HOOOOOOOO BOY

first off, for anyone who doesn’t know, terry is the main character of batman beyond and its continuations via comic; walter shreeve (aka shriek) is one of the recurring villains (aka evil deaf subtly-but-strongly-implied-to-be-gay husband).

in this one, terry is on his last year of college when he meets walter during spring break, while doing research for his senior thesis. * they end up hitting it off really well, and then dating, which goes great for a while.

(*he started college a couple years later than average, thinking he could never be intelligent or dedicated enough to try. when he did eventually go fuck it and take a class or two, he took to it surprisingly well, and decided to go for it after all.) 

then, right around the time the fall semester begins, the events of ‘rebirth’ happen. terry is now having to juggle a relationship, his last semester of college, and being the real actual batman, which starts to take a toll on him to say the least. 

despite walter’s own work ethic, which involves a lot of long hours and not eating or sleeping enough, he sees how much terry is struggling suddenly and gets Concerned to Say the Least. because of the timing he doesn’t put two and two together about what exactly is taking up so much of terry’s time and energy (beyond being more than a little suspicious of bruce); he just thinks it’s the coursework, which terry lets him believe even if he feels guilty about lying to him.

then, about halfway through the semester, the events of ‘shriek’ go down. shriek’s identity is outed to the police; terry finds out that the man who tried to kill both him and bruce is none other than his boyfriend, and is deeply shaken. 

then, while he’s trying to figure out what the hell to do about any of this, walter sends him a message to meet up somewhere so that he won’t bring suspicion on him by showing up at his house. despite his better judgment terry agrees, partly because he hopes to god that this is some kind of misunderstanding and walter is actually innocent. 

nope. he’s not. 

instead, walter confesses, does his best to explain what happened, and apologizes to terry for all of this. he tells him that superhero or not he’s worried that batman will try to use him to get to him, and that for his safety they should end things. 

terry is then forced to decide whether to tell him the truth, continue pursuing him as batman, or let him go to possibly do more harm. he does the only thing he can think of in the moment, which is to buy himself time by convincing walter not to break things off just yet; he tells him that while he’s in hiding they can figure something out together, one way or another.

walter reluctantly accepts, leaving terry with more time to make his decision amid a fuckload of conflicting feelings, crushing coursework, and his secret job as batman.