asgardmeridiem | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Wally West (

performance)
What: best friends being gross and best friend-y
When: May 27th
Where: Heimdall House & wherever else they go
Rating: PG-13 at worst

By Wally's reckoning, it's Dick's birthday. He knows that the seasons and the calendars are different here; hell, he's even come to begrudgingly accept that they could've been abducted from completely different times without the other person even knowing. He was still working on an explanation for that one, but didn't let himself lose sleep at night over it.

That didn't erase the fact that for Wally, it's Dick's birthday, and it didn't change the fact that every kid deserved cake on their birthday. And if Dick didn't agree it was his birthday, well, then he gets free cake anyway and who would say no to that?

More than that, Wally had noticed Dick doing that "withdrawing from sunlight and social interaction" thing he always does when there's a mystery troubling him. On top of all the weird bullshit going on in the city, the screaming and crying and everyone around them moaning about the end of times and one guy insisting that his entire universe was dead- no. It isn't true. It's not true, because the League wouldn't let their world end. ...it's probably way too much to hope that Dick didn't see that network post, though.

Still, Wally has the perfect solution to get their minds off of it. Cake, and pretending everything is fine, and being in each other's company. So that's what's on his mind as he balances in his arms two boxes of Dick's favorite kind of cake (because Dick should at least get some of his own cake) on his way over to Dick's room and kicks the door in lieu of knocking.

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"Pretty much, yeah." Wally grins at dick and some crumbs fall out of his mouth onto the bedspread. Sorry bro. "You know me, I can handle it. Heck, hang around me for a day and I'll get hurt all on my own doing something stupid."

Dick sighs long-sufferingly at Wally making a mess of his neatly-kept bed, but doesn't say anything. Such is the life of a speedster's best friend. "Okay," he says, and takes another bite of cake as a gesture of solidarity. "Okay. We'll start off small. No limb loss on day one."

"Right. Wanna save the good stuff for later."

Wally should probably tell Dick that his speed-healing isn't working here though. Probably should tell him. ...later. When telling him won't make him backpedal on this tenuous agreement.

"Let's agree to leave this part out of the mission report back home though." Yeah, his aunt and uncle would have a cow if they learned about this.

"No kidding," he says, with a glance at his stack of notes. "At this point, I'm thinking it'll be better if we do get our memories wiped. Shorter report."

Okay, so it's not a very funny joke.

Not really, but Wally will grin anyway. He finishes a half of the cake before licking his fingers clean and wiping them dry on his jeans. "Okay. Wanna do this now?"

Dick sighs. Better to get it out of the way now, right?

"Sure," he says with a shrug that he hopes looks casual. "That way even if it goes wrong, at least we'll have cake."

"Right? Nothing cures blood loss like cake." Wally picks himself up, rolling up his sleeves and glancing around Robin's room. He's got to have a knife or something he can use. "I'll just like, prick myself. Really small."

...he should probably tell him before he actually does this.

........nah it'll be fine probably

Wally acquires a small knife and heads back over to Robin, holding out his palm. He hesitates, knife point over the ball of his palm. This is... "This is weird. It's weird, right?"

"It's weird," Dick confirms, trying not to wince at the blade hovering over Wally's skin. Just a prick, he'd said. It'll be small. And he'll heal in a day anyway, right? So... if this was really what he wanted...

"You don't have to do this," he says, even though he knows it won't matter.

"Nah dude, it's fine. Just don't tell my parents." Wally digs the tip of the knife into his palm and flinches; not from pain, just...something else.

"Okay." He holds his hand out to Robin, blood welling up over the cut.

"It's our secret," he says, and then Wally's cutting his palm. Dick isn't entirely sure how this works, and that suddenly worries him. What if there's more to it than just — thinking about it? But he doesn't have time to worry about that, not with the bright red blooming on his best friend's skin. So he rests his fingers delicately on Wally's wrist and focuses all his energy, all his thoughts on making that cut his own.

Only a moment later, a sharp little stab of pain pricks his own palm. The reality of it is startling, even if the result was exactly what he hoped for. He sucks in a sharp breath. "Okay," he says, amazed, "I feel it..."

"And I don't." Wally blinks down at his own palm, blood sitting in a line along the cut. The wound doesn't close, the blood doesn't slow or sink back into his hand or anything like that, but the pain's completely gone.

Wally sticks the wound into his mouth to suck on it. Usually a wound like this would close in minutes, but it'll probably still around for days. He can hide it. "Okay, so...you're like walking morphine? Sort of."

"I guess?" Dick laughs a little. It's absurd, the entire situation, but he can't help feeling a little giddy rush of success. "You don't feel anything?"

"Nope." Wally pulls back his hand and peers at the cut. The wound is still there, but even when he pokes at it he can't feel anything. "So...you just take pain?" That's not so bad. Sucks for Robin, but it's not life-threatening.

"Looks like it," he says. He can't help but feel a little disappointed as he blinks at Wally's injured hand, rubbing the same spot on his own palm. "I thought it'd be a little more dramatic than that."

"So there's nothing? Not even a red spot?" Wally takes Robin's hand to look it over.

Dick's fingers twitched a little in Wally's, but he only leaned in closer to peer at his palm himself. "I don't think so," he says, disappointed. "Definitely stings, though."

Wally leans back, dropping Dick's hand. He'd been expecting something more dramatic too. He'd been expecting entire wounds transferring, or some kind of light show or something; already he's thinking about how it works, that maybe skin-to-skin contact helps Dick to rewire certain brain synapses and keep the other person from feeling or maybe he just numbs nerve endings with some kind of pulse, but then why would he feel it himself if-

OKAY okay. Open mind. Right.

...also why does he sound disappointed. "That's good though. That you don't take the whole thing. It's not so bad this way."

Now Wally is being overprotective. Dick frows slightly.

"It's okay. I expected something more useful, I guess," he says with a shrug, trailing the fingers of his other hand next to the cut on Wally's palm, light and considering. It isn't damage drain so much as pain drain this way. Which has its uses, sure, but... "I wonder if it's the kind of thing I can train," he adds, thoughtful.

"Yeah, probably," Wally says with a bit of a scowl.

He's not entirely sure why he's got such a problem with Dick using this power. It's not that he thinks Dick is punishing himself or suicidal, and it's not even because he's concerned that Dick will go too far one day and take something he can't recover from (though he knows that last one is a real possibility). No, it's just...it's unsettling.

It's like whoever did this to him did it on purpose. Like whoever altered Dick, gave him this power, knew things about him that they shouldn't have known. It's also unsettling because it's like whoever gave him this power wants him to be more hurt, and maybe it's that part that upsets Wally the most.

He pulls his hand out of Dick's grasp, because the wound is still oozing a little blood and he should probably avoid letting Dick watch too closely or he might figure out that it would've already stopped bleeding under normal circumstances. He sticks his hand back in his mouth. He can probably sell it as his powers being suppressed if it comes to that. "Does anybody else here have your same deal? Maybe you can talk to 'em about it."

Sorry, Wally, but expecting Robin to not be observant? Not gonna happen.

"I'll ask around," he says quickly, adding it to his massive mental To Research checklist. But there's something more pressing that has his attention now. He frowns at the cut, still bleeding, and looks back up at Wally. "It's taking too long," he says. "It wasn't that deep, was it?"

"It wasn't?"

wally wow you are not even fooling yourself

"I dunno man. Maybe because my powers are kinda downgraded? It'll close in a minute." See, look! It's not bleeding anymore. Wally's just going to grab his cake box and start stuffing his face again.

From what he's heard, plenty of people here get powers when they arrive, and some are limited, but Wally's case is strange. There's nothing new — he's just slow. His metabolism is working fine, judging by the way he's shoveling cake into his mouth, but if his healing is slowed down, too...

"It's weird," he says, "that I got powers and you got slower. Don't you think that's weird?" And with that, Dick grabs for Wally's hand, a little less gentle than Wally had done for him, but still mindful of the cut.

"Ow!" Wally says, not because it hurts but because it's reflex, and gives his hand a little tug. "Dude, yeah it's weird. I've been saying that to myself for days."

Never mind that now he knows that people in Thor's house get either super strength or super speed, and never mind that this speed feels different from his, more controlled, less...less his. Never mind that he can't feel it anymore, that bone-deep hum that's always there if he listens, the sounds of his molecules whirring and whirring, waiting to be accelerated.

Never mind that.

His speed isn't gone. It's just suppressed. He's still metabolizing like normal (for a speedster) so his speed isn't gone.

That tug only makes Dick hold tighter. His mouth draws down, and a little crease appears between his eyebrows. The cut is still there. It could be a fluke, he thinks, an aberration — but nothing like this is ever that simple.

The implications of that frighten him. If he's right, then Wally isn't healing like he should be. And now he knows there's nothing he can do about it.

"You didn't tell me about this part," he says, looking up at Wally, pressing his thumb against Wally's palm.

Robin pressing his thumb against Wally's palm opens the wound back up and dribbles a little blood out. Wally watches a bead roll over into the center of his hand before flicking his eyes up to look at Robin, then away.

He doesn't really have an excuse. Robin's got him cornered.

"I didn't tell you 'cause I knew you wouldn't test your powers out," he mutters, and against probably everyone's better judgment but his he continues, "but it's just a cut, it's not a big deal."