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“I heard that he was basically being waterboarded by his mask for this whole scene,” Dick said.
Wally snorted. “Yeah, makes sense. I mean. Upside down? Pouring rain or rain substitute?”
“Rain substitute,” Dick snickered.
“And fabric of any kind over the nose? Man, I feel bad for him just thinking about it,” Wally said. He shoved a fistful of popcorn into his mouth.
Dick took one piece of popcorn from the oversized bowl. “But, like, seems like it could be fun.”
“Waterboarding yourself?” Wally asked. (It sounded more like “Wubba-worban worsel?” interspersed with popcorn-y crunching noises, but Dick was adept enough in full-mouth speedster gibberish that he probably caught the gist of it.)
“No,” Dick motioned at the screen again, where Tobey’s Spider-Man was making his escape after the end of the infamous kiss. Why did they even pick rain? Was there something romantic about standing in cold torrents of rain or something? Because Wally was pretty sure sunny days were more romantic. “The kiss itself. Like. Upside-down kissing. Seems like it could be fun!”
Wally gave him a dubious look. “I mean, sure you might get around some of the usual nose-bumping, but if you’ve done any kissing, you’ve probably figured out that bit, anyway. Besides, how’s the one person supposed to get upside down?”
“Well, in Spider-Man 2—”
“Right,” Wally waved him off and went for another hand-scoop of popcorn. He graciously held off on shoving it into his mouth for a moment, though. “The whole J. Jonah Jr. thing on the couch, when MJ kisses him from the other side of the arm rest.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten he was J. Jonah’s kid,” Dick hummed. “But yeah, that thing. Which is a boring cop-out, if you ask me.”
Wally scoffed, mouth once again full of popcorn. “No one asked,” he managed through the popcorn.
“But like. The novelty of the kiss is wasted on that version. You’re just bending over the arm of the couch. Or laying on the arm of the couch, depending on which part of the kiss you’re on. That’s lazy. Boring.”
“Oh, should MJ have climbed up on something and gone whole-hog on her upside-down kiss recreation?” Wally asked.
Dick opened his mouth. Closed it again. Then opened it again. He received a handful of popcorn to the face somewhere in the middle of that and spluttered, whacking at Wally in retaliation. “No, that would have looked goofy,” he settled on. He didn’t stop his whacking and pushing, though.
“Oh, too goofy for the guy who had a suit inspired by disco?” Wally whacked back, but guarded his bowl of popcorn close.
Dick gasped, pausing in his attack. “You take it back! I know you love Discowing as much as I do, you jerk.”
Wally laughed. “Dude, it was so bad!”
“No it wasn’t!” Dick whacked at Wally again.
“You’re so deep in denial, oh my god. But really, it was so bad it was good. But I’ll deny it if you try to tell anyone I said that! I won’t go to the disco shame corner with you, I don’t care how pretty you are!” Wally said.
Dick gave him a final shove. “Good enough. For now.” He settled into his seat again, pouting.
“I mean, Mulletwing was worse,” Wally said.
Dick groaned and buried his face in his hands. ”The suit was fine!” he said into his palms. “I just happened to be growing my hair out at the same time! Why won’t anyone let that go? Oh my god.”
“The suit was kinda bad,” Wally disagreed. “And I’m glad you changed it, because Jesus Christ,” Wally fanned himself in an over-exaggerated manner. “Those finger-stripes.”
Dick burst into snickers. “You’re making it weird.”
“They’re sexy!” Wally said.
“Oh my god, my childhood friend is hitting on me,” Dick feigned a swoon toward his side of the couch and the arm-rest found there.
“I’m hitting on the suit, technically,” Wally disagreed.
Dick sat back up. “Well, you said I was pretty, earlier.”
“Objective fact isn’t flirting.”
Dick snorted. “Objective fact, huh?”
“Totally objective. I do science things. I know how to be objective. And, scientifically and objectively, you’re extremely pretty. And also one of the few guys you could probably call pretty without then getting socked in the face.”
Dick leaned his head back to laugh.
Wally watched him, his smile a bit dopey with fondness. “So, no upside-down MJ. What? Upside-down John Jameson?”
“How do you know his name off the top of your head? I keep forgetting he’s even a thing in that movie!”
“Uh, dude. That’s my nerd power.”
“Wow,” Dick snorted. “Amazing.”
“I know, I know,” Wally nodded. “I’m pretty awesome.”
Dick reached into the popcorn bowl on Wally’s lap, just to pick up a handful to throw at Wally’s face. “Super awesome,” he agreed. “But also pretty lame, dude.”
“Oh, dude,” Wally put a hand over his heart. “First you waste perfectly good popcorn for no reason, then you insult me? You’re breaking my heart.”
“I could kiss it better,” Dick made an exaggerated kissy face.
“Oh, sure. What, you going to do the upside-down Spidey kiss?” Wally teased.
Dick looked thoughtful, leaning back against the couch cushions. “Actually,” he said.
Wally laughed, a quick, surprised bark. “What, you’re being serious?”
“Well, no? But I mean. I could totally do that,” Dick mused. “I mean. I’m an acrobat. It would be easy. It’d be easiest with one of those pullup bars, if it were high enough up. Or a trapeze. Ooh! Silks. I could totally do it with silks.”
“Oh my god,” Wally laughed.
“I could!” Dick defended. “I bet I could do it off one of the chandeliers around here, if there was one low enough down. It’d probably be easy.”
“You sound like you’re taking my interjection as a challenge. That is so not how I intended you to take it,” Wally said.
Dick hopped up, off the couch, and dusted stray pieces of popcorn from his lap and sweater. “Nope, challenge already accepted. The movie can wait, I have a point to prove!” He settled his hands on his hips and looked at Wally expectantly.
“Dude,” Wally grinned. “This is stupid.”
“I agree, so hurry up so I can get it over with and return to the warmth of my speedster cuddle session.” Dick clapped his hands together. “Chop, chop, Wallace. I’m starting to get cold, already.”
“You have no ability to maintain your body temperature,” Wally set the popcorn aside, though, and allowed Dick to step forward and take him by both hands. Dick pulled Wally off the couch and to his feet, then swung their clasped hands back and forth, like a Sim told to hold hands with another Sim.
You’d think, mushy and tactile as the two were, that they would be dating.
You’d be wrong.
But you’d also have a standing offer to join the betting pool on when the two of them would get their shit together. Babs was always taking new bets and revising the odds. She was also always moving the bet money around when dates came and went without the two idiots getting together. (Frankly, it was one of the longest-running betting pools in the hero community, so far.)
“Aren’t all the ceilings around here, like, super high?” Wally asked. “How are you going to find a chandelier low enough to the ground where you could even do that.”
“I could grab a ladder,” Dick mused. He dropped Wally’s hands to cross his arms and prop his chin up on one hand. “But that just sounds like cheating. Guest rooms, though.”
“Guest rooms?”
“Not all of them have chandeliers, but most of them have lower ceilings, in part because they’re up a floor, maybe? We should poke around there, first. See if one of those work.”
“So, I’m your unwitting target,” Wally surmised.
“You’re not unwitting if you know it’s you,” Dick disagreed. “But who better than my first kiss to also be my first Spider-Man kiss?” He shot Wally a bright grin.
Wally, though, went suddenly red. “You know I didn’t know it was your first!” he squeaked.
Dick winked and shot him finger guns, then turned to walk out of the room. “Well, it was! Too late now, Walls! You’ve been immortalized in my memory as the first time ever that I ever kissed someone. Or got kissed. Details.” He waved it off as he kept walking.
It was a dare from Roy. Neither actually knew who kissed who, as both had been immediately up for it, especially when Roy looked so sure that neither of them would follow through. But Wally so wouldn’t have done it, without at least asking again, if he’d known Dick hadn’t actually kissed anyone yet, at that point.
Oh well! They’d kissed. That was that.
And then there were the other times, but that was all platonic. Mostly. Or it was spin-the-bottle. Or it was for some kind of tangentially good reason, like some homophobe being mean in the vicinity and two boys kissing being a petty way to get back at them, make them uncomfortable, and otherwise ruin their day.
That isn’t to say Wally made it a habit of kissing his friends, or his best friends. Sure, he’d kissed Roy once or twice. And also sure, he kissed Dick probably a bit more than could be considered purely platonic. But it wasn’t, like, a habit or anything. It was games and dares and being wholly and completely comfortable with Dick, and with whatever affection looked like when it was coming from Dick.
Which also wasn’t to say that Wally never initiated anything—
“Dude,” Dick waved a hand in front of Wally’s face. “Did I lose you?”
“Hm?”
“So, I did lose you,” Dick gave him a fond smile. “You went off on those rabbit trails, didn’t you? Or did you spiral about the first kiss thing again? Because, dude, the only reason I ever bring it up is because you get all weird about it and I think it’s funny. It’s not a big deal!”
“Yeah, but it could have been,” Wally whined. “I didn’t even think to ask or anything!”
“We were literally twelve and fourteen. Why would either of us think about it? We barely thought about anything, honestly. Except how much trouble we could cause without repercussion.” Dick linked his arm with Wally’s and started to pull him along, down the hall Wally’d wandered into while he’d spiraled deeper and deeper into his own thinker-thingy space.
“You were a baby! Oh my god,” Wally whispered.
“So were you,” Dick rolled his eyes. “I’ll have you know that you didn’t exactly rob me of my innocence, dude. It was a half-second peck on the lips.”
“That’s even worse! First kisses should be way more memorable than that!”
“Oh, what, like catching your braces in someone else’s braces?” Dick paused so that he could level Wally with a truly impressive raised eyebrow, of the level of judgment usually reserved for use by Alfred. Or the guy that lived two doors down from Barry, Iris, and Hal, who always looked like the world had personally affronted him in a very specific, unforgivable way.
“That was horrifyingly specific,” Wally blinked.
“I listen to YouTube read-aloud things when I’m bored sometimes. ‘Worst First Kisses’ came across my recommendations. It was truly enlightening, and I’m glad my first kiss memory involved five bucks when Roy paid up for doubting us,” Dick waved him off.
“Wow,” Wally laughed.
Dick nodded and started walking again.
“You know what I remember about my first kiss?” Wally asked.
“Wasn’t yours, like, Roy? Or was it Donna? Why is our friend-group so incestuous?”
“Probably because young superheroes are hot and the people who know that best are the same young superheroes?” Wally suggested. He shrugged. “It was a girl at my school, though, actually. Her hair tickled my face. That’s, like, all I remember.”
“What was her name?”
“I mean, it really is all I remember. I don’t remember who it was,” Wally said. “It was kind of out of the blue and she was a grade ahead of me, so we weren’t really running in the same circles. I think her friends dared her, though, so it turns out that normal kids are just like superhero kids, in that regard.”
“Hm,” Dick started up the staircase. And it was a testament to how big Wayne Manor was that they were only just getting to the staircase, in the first place. The back stairs, specifically. Wally was pretty sure they were, like, intended for servants or something – way back when the Manor had first been built. “Well, it sounds like I have one up on you, then, because I remember exactly who I kissed.” He shot Wally a grin.
“I’m still surprised your first kiss wasn’t Babs.”
“Well, she was probably way too mature for twelve-year-old Dick Grayson, anyway.” Dick shrugged. “I know she’s only about as old as you, so we have the same age difference as you and me have... I mean. I have the same age difference with Babs as I have with you. But you weren’t anywhere near as mature as she was. Case and point? Your best friend was twelve.”
“I love how you’re dissing me with something that directly involves you,” Wally said.
“Of course. I have no shame, dude. I’d sooner risk embarrassing myself than pass up poking fun at you,” Dick winked, then turned a sharp right, into the hallway at the top of the stairs. “God, this place goes on forever. I feel like moving out gave me this impression that it was smaller than it really was.”
“You guys should have, like, maps,” Wally said.
“So that someone can leak them online and someone else can sneak out of a gala and go find our rooms or something? Yeah, no thanks,” Dick waved him off, then stopped and opened the nearest door (also on his right). “Aha! Low chandelier,” he motioned up at said chandelier.
Wally looked at it and made a face. “That’s an expensive looking chandelier, dude.”
“Uh, they’re all expensive, dude.”
“And you monkey around on them? Rich people are so weird.”
Dick gave Wally a look. “Do you seriously think there’s any ‘rich people’ not in my or Roy’s family who actually go around messing with their chandeliers? Because I’m pretty sure most people don’t actually do stuff like that.”
Wally motioned at the Swarovski crystals on the chandelier in question. “Dude.”
Dick groaned and closed the door again. “Fine. We’ll find a different one. But I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter if it’s dripping with the fancy glass stuff or not. Bruce’s pocketbook just doesn’t care.”
“Yes, but Wally’s scholarship and internship both care, since those are what are getting Wally through school. And Wally doesn’t like flagrant misuse of money for the sake of flagrant misuse of money,” Wally said.
Dick rolled his eyes. “It’s just a chandelier. And stop talking about yourself in the third person! Damian was doing that the other day and it was so uncomfortable.”
The two of them walked further down the hall, then up another flight of stairs. The third floor had rooms that weren’t used as much, though heaven forbid Alfred clean them less just because they were used less, really. Alfred had some magical way of keeping everything spotless, dustless, and in pristine condition, no matter where in the Manor it was. Frankly, Wally wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Alfred somehow kept the attic spotless, too.
Dick found a new door to try pretty quickly. “Happy?” he asked.
The chandelier, there, was plainer, though no less expensive looking for it. But Wally was satisfied to see a lack of Swarovski crystal glass, at the very least. Because his wallet cried, just thinking about breaking so much as one Swarovski crystal decoration (let alone a whole chandelier’s worth). “Thrilled,” Wally said.
“Awesome,” Dick wandered over to the chandelier and looked up at it. He crossed his arms over his chest thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to smile at Wally. “You even have the right hair for this,” he said.
Wally rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, dude.”
“Well, I say get over here so I can get this over with.”
“Why do you have to sound like I’m making you do this, or something?” Wally snorted. “Because I’m really not. You don’t have to prove you can do an upside-down Spidey kiss, on me or otherwise.”
Dick, without giving proper warning, climbed his way up Wally’s shoulders.
“Whoa, hey,” Wally laughed. “Little warning, damn!”
“You’re fine.” Dick grabbed onto the chandelier and swung himself from Wally’s shoulders to perch in it. “Huh, feels sturdier than I would expect from one of the unreinforced chandeliers,” he noted.
“I’m sorry, the what?”
“Nothing,” Dick grinned down at him.
“Oh. Oh, nothing,” Wally rolled his eyes. “Sure.”
Dick laughed and dropped his upper body off the chandelier, swinging lightly in place. “C’mere.”
“You’re too high up,” Wally complained. But he shuffled over the half step he needed to, in order to be lined up with his upside-down best friend, then reached up to smooth his fingers along Dick’s cheekbones and jaw. “Hey, you’re pretty cute upside-down, too.”
“Thanks?” Dick laughed. He reached for Wally in return, though. Even though that wasn’t part or parcel to the Spidey kiss.
Wally went up on his tip-toes and.
He was just tall enough, on his toes, for that to work.
Their lips met in a brief, laughter-flavoured peck, then Wally pressed in a bit closer to get a proper kiss in. Hey, if he was going to stand in the middle of some random guest room in Wayne Manor, his best friend hanging off a chandelier to try and reproduce the upside-down kiss from Sam Raimi’s superhero masterpiece, then Wally wasn’t going to half-ass it.
Dick curled a hand into Wally’s hair and pressed the other to the side of his face and returned the kiss.
Wally felt a bit bad for his chapped lips, for the split second he had the brain power to think about it, but the thought was quickly drowned out by a sense of warmth and comfort. Wally felt his pulse quickening, though he’d probably be the only person able to tell that his rabbit-quick pulse had gotten even faster. His ears also felt very warm, though he didn’t think he was embarrassed, per se.
Dick’s lips weren’t chapped. They were soft and familiar, which probably wasn’t normal for “just friends,” but neither Dick nor Wally ever claimed they were normal. And that was fine. Their normal had no reason to conform to someone else’s normal.
(But there was a definitely unplatonic undercurrent, there, too – it had been there for a while.)
Dick deepened the kiss, which fried the very last of Wally’s poor braincells. But the sacrifice was gladly made and Wally reciprocated the new depth and heat of the kiss, willingly. He didn’t have this kind of kiss nearly as memorized. Not with Dick, anyway—
The chandelier made a soft, almost annoyed-sounding protest.
Dick and Wally were too involved to pay any attention to it, though. Wally’s feet begged him to stop standing on tip-toe, but he willfully refused. Wally tried to remind himself he could breath through his nose but, again, his brain was a bit fried and he was quickly going breathless.
Wally whined in dissatisfaction for the brief moment Dick pulled back from the kiss, then Dick’s smiling mouth returned to his own. Dick breathed a breathless laugh between them and tugged a bit on Wally’s hair.
Wally was pretty sure that this was actually one of the best ideas that Dick had had, actually.
And then, of course, the chandelier’s protests gave way to cracking. Wally dropped down from his toes, but only had time to do that much before he had an armful of Dick as the chandelier gave up on life.
Bits of the ceiling followed, pelting down with what felt like the Manor’s annoyance at her warnings (the chandelier’s protests) being ignored.
Wally rolled them over and let the bits of ceiling pelt him, instead of Dick.
“Shit,” Dick laughed.
Wally laughed with him.
They now lay under a mangled chandelier and a layer of plaster, dust, and whatever else, as well as ceiling bits of all shapes and sizes. All the same, the giddy bubble that they’d found themselves in didn’t burst. In fact, Dick pulled Wally down into another kiss, even though the initial idea was well and truly past, what with the death of the chandelier.
(From the doorway, Bruce looked at the scene with the beginnings of a headache and only half a mug of coffee in hand. He brought a hand up to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. He sighed. He looked at the scene again and—yep—it was exactly the same.)
(He really wanted to stop finding broken furniture and fixtures, but knew better than to hope for that. He also knew better than to hope he wouldn’t consistently walk in on his kids, even if they’d moved out. It was still up in the air who suffered more from Bruce walking in on his kids; him or his kid. But those were his constants in life: broken furniture and fixtures, walking in on his kids. And Batman, of course.)
Bruce cleared his throat.
Wally jerked back from Dick and looked up at him with wide eyes.
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Try not to leave the whole mess for Alfred,” he said. Then he sipped his coffee, turned, and left.