Chapter Text
He wasn’t that hurt.
Well okay, maybe he was. But it was fine. He’s the Flash. Give it an hour or two and he’ll heal through it just like always. In the meantime, all the fuss everyone kept making about how Grodd had folded his legs like origami was way overkill. Embarrassing, really.
It had been just the three of them on the reconnaissance mission. Over the past month, Gorilla City tech had shown up more and more often in the hands of run-of-the-mill gangs and racketeers. It made no sense. These weren’t super villains, and there was no way they would have been able to afford the gear they’d gotten their hands on. Most of all, they weren’t gorillas. So Batman had sent a small team to scout out a possible arms trade route leading out of the hidden city.
When it happened, Hawkgirl had been the first to come to Wally’s aid. She flew over him low and fast like a bullet trained for Grodd’s knobby skull, mace pulled back and fire in her eyes. And in those fleeting moments before he was airlifted by Wonder Woman out of the hole that used to be a completely normal, flat bit of road, he remembered thinking that Grodd was going to be hurting a lot more than he was.
It was chaos when they arrived back at the Watchtower. Shayera was yelling her head off and forcing out everyone between them and the med bay. Diana was covered in Wally’s blood. She looked like she might bust through a wall to get him where he needed to be faster, which Wally didn’t doubt she could do. From halfway down the hall, Superman was already panic-scanning Wally’s entire body for injuries, and babbling about comminuted fractures to the doctor he had trailing behind him. The whole thing was a mess.
“Guys, guys, I’m fine! I swear!” Wally managed as they threw him onto an examination table. A bright light snapped on above him, which he was of course looking right at. He winced.
“My god, he must be in so much pain!” John had arrived out of nowhere and stood over Wally, grief written over his face.
Next to him, J’onn appeared, floating into Wally’s field of view like a cloud. “No. He is not currently experiencing pain.”
“See?! At least someone’s on my side. Tell him, J’onn!” Wally said indignantly.
“He is in shock. His brain is currently blocking immense trauma. But yes, Green Lantern. Once the shock wears off, I believe the sensation will be excruciating.”
“For crying out loud,” Wally muttered and closed his eyes.
—
It was a long evening of laying there and getting poked and prodded. The doctor ran a whole battery of tests, which meant various scans, lots of blood getting pumped in and pumped out, and some severely disturbing realignment of his shin bones before sequestering him to a hospital bed in one of the infirmary rooms. Just as J’onn had promised, the pain came in full force some time before nightfall. Wally knew he had suffered worse in the past and probably will again someday in the future. But in the moment he was really wishing that this whole thing would just hurry up and be done. Maybe he had overestimated his healing abilities on this one.
And he was exhausted. He drifted in and out of sleep for what was probably only a handful of hours, but felt like twenty. He caught glimpses of his teammates sitting by his side, rotating out as he stirred awake, then fell back into sleep. Consciousness oscillated around him like that until about 3 am when the hunger kicked in and outweighed his fatigue. He shifted his weight in an attempt to sit up, and an immediate, throbbing pain shot up both his legs like electricity.
“Don’t get up,” a gruff voice spoke in full volume from a corner of the dark room.
Surprised, Wally instinctively jumped, triggering a fresh wave of agony. “What the fuck, dude?! Don’t startle me like that!”
He threw a pillow towards the voice, and it hit the chest of the dark figure and fell to the floor with a soft flump.
“Jeeesus, Batman. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you like sneaking up on people just for shits and giggles,” Wally sighed with exasperation as Batman approached his bedside with the jettisoned pillow.
Gently, he urged Wally to lean forward in the bed, and placed the pillow behind him to support him. “Not just shits and giggles. I also wanted to make sure you were alright.”
Wally smiled reluctantly. Batman had the same stoic, undecipherable voice even when he was cracking a joke in the middle of the night. He was a weird one alright.
But who was weirder? The grown-ass man who dressed up as a bat and terrorized criminals? Or his overly optimistic younger colleague who couldn’t suppress the raging crush he had on said rodent-themed superhero? What a toss up.
And a one-sided toss up at that. Wally was pretty sure Batman knew something was up, but he’d never confronted him about it, and Wally sure as shit wasn’t about to make any grand confessions of love from a hospital bed. Not that it mattered. It was just some stupid attraction probably born of the allure of mystery. Batman pretty much embodied tall, dark and handsome. Everyone knew it. But maybe Wally knew it a little better, given the few times he’d used his super speed to take a longer, closer look at the man. Ah the perks of being a speedster. All the time in the world, and gone in the blink of an eye.
Speaking of, Wally could really do with some of that speed to heal himself right about now. He wondered how long he’d be laid up like this. He also wondered how he’d get down to the mess hall to get snacks.
“Here,” Batman offered plainly. He handed Wally an energy bar.
Wally blinked down at it, then looked curiously over to Batman, who had since pulled up a chair beside the bed. “Batman.”
“Yes?”
“...Are you psychic?”
Wally could feel Batman rolling his eyes behind his cowl. “I mean, how did you know I was thinking about food?”
“Flash. You are always thinking about food,” Batman supplied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, which, okay. Maybe it was.
“Hmph. Well, yeah I guess if you put it that way.”
Wally munched on the energy bar at regular speed. Normally he’d scarf the whole thing in less than a second, but he was kind of enjoying this quiet alone time with Batman, and for once didn’t want to rush things to their conclusion.
And so they sat for the next couple minutes until Wally finished the energy bar and crumpled the wrapper into a wad. He tried to throw it over into a nearby waste basket, but it disappointingly unfolded and billowed its way to the ground about a foot from the bed.
“Flash, I-” Batman started.
A long silence.
“You… what?”
Batman leaned forward, looking down at his hands, a scowl on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he finished matter-of-factly.
Another silence. Wally looked around the room as if there would be some clue as to why Batman was apologizing to him.
“The information was bad,” Batman finally clarified. “It was a setup.”
Wally breathed a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding in. “Uh yeah well, I mean, they definitely knew we were there, so I figured as much. But what’s there to apologize for?”
Batman looked up at him, and even though Wally couldn’t see his eyes, he could feel the sincerity and intensity behind them.
“You could’ve been killed.”
“Yeah, but that-”
“And it would’ve been my fault .”
“So you’re saying you’re not trying to kill me for spilling coffee beans all over the kitchen floor last week?” Wally said cheekily.
“Flash, this isn’t a joke.”
“I know, I know,” he relented. “But god, you’re like the king of beating yourself up over things that happen to other people. I don’t blame you for this, I blame Grodd. You know, he’s really become an asshole lately. Anyway, point is, you don’t get to feel guilty about it. Not this time, bud. So stop sulking, you give emo a bad name.”
Batman didn’t respond, just stared at Wally in that unreadable way where you can tell all kinds of gears are turning in his head, but hell if anyone knows what about.
From nowhere he produced another energy bar and handed it to Wally.
“Oh, uh… thanks?” Wally said with confusion as he looked down at the bar before tearing it open. He wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be some sort of reward, a peace offering, or if Batman had just held out on more snacks to see what would happen.
When he looked back up, Batman was gone.
“Jesus fuck, how does he do that?” Wally spoke to the empty room, mouth full of energy bar. He shrugged and wadded up the wrapper into a tight ball.
It drifted to the floor not far from the first.