Archive of Our Own ^beta

The dropping base of shitty EDM-pop pulses underneath Wally’s feet. His dick is crammed into these tight skinny jeans he picked off the floor of Kyle's dorm room, but he’s grown used to them. This night get-away has warped all perception of time. The celebratory limitlessness this week has progressed has made him nothing short of invincible. 

He has no idea how long he’s been in this “ultra-exclusive” nightclub, but the tequila shots Kyle bought earlier for everyone should be starting to wear off, so he can drop the pretend-drunk act he’s been sloppily putting together. He wants to see how Kyle is faring. 

Kyle doesn’t know Wally’s a meta. More than that, Kyle has no idea he’s Kid Flash. The two of them met in high school—Kyle was the new transfer kid, Wally was routinely targeted by bullies; the two of them got picked on and connected through misery. Following high school, it only made sense to go to the same college. Throughout it all, however, there’s never been a good time for the identity reveal. 

So, the non-shop shots are nothing to Wally, but he can’t make that obvious. 

Wally’s only pulled away from his science textbooks because Kyle dragged him to the club to celebrate the impending graduation. They still have finals to get through! But Kyle’s irresponsible and a civilian, and has horrible puppy dog eyes he whips out at every opportunity. Like usual, Wally’s the one on the outs: perpetually single, hopelessly unemployed, the largest stick up his ass that Kyle keeps telling him to pull out (good thing Kyle and Dick have never met).

He needs to look busy instead of anxiously awaiting Kyle’s return from the bathroom. Stop being weird , Wally tells himself. He reaches out to the girl in front of him and she smiles with chemically white teeth, glowing in the darkness of the club. He drags her closer and the two of them dance recklessly, banishing all self-deprecating thoughts from his mind with each press of her ass against his crotch. 

Her heels get dangerously close to stabbing his toes a few times. It’s uncomfortable, but necessarily performative while he keeps an eye out for Kyle. Bathroom trips shouldn’t take this long. 

Speak of the arty devil and thou shall appear. Through the crowd of people humping and thrusting on the sticky, musky dance floor, his eyes catch onto Kyle's mess of black hair and pierced lips. The piercings are new as of this week. He never had any in high school given his mother would’ve crucified him. Wally went with him to get the snake bites done, but refused to get any himself, not for a lack of wanting. Having to explain why the piercings healed instantly would’ve been too awkward…

Wally watches Kyle push his way through the glob of sweaty bodies. He’s not wearing the baby pink ‘Getting Married!’ sash Wally bestowed him at the start of the night—which must've been four? five hours ago?—and he bets he misplaced it on purpose. That or a lucky girl swiped it off him. 

Kyle’s trying to shimmy his shoulders to the beat of the song and he's freakishly bad at it. It's an absurd sight. Kesha songs aren't even hard to follow, but Kyle has absolutely no rhythm. 

Wally reaches out to drag his hand up the girl's waist as their gazes meet, but his hand only gropes air. His eyes flick down and yup, suspicions confirmed, she left. Whatever, her loss. It makes it seem more circumstantial that he’s alone anyways. 

Kyle finally catches up to him and immediately stumbles, forcing Wally to catch him by his shoulders and steady him in place. Always a lightweight with this guy. Dweeb , Wally thinks with a twinge of affection. What would he do without him? Unfortunately, the answer is clear: get a girlfriend. Before this week, they hadn’t had a proper hangout in months. It’s always about Alex now. Wally doesn’t see her lasting. 

"Are you having fun?" he yells into his ear. There's still the taste of shelf-grade tequila over the back of Wally’s tongue.

Kyle's face splits up with a wide grin. "Yeah! This is the best night I could've asked for."

Wally knows enough about alcohol to confidently assume Kyle isn’t sounding as sober as he probably thinks he sounds, but it's a rose-colored glaze over the whole thing. Kyle drags him into a bear hug, pulling him down to close the distance of the sparse three inches they have between them.

Wally clutches him back, wrapping his arms around his shoulders, feeling the sweaty damp fabric underneath his bare forearms. It must be a placebo effect, because it seems like the drugs have gotten to him too. He’s clinging onto Kyle more than he should.

This close he can see the smudges of body glitter smeared over Kyle’s cheeks, mingling with his facial hair, and making him look like a fairy. The party girls must've gotten to him. They're sharks in the water and pounce on any man who shows weakness. Wally’s been a victim more than a few times. 

The glitter makes Kyle look cute in a dorky dumb kind of way, like a lost puppy traveling through the streets looking for an owner. Wally would pick him up just to keep him safe from the girls. Maybe he’ll go home with one tonight, but he’s not looking. He hasn’t settled down with any girl. 

Kyle should be more like him. They’re still in their early twenties. It's honestly a huge stress for him that Kyle's trying to move on. They’re graduating soon, but there’s still so much to do, but Wally knows Kyle’s already starting to look at rings to propose to Alex. They’ve gone from sleeping on each other's floors and stealing booze from their parents to this—getting married feels like he’s throwing their friendship away. 

Kyle moves away from the hug with a giggle Wally can hardly hear through the thumping EDM. He raises his arms up in front of him and rolls his knuckles over each other, recreating some kind of white-boy jig. It's a dumb dance move, recycled from Prom and Homecoming, but it elicits a bright burst of laughter from Wally. 

There's something tangled up in his chest. He can feel it underneath his ribs. His heart is pounding out of his body. It might be the complicated effects of anxiety for the future striking at the wrong time or residual horiness from not getting laid in a while. He doesn’t think he’s coming down from what he took earlier, since his metabolism should’ve washed it out within seconds, but if he is, he ought to go to the Titan’s tower to get a cure. 

"You need to meet Alex’s parents, they're so uptight that it’s funny." Kyle's trying to tell him. No other girls have joined them. Wally’s struggling to care. 

He waves away whatever Kyle’s saying. "We should do this more often!”

In high school, Wally couldn’t count on the Titans to save him from the misery of civilian life. Dick hardly went to school, Donna and Kori couldn’t understand, and Victor lived in a whole other state, which is nothing as Kid Flash, but for Wally West , the distance is staggering. 

As a result, Wally only had Kyle. Subsequently, whether it’s because Kyle struggled to make friends on his own or only cared for Wally’s company, Kyle had no one else either. They did everything together. It got to the point where if you invited one somewhere, it’s assumed the other will tag along; the two of them were a pair, a duo, interconnected and inseparable from each other. 

The two of them would huddle in his bedroom on a school night. They had a can of beer Wally swiped from his dad’s stash and they passed it back and forth to practice shotgunning. (Reusing the can wasn't as hard as it seemed; they used thick black Gorilla tape and a switchblade Hal gave him).Wally picked up it easily, but Kyle struggled. 

Kyle always had this wide-eyed Bambi innocence about him. Wally can’t help but think of him as fragile. It must be from him being a civilian, cushioned and protected from any threats, entirely unaware of the double-life Wally led. 

Kyle taps Wally’s cheek with a light palm. He's looking really intently at him with his big brown eyes. "How high are you?" 

Wally thinks about buying Kyle another drink. He’s witnessed people pouring shots back into their friend's mouth, fingers digging into their cheeks to keep their jaw open. It's an experience Wally’s itching to replicate. 

"Hardly buzzed," he yells over the speakers. "I have a question: why are you getting married? Why don't you just be a runaway groom?"

Kyle shakes his head with a laugh Wally can hardly hear, but knows like the back of his hand. They smile at each other like this is one big joke, though Wally’s dead serious. He tilts himself down so they’re not that far apart and Kyle can hear him better. 

They’ve been distant and Wally feels like he hardly knows the man he’s becoming, but he knows Kyle more than any girl he met in college. 

He tugs him in closer. They’re close enough he can smell his cologne: a wood-sea scent, something different than the bottle they shared as teenagers. 

Back then they polled together their allowances and bought the fifty dollar cologne the magazines advertised off the palm of a shirtless man, passing the bottle between each other throughout passing periods during school, doing rock paper scissors to see who gets it on weekends. Wally cut out the picture from that advertisement and hid it under his pillow with a flimsy excuse of manifesting abs, but after two nights he felt so disgusted he threw it in the trash. 

This new scent smells good. Kyle looks good too, similar to the model in a dorkish tortured artist way that no girl can replicate. 

One blink and now they’re kissing.

Wally must’ve slipped into the speedforce accidentally, or something, because it’s a jump to even him. Kyle’s lips are soft and firm against his, not dissimilar to the girls he’s messed with before, but in place of cherry lip balm there's cherry liquor. Wally’s hand cups the back of his head, fingers sliding through the tangled dark hair, and he holds him close as they kiss underneath the pulsing lights.

His other hand cradles Kyle’s cheek and rubs his thumb over his cheekbone. The music the club is playing is for them. Shitty EDM they've been listening to since they were fifteen and jacking off to the music video models.

A wild thought flies through Wally’s mind, whipping past him: I think I'm in love with him . What the fuck?

Wally shoves him away from him. Kyle bumps into the person behind him, but he doesn't fall back. His face is a cracked expression of wretched grief as he stares at Wally. His lips shine with his spit. He opens his mouth to say something and Wally breezes past him before he can, elbowing him harshly to get through.

Wally forces himself to escape the stifling club, one foot in front of the other, while the kiss burns his lips, a memory cementing itself in his mind despite the false hope towards alcohol disillusion.

It was a dumb frat boy thing to do, he reasons with himself, even if he’s never been in a fraternity. Maybe he could say it was a dare? They used to dare each other all wild things, eating bugs and asking random girls out, but nothing like this. And who would've dared him?

He storms past the people coming in, the girls in their sparkly tops and men with their checkered belts, dipping into the speedforce to evade all the rambunctious night crowd. There’s a patio in front of the nightclub he walks through and he drops into the empty space outside the club, his shoes stumbling over each other.

He risks a glance behind him before he slinks off to the side. He should throw himself back in. Get another shot from the bar. Drown himself with the beer on tap until he’s properly drunk. Everyone already thinks he’s wasted, so it shouldn’t be an issue to feed into their preconceived notions. 

Since all he can think about is Kyle. He’s in the fold of everything Wally does even with the barrier of being a civilian. He’s something so entirely different from the rest of Wally’s life that he can’t fathom the slightest idea that their relationship won’t be solid, but what they did in there completely shatters everything they built up. 

Kyle’s always been—. There’s been something fruity about him for as long as Wally’s known him. He’s been too affectionate whenever Wally stayed the night (which was most nights, given it was a chance not to be under his father’s roof), always leaning on him, nudging him, hooking their ankles together under the table and smuggling close during movie nights. And Wally didn’t care- he doesn’t care, but there’s boundaries, right? 

Wally’s not gay. 

Kyle follows after him. He hears the brief second of sound exploding behind them, a mixed set of cheering and hollering underneath Kesha's nasally tone. Wally’s body turns to him like a sunflower turns to the sun. The door swings shut behind him and the moon highlights the wispy ends of Kyle’s messy dark hair and reflects his expression back in his blown-out pupils. 

The street is far from empty in spite of the time or because of it. This isn't the only club on this street or in the city. The nightlife bustles around them and Kyle has to wait for two people to pass by before he can get close. Pathetic, Wally turns away from him. His sandals edge off the sidewalk. He’d never do it, but running into traffic and getting hit by a limousine sounds really good right now.

"Wally," Kyle pleads as he stands next to him, daring to reach out and graze his arm with his fingertips.

Wally jerks his arm away before he can make contact. He has to keep him at a distance for his own sanity, because he tastes the phantom memory of their lips together, it's stuck behind his teeth and heavy on his tongue. He’s so fucked up.

"Ky," his tone edges on a warning. "Back the fuck off."

Kyle talks over him, their voices mixing together under the streetlights, "You don’t have to run away. If you didn’t like it- that’s fine, okay? But I don’t wanna lose you.” 

Wally can't look at him. The vulnerability spurred from the distraction of dancing wears off and shatters like glass against concrete. He tries to shake himself out of the pit he’s falling down. Either his high is crashing or his heart is breaking, and the second one is much worse than the first. Searching for an excuse, he thinks to himself, ' you can blame the drugs ,' then blurt out the opposite of what he meant, "Why are you getting married?"

"What?"

"I don't care that you are." His assertiveness sounds weak when he hears it outloud. He obviously cares. "If you want to settle down, it’s cool, dude. But you just kissed me. Who does that?"

Miami warps all perception of time. It must've been hours before Kyle replies. "First of all, I haven’t asked her. And, Wally… you kissed me ."

Wally’s body jolts towards him. Reasoning swarms in his mind, excuses ebb and flow within the current of recklessness, and since he’s already drowning underneath his stupid actions of the night, he decides it's better to throw his damp corpse into a grave than admit what could be lurking under the surface. 

He shakes his head. "Are you on something? You leaned in first."

"No, I didn't!" Kyle's patient demeanor snaps. He's finally showing his teeth. He continues, "I’ll admit I liked it. I really did, man, but I’d never push you. You care so much about… guh, straightness, so I never thought we’d actually do it."

Kyle presses his lips together in a straight line. The glitter has migrated to his jaw and down his neck, the same pink hues as the flecks stuck to Wally’s fingers from holding him close. 

Wally takes a sharp breath in. "Yeah, you’re right. We shouldn’t have done it, so we can just push this under the rug and pretend nothing happened.” 

“What- no! No, we don’t have to do that. It's okay if you like boys. It’s okay if you like me.” 

“I don’t like boys!” 

“Oh, come on, when’s the last time you've even slept with a girl?"

Everything comes boiling to the surface. Wally didn’t know Kyle actually liked men; he never admitted to it before. Kyle had a long list of girlfriends. Wally, too. His last girlfriend was a nice blonde who ended up being the physical body for the antichrist and the Titans had to help expel the evil.. and before that was Raven, as one-sided as that was. 

Wally pats his body for a pack of cigarettes. There's a group of bystanders; a gaggle of girls who are waiting at the crosswalk, shifting in place, five inch high heels and fishnets. He eyes them, wondering if one of them is secretly a villain. The amount of civilians his age that he can trust has narrowed down to solely Kyle. 

"Really interested in my sex life, huh. I fucked a girl last night," he lies. 

"Bullshit." Kyle scoffs. "It's kinda stereotypical too. I talk about wanting to propose to Alex and you freak out?”

Wally snaps. His knuckles slam into Kyle’s cheek. It cracks under his hand from the quickness and Kyle’s head smacks to the side, stumbling back and barely keeping himself from falling to the gritty sidewalk underneath. The two of them breath heavily for a moment. He raises a hand to touch his skin, pressing his fingers to the cheekbone Wally hit, the blossoming bruise undetectable underneath the glittery makeup.

Then he lunges at him, slamming his fist into Wally’s lips, his thumb hitting right on the place his lips kissed minutes ago. It splits underneath him and gives him a red, bloody ring. 

Wally shoves him back and goes after him, attacking with reckless abandon of all social norms. He tackles him to the ground and they slam against the concrete, the grit tearing up Wally’s elbows and healing instantly. The two of them wrestle like they’re teenagers again, hitting hard enough their parents get called, breaking furniture, only this time Wally’s not holding back. Every other fight he’s lost on purpose to keep his identity intact, but this time he doesn’t fucking care. 

Kyle drives his knee into his gut as he yanks at that sequined top, ripping the collar of it to drag him off to the side and switch positions. Metallic tangs in Wally’s mouth and he spits a wad of blood-spit at him. It lands in Kyle’s eye and he howls like a cat in heat.

Wally straddles him at the hips and raises his fist. He’s hard and he hates him and he loves him. 

Someone else grabs the back of his shirt and hauls him off. Now he’s several feet away. It’s the bouncer from the night club and he is yelling at them, but Wally can't hear it past his blood thundering in his ears and the roar of traffic. Something about getting his shit together, being too wasted, get the fuck out. 

Wally spits at the bouncer’s feet and staggers away, leaving Kyle behind as he slips past the girls and their loud heels to the nearby bushes. He pukes up everything Kyle kicked, then presses his fingers to his lips and feels only smooth skin, not even a scab. Fuck, that’ll be hard to explain. Whatever!

He slaps his palms over every pocket to find the pack of cigarettes Kyle bought him. His fingers tremble from the jitteriness of the fight. It's hard to close his fist without wincing and even harder to light this damn thing. It takes three tries before the flame finally catches. He glances down to the blood on his knuckles and watches as the skin knits itself back together. 

Wally raises his head and there Kyle is. 

When he breathes in, he can hear his ribs struggle; they're wet and sore and bruised. "Kyle," Wally says his name so definitively, securely, as if it’s the only thing he’s ever said. He hates that Kyle gets him worked up like this. “We can’t be together.” 

 "Why not?" Blood drips down Kyle’s nose to his lips and Wally has to force his eyes away.

He sits down on the curb, barracking his head with his knees, taking deep breaths in so he doesn’t hurl again for an entirely different reason. Kyle slowly clambers his way next to him, sitting down on the sidewalk with their backs against the ugly weeds of a patchy puke bush. 

What a night club. The cigarette falls to the ground. What a waste.

“Can you explain..” 

Wally rubs his face with his hand, smothers the urge to punch Kyle again. “I’m not who you think I am.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I have secrets, and it’s stuff I seriously can’t tell you, so don’t even ask. Plus, you’re still in a relationship and it’s not fair to her if you're so willing to cheat.” 

“I’m pretty sure she knows,” Kyle mutters. Wally wishes he would shut up. “You’re the last one to catch on, Wals.” 

He holds out his hand. Wally drops the pack, then the lighter, and hears the click of him struggling to start it. He doesn't offer to help. After his pathetic attempts, he didn't think he'd be any better than him.

“I can’t love you,” Wally confesses. 

Kyle shrugs. “I won’t stop loving you.” 

Wally squints down at his banana yellow flip-flops and the hair on his toes. He’s not sure how to feel anymore. "When did you start?"

“You remember when that asshole Rodney called you names?” 

“Yeah, you punched him in the face and got suspended. We didn’t even know each other then.” 

“Right. Do you remember after that?”

Wally tries to remember, but comes up empty. It was so long ago. 

“You stayed with me the whole time in the office, then you offered to visit me every day after school the whole length of my dumb suspension.” 

Wally looks up to find Kyle searching his expression for something. His brown eyes are wet and glistening with unshed tears. It brings out a swell of emotion from Wally, and he knocks his knee against his, pressing their legs together. “What’s so special about that?”

Kyle scoots closer and throws an arm over his shoulder. “You chose me. Everyone else.. They get saddled with me, but not you. So, yeah, that was the start and I guess it just spiraled out of control. I like everything about you.”

Wally leans into him. “I like most things about you,” a partial tease, a partial display of honesty. “But I can’t…”

A long moment passes between them. He feels Kyle press a kiss to his temple. The action is more soothing than Wally’s comfortable to admit. “Don’t worry about it tonight. There’s time. We can leave it for after graduation.”

Wally snorts. “If you actually graduate.”

Kyle shoves him. It kicks off another wrestling match, but this time lighter in nature, and Kyle doesn’t mention Wally’s healed lip or knuckles. He’s probably too drunk to realize. God, Wally hopes he’s too drunk to remember this conversation, but it’s unlikely, and after they walk across the stage, he’ll have to face repercussions for tonight. For now though, he doesn’t have to worry about the future. Everything’s gonna be okay.