”

You nod, “just a little dizzy, might need to sit out a minute.”

His voice cracks. “I think we should call it there for today.”

You look up, tilting your head at your boyfriend. “Are you…crying?”

He shakes his head but you see the way his eyes are glistening, see the stray tear that drips down his cheek. You reach up, swiping a thumb at it. He shrinks beneath your touch, tries to withdraw from you only for you to catch his hand.

“I hurt you,” he says plainly.

“I’m fine.”

“I-I hit you.”

“You didn’t mean to.”

He shrinks even more, broad shoulders folded in on themselves. You wrap your arms around him, pulling yourself closer to him. 

“How about we stop with the sparring for today?” You mumble against him.

“Yes, please.”

dc masterlist | navigation