Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Flash was in the cafeteria.  

That wasn’t the strange part.  

The Flash was in the cafeteria with someone. With someone that no one knew. With a stranger.  

And, yeah, strangers weren’t  too  uncommon, in the expanding numbers of the Justice League. But  complete  strangers absolutely were uncommon. Every new member of the JL had been at least formally introduced, before they made their Watchtower debut. Had had some kind of profile circulated (you know, so that no one would attack them as potential trespassers).  

This guy, though. The one that the Flash had his head bowed close to. The guy who sat practically in the younger Flash’s lap. He hadn’t been announced or introduced. He wasn’t a member. Or, if he was a member, someone had forgotten to do the very important task of  making sure the rest of the Justice League members knew he was a member.  Which was, of course, pretty unlikely.  

As already mentioned, it was the younger Flash. Wally.  

Wally had taken over Flash duties for the two weeks the elder Flash, his Uncle Barry, was off-planet during a mission with some of the League alumni (that is: Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, and the second GL, John Stewart). Then Barry had gotten hurt, leaving Wally with approximately one more week of Flash duties spanning across both his city – Keystone – and his uncle’s city – Central. And Monitor Duty. And League missions, if those came up.  

Wally wasn’t the kind of guy who took everything with stoicism or indifference, either. He didn’t – probably couldn’t – hide his emotions, hide how he was struggling. Which meant that people could see him wearing down, tiring, over the course of those three weeks.  

All this meant that, previous to this stranger’s appearance, people – Leaguers – were getting concerned for him. Without, you know, knowing how to help him.  

And now they had this stranger.  

Wally sat sideways on a cafeteria bench. The stranger sat opposite of him, with his knees thrown over Wally’s thighs and his ankles crossed behind Wally, so that he could sit right up against Wally. Wally had his face buried in the stranger’s shoulder. The stranger had his arms around Wally, one hand rubbing circles on his back. He had his head leaned up against the side of Wally’s head and seemed like he might be murmuring or... singing, maybe. But that seemed almost absurd.  

Wally’s shoulders shook briefly and he lifted his head, smiling.  

The two young men kissed, then returned to their previous, cuddled up positions. And it was weird.  

No, not like that.  

The League had strict policies in place to keep discrimination at a very firm minimum. Some people didn’t share the core beliefs of the League, but they had to respect those core beliefs – including kindness and equality across the spectrum of gender, sexuality, race, and so on – in order to be a member of the League.  

It was weird because no one knew Wally was in a romantic relationship.  

No one knew of a mask that was romantically involved with either the Flash or the Flash’s civilian identity. And no one knew of a civilian identity that was romantically involved with Wally or Wally’s vigilante identity. Well, no one who was talking.  

Hal, from his lack of reaction to the scene, seemed to be one such person who knew of the romantic development, but who wasn’t talking about it. Which was, you know, weird. Hal wasn’t a gossip monger of the same caliber of Ollie, but he wasn’t shy about talking up rumours and speculations, even if it had to do with his friends or family. Wally was both “friend” and “family” in Hal’s book and Hal hadn’t once mentioned Wally having a boyfriend, let alone a mystery vigilante boyfriend.  

But, hey. Wally’s heart was on his sleeve. Constantly. And that heart seemed to be soothed and quieted by the presence of the mystery boyfriend.  

Superman confirmed that the mystery guy was singing, quietly, to Wally. A lullaby or something. In a language Clark wasn’t immediately familiar with, which was weird for the polyglot. A language Clark didn’t know? It had to be a less common one, then.  

(Clark mentioned, however, that he’d heard Batman, over comms, speaking that language – if slightly less fluently. “Romani,” he offered, albeit with some hesitance. “It’s on my list, but I haven’t gotten around to learning it, just yet.”)  

And. Wow. A lullaby. That was... almost absurd in its innocence, really.  

But though it seemed to make Wally laugh a few times, it also seemed to soothe him.  

Of the League members to run into the cafeteria scene – which lasted a very long time, in spite of Wally’s usual flitting from one thing to another – most of them were on guard about the stranger. But – and this really frustrated Ollie, at least – but not the big guns, not the Leaguers who could do something about what almost felt like an invasion.  

Superman, besides telling Ollie that it was a lullaby being sung to Wally, didn’t do anything to remove the stranger or interrupt the scene. Actually, he told Ollie to leave the two of them alone, with all that Kansas earnestness coming through in his ridiculous puppy eyes.  

Wonder Woman took one look at the two of them, then told Dinah – all authority and self-assuredness – that “the child is not a threat” and that they should be left alone, as if she and Clark were somehow of one mind about the stranger, in spite of being spoken to about him separately. Which spoke to some kind of familiarity with the stranger, but not to what kind of familiarity.  

Batman, when Ollie caught him to mention to potential security risk, grunted and almost disappeared on the spot, but took a moment to congratulate Ollie on “doing the right thing,” before ripping his “doing the right thing” apart with a well-placed “if only you could apply that to a situation that actually called for that kind of attention,” like the jerk he was. Ollie felt both flattered and offended. The latter was a normal feeling that he consistently associated with Bats, the former – however – was a new one, because Batman was probably the worst about giving praise, out of – like – everyone Ollie had ever met. Ever. Even the Martian, who didn’t really understand human niceties in the first place.  

So, yeah. The Big Three weren’t any help. GL apparently knew the mystery trespasser, but wasn’t willing to talk about it. And Wally was finally getting some much-needed support.  

Ollie still felt kind of like the Watchtower had been invaded, but Wally was one of Roy’s friends, and Ollie didn’t feel like seeing Wally looking like a kicked puppy, so he decided against any attempt to confront him about his guest.  

The question remained; How in the hell had this mystery mask gotten on the Watchtower and why was nobody (who had authority to do something) concerned about it?  

Chapter Text

If Ollie thought the cafeteria was going to be the end of it, he was wrong.  

It was like some kind of invisible dam was burst. Or some line in the sand was swept away. Once the mystery guy had shown up the one time, he started showing up at other times. And he didn’t have the decency to only ever show up around or with Wally.  

Sometimes, Ollie would run into the mystery mask just... on the Watchtower, seemingly no one else around. It had begun to get on his nerves. And put him on edge. It was like, at any given time, this guy could pop up and pop out of nowhere. And Ollie had no idea who he was!  

“He’s chill,” Roy said, once. But that was it. It was, obviously, enough to show that Roy knew him, but no more. Ollie still didn’t know who the  hell  the guy was or what the  hell  he was doing on the Watchtower!  

He got a better look at him, though.  

Besides the most obvious visual trait of a black quasi-Kevlar weave suit (vaguely reminiscent of Ollie’s Green Arrow uniform, or the Bat’s uniform), the mystery mask had a stripe of friendly blue down either arm, which carried onto his shoulder, splitting into two lines that met at the center of his chest and between his shoulder blades in a blue arrow that clearly meant something. Meant something to the young man wearing the symbol, at least.  

He was pale, had long black hair, and never was without his domino. Physically fit. Prone to acrobatics and, just, movement in general. Not very good at standing still. Also not very good at  not  disappearing without warning.  

Attached to the back of his costume, the stranger had two batons, which appeared to be magnetized (maybe?) in place. Ollie’d seen the stranger in the training room, once or twice, practicing with those batons, but didn’t have a name to put to the weapons until he’d asked Dinah about it. Dinah was able to tell Ollie that the batons were escrima sticks. She was also able to explain that escrima was a style of Filipino martial arts – also called kali or arnis – that emphasized sticks or bladed weapons, improvised weapons, and unarmed combat.  

(Frankly, Dinah went on for awhile, about the martial arts that the sticks were involved in. Ollie wasn’t able to ingest as much of it as he might have liked, but he did pick up that, technically, the “sticks” were called bastons. Or something. More people seemed familiar with “escrima sticks,” though.)  

(Dinah also mentioned that the brain behind the Birds of Prey, a multitalented wheelchair user, was escrima-trained, to some unknown extent, and that said brain – Oracle – had learned from an unspecified “old friend.” Or learned with an “old friend.” One or the other.)  

So.  

Where did that leave Ollie, anyway? He knew what the guy looked like and what he fought with (usually?). But he didn’t even know where the guy was from or what he called himself. It was going on weeks and Ollie still had no idea on the name or codename fronts. None!  

“It’s not that big a deal,” Hal said. Hal was wrong.  

“Don’t let it bother you,” Barry said. But Barry talked a big game for someone who actually knew what was going on (and who the damn stranger was)!  

The only other thing Ollie could glean about the stranger was that he had ADHD that almost rivaled Wally’s. And, part and party to that ADHD, the guy was constantly listening to music while doing other things. And, no, Ollie didn’t  personally  understand the music thing, but Barry (the original ADHD king of the Justice League) had once told Ollie that the music was like a secondary stimulus, distracting the ADHD mind just enough so that the person with said ADHD could focus better. Other secondary stimuli could be fidget items, balancing, doodling, or other forms of “stimming” (self-stimulating). Anything to distract just a small part of the mind so that the rest could pay attention.  

Ollie had seen enough stimming in the JL ranks to recognize it in the stranger. Though it was kind of interesting to watch Wally and the stranger play progressively more complicated rounds of cat’s cradle during a debrief (that the stranger shouldn’t have been allowed into) as a sort of shared stimulus. Interesting, if a bit unprofessional seeming.  

Hell. The Justice League was a bunch of people in colourful costumes taking the law into their own hands on a daily basis. Professional? Who the hell even cared about whether or not something looked professional, so long as it worked and kept people even-keeled.  

So. ADHD. Untreated, if the jokes between Wally and the stranger were anything to go by.  

But no name.  

Not even a codename!  

At least this guy, whoever the hell he was, wasn’t out in the field. The line absolutely had to be drawn somewhere.