Well, Life Has A Funny Way Of Sneaking Up On You
Running the Speed Force Test
Chapter 1
Nightwing resists the urge to take a page out of Impulse's book and ask incessantly if they've seen any changes. It's not easy.
To give himself something to do, he's helping Max dole out snacks and chocolate to the speedsters because worrying makes them burn even more calories. Plus, it gives them something to do, and it slows Bart's questions down from every second to every two, which doesn't sound like much of an improvement until one has experienced it.
Atom makes a surprised sound. “There they both are! See, we’re-what the heck!”
There is nothing in this world or the next to stop the rush over to the computer monitors. “Whatizzifwhaizzif?” Bart asks around a mouthful of cheese crackers (the Chicken Whizees were long gone, and he is on his fourth different snack).
Atom only points at the Speed Force chart, and Nightwing spots it immediately. Barry's line has shot up, while Wally's line has started fluctuating wildly. But even with the fluctuations, Wally's lowest points were still miles above Barry's newest high points.
Then both lines flattened out, and not even a blink later, Wally and Barry skid to a stop in front of everyone. They're instantly mobbed and Nightwing has to use more of his elbows than he'd like to against his allies so he can touch his boyfriend.
Wally's managed to push up his goggles, and he looks exhausted. So even though Nightwing is feeling the hot urge to climb Wally like a tree in a bid to reassure himself that Wally is back and safe and his, he only pulls Wally's arm over his shoulders in the universal gesture of 'lean on me'.
And lean on him Wally does. He brushes his nose against Nightwing's hair as he lets some of the tension run out of his body, making him heavier than normal.
It's Max who gets Jesse to pull up some small boulders for Barry and Wally (and Nightwing) to sit on, and only after he's plied both of them with food and drink does he let Mr Terrific and Atom grill them.
"There was this vortex thing," Wally says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "It was…like sucking up the Speed Force or something. It had trapped Uncle Barry."
"Wally got me out by lending me some of his 'Force," Barry puts in. "And he kept lending it to me so we could oversaturate that thing and force it to collapse in on itself. I don't think I would have been able to shut it down without his help."
"Do you think it was a one-time anomaly or do you think we might run into it again?" Jay asks as Bart zips between Wally and Barry, hugging them and trying to steal some of their food.
"I don't know. I've never seen anything like it before. I don't know what-or who-caused it to form in the first place." Barry holds his cookies out of Bart's reach and looks over at Max. "Have you seen anything like what we described?"
Max is silent for a moment. "Not exactly, no. I've only…I've never seen something drain the Speed Force."
Nightwing isn't the only one to latch on to the old man's careful wording. Jay's eyes narrow and Jesse's eyebrows pull in, but it's Wally who speaks. "But you've seen something similar?"
"I once...saw a man who diverted the flow of the Speed Force to suit his own purposes, and the same man dammed it up so others couldn't access it," says Max after a few seconds of contemplation. "He did it on a surprisingly large scale."
"If he's into manipulating the 'Force, do you think that draining it is the next step for this guy?” Jesse asks. “Or maybe do you think he’s trying to hoard it or something?”
“I don’t know,” Max says heavily. “I don’t have enough information.”
“Maybe we can fix some of that,” Mr Terrific interjects. “Let’s see what other information we can pull off of the sensors. We can also see what kind of strain they were under, and we can take steps to improve them for the future. So if we run into-no pun intended-another event like this again, we can be better prepared to handle it."
Wally finishes his sports drink and he lets his head fall on Nightwing’s shoulder. He looks like he might be fading, now he’s eaten something and the adrenaline is gone. So even though he’s feeling like tumbling them back behind their boulder so they can get naked and reassure each other of their presence and safety in a much more erotic way, Nightwing only combs his fingers through Wally’s slightly sweaty hair. He can wait and reward Wally’s return later, when Wally’s awake enough to actually appreciate said sexy reward.
He pushes aside the small part of his brain that suggests he rewards Wally more than once (it would be so easy to slip off their boulder on to his knees between Wally’s strong, pretty thighs) and makes himself focus on his boyfriend. He fends off Bart’s thieving hands and feels Wally get softer and heavier against his side with each pass of his fingers through that pretty red hair.
Mr Terrific comes over. He raises his eyebrows at Wally’s position, but starts to peel the sensors off of him. Wally cracks one eye open blearily before letting it fall shut, and he snuggles in a bit closer to Nightwing.
Nightwing determinedly does not revisit his recent fantasy of tumbling them off the boulder. Just because he hasn’t had nearly enough sleepy sex with Wally does not mean that he should deprive his boyfriend of much-needed sleep due to his inability to keep his lust in check.
“You should get those two home,” Mr Terrific says as he puts the sensors back into their case, jerking his chin in Barry’s direction. “I think we’ll get more out of them later when they’re more cognisant.”
“Probably,” Nightwing agrees as Wally tries to shift closer. “How soon do you think you’ll have some answers?”
Mr Terrific shrugs. “Too soon to tell. Currently, we have too many gaps in our knowledge to make any sort of accurate predictions. I’m hoping by the time those two start looking more alert, I’ll have a better grip on the data and what it’s trying to tell us.”
Nightwing nods slowly. “Okay. Well, I’m gonna get him out of here.” He taps his ear piece as he loops his arm around Wally and gets them in something resembling a standing position. “J’ohnn? Wally and I are ready. Beam us down, Snotty.”
Wally snorts softly into Nightwing's shoulder as they're teleported to the Watchtower, and his tired chuckle is almost soundless. "Lock one," he mumbles. "Lock two, Loch Lomond."
J'ohnn's expression, as the teleporter's lights settles down around them, is less amused. "You do know," he says dryly, "that joke is the equivalent to the 'it must be free' 'joke' cashiers hear all the time, yes?"
"I didn't know Hal had told you it that many times." Nightwing adjusts his arm and coaxes Wally to stumble down the stairs from the platform with him.
"Hal tends to prefer 'beam me up, Scotty', which is just as overused. Occasionally, he will stir things up with a Spaceballs reference, but he usually sticks to Star Trek. Others, however, overuse the other." The Marian gives them both a very pointed look.
“Well, I’ll keep an ear out and if I hear others using it, I’ll let them know you’d like it if they knocked it off.” Nightwing makes sure to give J’ohnn the bright smile that got him out of trouble as much as it got him into it.
J’ohnn does not look impressed. “I have to calibrate the transporter for Vigilante, Shining Knight, and Star Girl’s next deployment, so I am afraid you will have to use the zeta tubes.”
“That’s fine.” Then, when they got to Nightwing’s warehouse, he could turn off his zeta and they could have a (probably) uninterrupted afternoon together. Even if it is mostly sleeping. He hopes they will do more than sleeping-so many things to do that may or may not include the bed, or the shower, or the kitchen island or-
"Would you please stop thinking about sex so much louder than usual?" J'ohnn asks, sounding a bit pained.
Wally makes a muffled noise. "Seriously, Rob? Seriously?"
"I can't help it!" Nightwing defends. "You're here, and you're right up against me! Sorry, J'ohnn, but it's going to happen. I'll try to be quieter, but I can't not think about it with KF right here! I mean, look at him!"
J'ohnn rolls his eyes upwards.
Wally snorts. "Love you too, babe," he says, somewhat inarticulately. "Now let's go home before J'ohnn makes us regret our life choices.”
Nightwing laughs and waves at J’ohnn before plugging in the code for his zeta. Then it’s some quick swirling lights, a moment of suspense, and then they’re in Dick’s warehouse. He kisses Wally, something quick and far too hot to be a simple ‘we’re home’ kiss, but far tamer than what he would like.
“Babe,” Wally murmurs as he eases back. “’Mflattered, but…”
“I know.” Nightwing can wait. If nothing else, it’ll build anticipation. “Let’s get upstairs and into bed. And when you wake…” Dick pulls off his mask and waggles his eyebrows seductively.
Wally smiles. “You’ll be joining me, yeah?”
Dick has a list of things he needs to do that’s a mile long. “Of course I will.”
Wally’s smile gets warmer. “Babe, you’re the best.”
They stumble up to the living area, and Dick helps Wally get into ragged old flannel sleeping cut-offs (one hundred percent not chosen so Dick could admire Wally’s long legs) and a threadbare cotton shirt (again, not picked because it’s so thin one can almost see Wally’s freckles through it). Wally flops down on the bed, face first, but he tilts his head slightly so he can watch Dick change. Dick doesn’t make it into a striptease, but he does make sure he’s standing where the light will flatter his musculature the best and he does a lot of unnecessary bending and stretching.
When Dick crawls into bed, Wally immediately nuzzles in. “You’re a tease,” he grumbles, shifting as he gets comfortable.
"It's only teasing if I don't follow through, and I'm definitely going to follow through." Dick gives in to his urges and runs his fingers through that pretty red hair. "Not now, of course, but after you wake up. I want you well-rested before I tire you out again."
"Promises, promises, promises." The last 'promise' is followed by a jaw-cracking yawn.
Dick makes a soothing shushing sound and relishes Wally's weight on top of him. He hums a few bars of the lullaby his mother used to sing to him, but he doesn't have to do much more because Wally's out before he even gets to the chorus.
Dick originally had planned to cuddle with Wally for a bit, and then get started on his lengthy to-do list, but Wally's so comfortable and warm that he ends up falling asleep himself. He wakes to discover they've swapped positions, and Wally is already awake.
"Hey Babe. You alert now?"
"Yeah." Dick shifts one of his legs until it can slip between Wally's.
"Good. Last two times, you just blinked at me, muttered something nonsensical, and immediately conked back out. It was kinda of hilarious."
Dick sticks out his tongue and feels a thrill run through him when Wally's chest shakes with a gentle laugh.
Before he can retort, Wally smiles, eyes a little more serious. "Thanks for staying. It…it made things easier."
"Of course I stayed." Dick stretches up so he can press a kiss to the line of Wally's jaw. He settles back a moment later. He drags his fingers slowly over the thin cotton covering Wally’s chest and starts plotting the best way to get it off of his boyfriend. “How are you feeling?”
“Right now, pretty good.”
“And earlier?”
Wally is silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” he finally says. “There were some parts that were absolutely amazing…and then there were those bits with that anomaly.”
“Do you think it was a one-off?”
“I hope so, but I doubt we’re going to get that lucky. If nothing else, we should try to figure out what caused it.” Wally loops his arms around Dick and his hands rest on the small of Dick’s back. “Because what would have happened to Uncle Barry if he was by himself?”
Dick-who is far too familiar with dangerous game of ‘what-if’-busses the base of Wally’s neck. “But he wasn’t, and that’s the important thing. You’ve got some of the brightest minds on Earth looking into it, and you’ve proven there’s a least one way to stop that thing, so you’re not completely in the dark.” He slides his hand up so he can cup a freckled cheek. “And you came back to me,” he says lowly.
Wally’s throat bobs as he swallows. “I told you I’d always do everything within my power to do so.”
“I know. It’s just good to see.” Dick doesn’t talk about the cold dread that had clamped around his heart when Atom had blurted out that the computer had lost the two speedsters, or the terror that the Speed Force might have decided to take back Wally, and Dick would be left alone again.
Even now, he can feel the fear permeating his bones. To combat it, he guides Wally’s mouth down to his and he makes sure Wally’s only going to think of him.
Wally breaks away. His cheeks are pink and his eyes are definitely darker than they had been a minute ago. “We don’t have to be anywhere soon, right?”
“I don’t have any outside plans.” To emphasis the point, Dick rolls his hips slowly against Wally’s thigh. “Plus, I did promise you a reward for coming back to me.” He adds a little back arch and a seductive flick of his tongue over his lower lip with the next sinuous roll.
Wally’s gaze follows the movement of Dick’s tongue with obvious growing hunger and he lets his hands slip down with the next roll until they’re cupping Dick’s ass. “You don’t have to reward me for that. I’ll always try to come back to you.”
Dick arches an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re not interested in one.” He doesn’t try to censure the breathless edge that’s beginning to enter his voice. “Besides, good behaviour should always be rewarded.” He works a hand under Wally’s shirt and lets it rest on the warm muscles there.
“Well, if that’s how you feel about it…” Wally tightens his grip and pulls Dick even closer to him.
Dick smirks and kisses Wally again, making full use of all his experience. He rubs his hips against the ones below him one last time, and then moves so he’s straddling Wally. “It is how I feel. Positive reinforcement goes a long way.” He brushes his hands over Wally’s pretty face before curling his fingers in that gorgeous hair and kissing him with all the heat he can find.
Wally responds and Dick sinks into growing pleasure. He knows it won’t always work out this well, and they still don’t know what caused the events to occur, but for now, Wally is safe and here and his, and that’s enough. It’s more than enough.
So he pulls out all the stops, and he uses every trick he can to show Wally why he should always come back. And when they lay sweaty and spent and satisfied, Wally presses a sweet kiss to Dick’s temple, whispering how Dick grounds him every time, Dick knows he’ll fight the Speed Force itself if it means keeping Wally here like this.
Whatever’s happening with the Speed Force, it had better be ready because Dick isn’t going to let it take Wally. He’ll do what he has to do to keep Wally safe, and the rest of the world had better watch out.
x Fin x