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There were some universal truths about himself and the world that Wally just knew, just didn’t question. Like: no pain, no gain. Truths like: women with long dark hair were just woah. Like: every quantum entity can be described either as a particle or a wave.
Truths like: the new guy at the gym was stacked.
“Do you think he lifts?”
Roy grunted next to him and kept on doing his bicep curl reps. One day, Roy was going to pump his arms one time too many and his biceps would pop like helium balloons.
New guy made a little turn on himself and then skipped to the stair stepper. Wally tilted his head and blinked when the black-haired guy started climbing.
Those were… massive buns… or something.
Wally felt a little intimidated. The guy looked like a vegan protein shake ad: muscular but with some lean lines, perfect tanned skin like he’d been airbrushed to look like he spent all his free time lifting hay bales in the sun or something. His hair had that healthy glow of someone who put the good product in it, bit longish, bit unruly, not really curly, just…
“He’s got good hair,” Wally said, which was. The most inane shit he could have ever said.
Donna’s loaded barbell banged on the floor, and she stopped the rebound with her foot. On his right, Roy interrupted his bicep curls and just stared at Wally like he’d grown a second head.
Donna pushed her barbell around with her foot and asked, concerned, “Wally, are you okay?”
Wally nodded at Donna like a dummy and ran for the treadmills.
Back when Wally had started coming to the gym, he’d mostly come here because a treadmill just sometimes beat running in the rain, or snow, or exhaust fumes. The gym was reasonably sized, didn’t look like a cow pen with hundreds of machines, nor did it look like a barely repainted garage with three dumbells and the smell of socks and balls. He'd thought he'd get to do his thing, run, shower, go back home to cry over fundamental physics and the quantum states of matter.
Then he’d met Donna, who he immediately recognized as “that woman who cracked a watermelon open with her thighs on tiktok??”
She’d answered, “that’s me!” from the other side of gym, unbothered by Wally pointing and yelling, and she'd smiled and put her hands on her hips and Wally had had a crisis because beautiful girls tended to do that to him, but he’d just freshly been with Linda and he was immune, okay? Immune.
Beautiful people were just fucking intimidating, is all.
Then he’d met Roy, a gym rat in his own right, who competed in archery, too. Wally took some time before recognising him from his Instagram posts where he showed off trickshots and thirst trap posts of his pecs and huge arms. Good thing he hadn’t noticed who Roy was before they’d hit it off, at least that meant that Wally hadn’t yelled across the gym “wait you’re the guy who got the cover them up slut comment??”
Awks.
So his two gym bros — sorry, gym pals, were like, social media influencers. Or moguls. Could one be a muscle influencer? Was Donna a watermelon influencer? He knew two was a coincidence and three was a pattern, but what was one then?
Wally ran on, his brain plagued with random buzzing thoughts ping ponging around his skull at the same beat as his feet.
What was one? Happenstance?
Not too far from him, Mister Vegan Free Range Protein Shake climbed down the stair stepper and wiped sweat off his face then gulped back some of his water. Wally stared at his glutes, missed a step and refocused on his treadmill.
Why were hot people so anxiety inducing?
Dick leaning on a squat rack, actively frying all of Wally's brain, art by Rotasha
Going from his experience with Donna and Roy, Wally knew there weren’t a lot of solutions to his anxiety. That man looked intimidatingly competent, and he must have some super good routine. Competence, and muscles, yeah, that was making Wally nervous, also the good hair, super nervous. There was no two way about it: he needed to just rock up to the guy, say hey, and like Donna, and all the other friends Wally had ever had, it would surely dispel this aura of, “I can’t stare straight at the guy, it’s like looking at the sun.”
Vegan Shake had finished his stretching exercises — bro could pull off front and side splits, like, whaaaaaat? — and had now migrated to a corner of the room where there were some gym mats and some rings he was adjusting at arm’s reach.
Wally turned the treadmill off and stumbled down. No two ways about it.
Wally ignored the twin beady eyes of judgment that followed him as he passed the weightlifting corner.
“Hey — Hi!”
Vegan Shake turned with a warm smile — Wally’s heartbeat ratcheted up a notch at that (WHY?) “Hi, there!”
“Want some help? The cinchers on these are a bit tricky.”
“Sure.”
Wally grappled with the small rusty cincher, all the while side-eyeing the guy. Holy shit, he needed to say something. “So are you like, uhhhh, like, an instagram model or something? For vegan shakes?” Wally nodded at the guy's… everything.
“What?” Vegan Shake tilted his head quizzically, which didn’t make him any easier to look at without getting nervous (why?)
“Uhhh…”
The guy pulled harder on the ring adjustment belt. “I mean, my little brother is? I think? He does the whole toktok videos?”
Toktok. Adorable.
Also, not an influencer, great, curse broken.
Wally beamed and went to adjust the second ring. “I’m Wally.”
“Dick.”
Wally pulled way too hard on the belt cincher and the ring hit his shoulder. “What?”
“Dick Grayson. My name.” Then Vegan Shake — Dick — grabbed the belt of the second ring, left there by Wally. “That’s a bit too low…”
“Uh. Uhm, yeah, sorry about that.” God, why was he so nervous all the damn time? “I only ever use them for dips at floor level… It's West, by the way, I'm Wally West.”
“Sweet.”
And then Dick just pushed off and sprang into the air, and using the momentum, balanced and did the most fluid ring muscle-up Wally had ever seen. He hung there for a second, up with the rings held close to his thighs, arms tense. He did a little wiggle, looked down at Wally and smiled wide before he descended slowly until his arms were perpendicular to his body, a perfect iron cross. Then he raised himself again, arms close to his torso, throwing the long lines of muscles in his upper arms and forearms in sharp relief.
Wally flapped his mouth. “Jeez.”
Dick winked. “I was in the circus.”
Oh man, bruh, shit.
“Class act?”
Dick laughed. “More like, clown act.” Then he did five reps of ring presses in quick succession. “I was on trapeze. Glad to see I still got it.”
Wally went through the whole range of “wow” and “I wish I had his muscles” and “I wish I were his muscles” and “I wish I were him” and “I hope he likes me” in less than a microsecond.
“You totally still got it!”
Dick chuckled, “Thanks, bro,” and then did a new set of reps.
Bro.
Wally made fingerguns and booked it out of there.
Over the next few weeks, Wally and Dick became fast friends. Gym bros, if you will. Wally’s plan of curing his nervousness with social interactions kind of panned out, in the usual way: he kept on being a nervous mess, but the bro-ness of it all transformed his anxiety into a good nervousness.
Giddy, he was giddy (he'd looked the right word up).
So Dick became his gym bro, and now Wally was always hoping he'd see him when he went to the gym after his TA work was done. Because Dick was all kinds of awesome in spite of this underlying feeling of tension running through Wally.
Then Linda broke up with him.
“Oooooh, sad sack alert.”
Wally gave Roy the finger and dragged himself over to the treadmills to run. He dialed the program up, hoping to forget everything and outrun his brain or his heart. Around the time he started to feel drained, the door to the gym opened to reveal Dick, looking just as shake-ad-worthy as usual. He greeted Roy and Donna and asshole Gardner who was looking at himself in the mirror like he was ready to kiss himself on the mouth, because Dick was just nice like that, and he must be the kind of man who never got his heart stomped on.
“Hey bro!” he chirped, and Wally nodded briefly, drowning in sweat, focusing on his steps (he’d dialed it too far up and now he was stuck running full tilt like a dingus because he wasn’t about to run slower when Muscle Mag Cover Dick Grayson came into the room okay? No way.)
“Don’t mind him, Dick, he’s grumpy,” Roy hollered from his place on the rowing machine. Motherfucker had even stopped rowing just to mock Wally.
Dick came over and leant on the side of the treadmill next to Wally’s.
“You okay?”
Wally nodded frantically, hoping that Dick would just go away, just as Donna came over.
“Sweetcheeks got his heart broken.”
Wally really really really wanted to make some sort of indignant noise, but at this stage he was mostly wheezing and an inch away from losing his breathing rhythm and falling to his knees and then the treadmill would yeet him in the stratosphere right in front of Dick, which would SUCK.
Knuckles came into his rapidly narrowing field of view — his lungs were on fire, he couldn’t feel his legs or his head anymore, woops — and rapped on the side of his treadmill.
“I wanted to do some bench press sets,” Dick said, tone friendly. “Spot me?”
Wally punched the controls of his treadmill and stumbled to a stop. “Arrrh yEsSs!” he heaved, and then coughed up what was left of his lungs.
Anything but running, anything but Roy’s ragging and Donna’s concerned glances, Jesus.
Dick smiled, Wally pretended he was wiping his face in a dignified way and not like, liquifying on the spot and having to gulp in air like he was on the verge of dying.
The first reps, they did in silence. Wally helped load the barbell with Dick, stopping his weight count after the second weight they added because he just couldn’t do math in his state. Dick did his reps and laid there, looking at Wally from the bench.
“You catch your breath yet?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Wally smiled awkwardly.
Another set. There was something wrong with Wally’s stomach, maybe he’d run too fast for too long, that happened. Dick’s pectorals and deltoids bulged like crazy, what the fuck was he made of?
“I used to get dumped a lot, it sucks every time.”
Wally tsked. “Come on, who would dump you, bro, you’re like…” Wally made a wavy gesture at Dick’s everything over the barbell. “You’re nice as hell!”
Dick shrugged. “You’ve got a lot going on for you too, sometimes things just don’t work out.”
Wally frowned. “I thought I had a good thing going with Linda, for real.” He went on, as Dick started another set of reps. “I did the whole date thing right, I was always on time, she wasn’t, really, but that’s okay, I romanced her, and we were like, together all the time!”
He placed his hands not too far from the bar as Dick’s arms wobbled a little on the last rep.
“I don’t know, it just… it wasn’t good by the end, so now it feels like such a waste.”
“You started counting who did more, who did things first and all?” Dick asked, still laying down, and letting his arms relax to the ground during cooldown.
“Yeaaaah.” Wally groaned and leant his elbows on the barbell, putting him directly above Dick. He was still trying exposure therapy for his hot people nervousness.
“I used to go out with this guy two years ago?” A guy? Wait what? “Older, wiser and all that, you know? When he dumped me he was really nice about it, just said once you started to count, it’s over.”
Wally sighed deeply. Because fuck older wiser Dick boyfriend, but he was right. Which, by the motherflipping way—
“You’re gay?”
Dick gripped the barbell. “Yep.”
“Cool.”
Cause, you know, what could Wally even say to that? “I thought you were hot only because hot people hit all the branches when falling from the hot tree?” Wait no, that was another thing. Maybe Dick was hot because he’d been rubbing against hot guys for years?
Anyway. Cool. Gay. That happened.
“I’m heterosexual.” Wally blurted as Dick reached rep number four, because he didn’t have a fucking filter and he needed to die. “Uhhhhhh—”
“Happens—” Dick said between clenched teeth. “—to the best of us!” the bar clanged loudly when he put it back on the rack. “Pwaaaah, holy shit! Want a turn?”
Oh god yes, anything but talking. “Please.”
Dick smiled again, like this was his default expression and left the bench.
“But we gotta unload that bar, bro,” Wally continued, “‘cause unlike you I can’t bench press myself.”
Wally wasn’t one to dwell, though. He felt like pure shit for a while, but throwing himself into his coursework, helping on the grading during his TA hours, and running like his leggings were on fire helped a lot, and a month later he returned to his baseline self enough for Roy to offer him a piece of his protein-enriched vegan wholewheat muffin.
It should be noted that this never happened, normally.
Today, Wally was deep in thoughts. And analysis. He’d run for a while and then he’d done some rowing, too, and had been in prime place to see the new woman come in. Helena something or other, and she’d started doing some crunches and stretches once she’d exited the changing rooms, so Wally got to do some pondering.
Long, black hair, or like, dark at least. She was like… shaped. Super hot.
He rowed harder.
Rowing machines were prime real estate to people watch, he had a perfect view of the gym mats in the far back, and Dick doing some kinda acrobatic shit on the rings — Wally blinked, and his next row was just complete shit and out of sync — and of the weightlifting corner on the right, out of the way of most of the machines and shit. Donna chuckled at some dumb joke Roy must have made and deadlifted something completely insane like the equivalent of a baby elephant.
Sometimes Wally wondered if the high of being punched by Donna would be worth being erased from existence?
New Girl Helena stopped stretching, fetched herself a weight, and started on weighted crunches.
How was he going to be able to do exposure therapy on two people at once?
Wait a second.
Wally abandoned his rowing machine, cleaned it up and drained the last of his water.
Hot girl exposure therapy but it was people…
Hmmmmmm.
He walked to the gym mats and looked up as Dick finished his routine, which incorporated much more gymnastics than calisthenics, to be honest. Just because it looked so much more fluid, less focused on the actual muscle reinforcements, no reps to see here. Dick was working on his transitions between figures, and it showed. There was this focus, similar to when Wally was going for a sprint, when the line was right here and you had to make everything in you reach that line first…
Dick pushed up in the rings, then released his pose, gained momentum, swung back, and then flipped once in the air in a really fucking nice exit.
Wally whistled. “Damn.”
“It’s nothing amazing, but eh.”
“Ah come on, stop that it-ain’t-much-but-it’s-honest-work shit, that was amazeballs, Dick.”
Dick chuckled and drank his water, bent to retrieve his towel. Not far away, Helena put her weight plate away, turning her back on them.
Wally’s brain went on the fritz.
Hot people. Girls. People, too. People which included things like men, for example, and Dick, because Dick was a people?
Oh no.
Helena had a nice ass, that was for sure, but Dick’s was on a whole other level.
Hot people.
Hooooooly sh—
“Hey I wanted to ask you,” Dick stood up, while Wally’s brain was rewiring itself entirely, “you wanna exchange numbers? Last week I think we kept missing each other, if we shared our schedule it’d be—”
“Yeah yeah yeah, numbers, yeah yeah.” Wally nodded like a dummy. Dummy thicc like Dick, haha, oh no oh no, he liked black haired hot people. “Sure sure.”
Dick’s smile could have powered a small city for a week.
So.
Wally had 99 problems and a bitch was one.
Or, to be precise, he had 99 problems and a “🌈 Gym bro 🌈” was one. Hamiltonian equations were one too, but only one of the two caused him to sometimes stop in the middle of a room and think very hard.
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
You still at work?
Wally looked down at the pile of essays he had to pregrade for the statistical physics teacher he was TA’ing for. There was a very real possibility the heart palpitations were coming from the mountain he still had to go through.
Lying half his chest on the desk and the essays, Wally typed his answer.
10min and then im free
Close by, the teacher was doing his own grading, and threw Wally’s slouch a judgmental glare. Wally got back to his grading prep. Ten minutes, that’s all and then he was free.
His phone buzzed and he caught it before it flung itself off the paper pile it was on.
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
See you there in 30 then!
Wally fumbled with his phone, which fell super close to his Starbucks, which he tried to save preemptively so he ended up shoving the cup and barely managed to not soak the whole fucking desk in almond milk chai tea latte.
“Mr West, maybe you should take the last five minutes off, before we end up with a catastrophe on our hands?”
“S-sure, teach.” Wally sped through tidying up his stuff. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay, you’re not the first TA I’ve had with heart troubles.”
Wally frowned, still packing his bag.
“My heart’s good.” He shouldered his backpack. “I have a resting heart rate of 42.” His phone buzzed and it was Dick again, and right there, his heart clenched, or did a somersault or something dumb, which kind of contradicted whatever he was trying to say.
“Sure, Wally. You can go on, now.”
As he speed walked through the door, Wally tapped on the picture Dick had attached to his message and subsequently tripped on his own feet as he zoomed in to get a better view of Dick’s arms..
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As time went on, the mystery of why did Dick’s hotness made him nervous remained. Sure, he liked handsome guys and gorgeous girls. And the gorgeousness must be the reason why he was nervous. And, okay, so he liked girls and when they were hot… Anyway, that was because he was straight.
He must be straight, right?
Except for Henry Cavill, that had been his exception from the get-go.
Up till very recently he was pretty sure he was straight, like 99% straight with the one percent for Cavill and that time he had fingered himself while watching one of the actor’s workout videos. So now he had to assess if he was like 98% straight.
No biggie.
“Hey, Donna?”
Donna looked up from watching TikTok while biking.
“What?”
“I need you for an experiment.”
Her rhythm faltered, and she smirked. “I think I’m gonna need Roy for this—”
“Oh no nononono—”
“Harper?”
Wally swore just as Roy rocked up to them with his asshole cap backwards, Oakleys on indoors like a douchebag. “‘Sup.”
Donna had stopped pedaling and was just sitting there now. She smiled. “Go on.”
“Ugh… Okay. So.” Wally threw a glance at Dick who was on the other side of the room, shooting the shit with Garth. “Okay so, I’m conducting an experiment and I need one straight man — me — and one lesbian woman — you, Donna — to give an honest opinion.”
Roy gaped and took his Oakleys off, “Wait, what do you mean s—”
Donna elbowed him in the shoulders since she was still seated on her bike, and while Roy was massaging his poor limb, she said, “Of course, Wally, you know I always give honest opinions.”
“Good good. Okay. Do you think Dick is hot?” He ignored the slack-jawed look Roy sent him, and continued. “Because I think he’s hot, so I need to know if this is a Henry Cavill situation where everybody on Earth can recognize hotness or if it’s a me problem.”
While saying that, Wally checked Dick real quick again, in case his hotness had disappeared in the meantime.
Nah, still dummy thicc and all that.
“Wally…”
Wally nodded and dragged his gaze away from Dick’s ass.
“What?”
“Listen… ugh.” She actually turned to look, so that was good, she was doing the experiment, results would be scientifically sound, perfect. “Wally, I’m a lesbian. I mean, he’s nice?” She winced.
“What’s that about Cavill, West?” Roy asked.
Wally frowned.
“You don’t… wait Donna, you don’t like Henry Cavill?”
“I mean who doesn’t like Henry Cavill? He’s like, really cut out for his roles and…”
Roy snorted. “Don’t hurt yourself, Donna, soon you’re gonna tell us his body is in great shape or something.”
She looked up to the ceiling “Look, I’m trying okay? I wish I had his muscles for sure.”
Wally murmured, awed, remembering the bath scene in the Witcher. “I wish I were his muscles.” Which echoed a regularly occurring thought and wish in his mind.
Donna grimaced. “Okay let’s not go too far, here though.”
Roy’s big hand fell on Wally’s shoulder. “Wally. Have you ever heard of bisexuality?”
“Are you telling me jerking off to Henry Cavill isn’t a universal experience?” His tone was a bit pleading here, but Wally thought he could be excused, considering.
“I mean, it’s pretty widely shared, but not universal, no.”
“But—” Wally blinked, dazed, because this reached much farther than Dick or Helena, or Linda, or Cavill, or that one time he’d watched the Crossfit Games and had— “But I thought fingering—”
Roy put two fingers on Wally’s lips, cutting him off. “Shhh, this is the moment you decide to keep the details to yourself.”
Donna joined her hands under her chin in prayer. “Jesus, I saw what you did for the dinosaurs and I want that for me.”
Roy grabbed Wally by the elbow. “I’m taking over.”
Wally wasn’t sure he heard Donna right, but it seemed she’d mumbled, “Men will say ‘I’m fighting demons’ and it’s bisexuality, I can’t believe it.”
But that couldn’t be right, right?
“Okay, Wally, sit down.” Roy ordered as he pulled a stool for him in the gym rec room. Roy uncapped his water bottle and started to mix in whey like this was chemistry class. “Are you okay?”
A little dazed but otherwise fine, Wally still took stock of himself, because serious Roy was serious.
“I’m… fine? I’m kind of reevaluating my worldview though.”
Roy nodded, shook his concoction and then slammed the shaker on the counter between them, shoved it towards Wally, and started on another.
“Right. You good… internally? No self-deprecating bad-talking knocking around in your head?”
Wally scrunched his nose. “No, why?” He drunk a big gulp of protein shake. Yum, vanilla and blackberry cheesecake? And the delicious papery feel of protein sliding on your tongue like sandpaper, noice.
Roy chuckled. “You’re really something else, West.” He got to shaking his own drink. “How’s your worldview being flipped, then?”
“I thought…” Wally bought himself some time by taking another big gulp of cheesecake shake. “I mean I thought… I thought everyone was like me? I mean, come on, Roy.” Wally gestured vaguely in the direction of the main gym room. “Dick? Cavill?”
This time, Roy outright laughed. “I know, right? Kinda took me by surprise too when I realized.”
“I don’t know how… straights… and gays do it.” Wally went through his internal reel of thirstiness. “Imagine looking at… Chris Evans’ chest and… and… Michelle Rodriguez and feeling… nothing.”
“Yup.” Roy took a swig of his drink. “Couldn’t be me.”
Problem was, recognising he was bisexual and knowing he was thirsting after Dick did diddly squat for his problem.
Sure, it labeled it and a labeled problem was a problem half solved, right? Now Wally could point at his phone and say, “Heart palpitation because I like Dick”, and point at his physics textbook and say, “Evil because quarks” and point at Dick’s ass and say, “Djkhksdf”. Cool.
Wally flipped through his textbook, but the words and formulas looked like they were melting under his eyes. Cool ADHD-induced dyslexia, just what he needed. He eyed his Adderall bottle, but no, no he wouldn’t take another or he’d never sleep again, it was too late.
Ugh.
He did a full 360 whirl on his chair, then another but the other way. Grabbed his phone and scrolled to the messages.
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
He sighed. They hadn’t scheduled to go to the gym today. Didn’t prevent Wally’s heart from doing the dumb flips and flutter stuff. He scrolled up to the gym selfie Dick had taken, with the barbell and his dumbass little fingers doing a gay little V.
Wally let the phone flop on the desk and his head fall onto his three-hundred page physics textbook.
Perhaps he could learn band-gap theory by osmosis.
Dick’s arms looked perfect for hugging.
That paper felt so soft.
What if he learnt how to make paper, though?
Boobs.
Wally groaned and flipped his phone right side up again. If he typed now and didn’t think he wouldn’t be able to panic.
U free to go to the gym tonite?
Could use the workout
Goin outof my mind
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
Lmao
Save me, bro
He attached a picture of his smushed face on his textbook, his red hair sticking up wildly and spreading across the page.
Im bouncing off the walls
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
When are you not tho?
Shut up
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
Cant for half an hour, gotta study for socio test tmw
Wally smiled like a lunatic at his phone. Dick had told him he had just finished a social work degree and wanted to get another one in physical therapy, because he “just wanted to help people, help children you know, and if I gotta use the shittillions of money my dad put in my trust fund, might as well do it to get all the degrees, yanno?”
Godspeed
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
I’ll need it.
Then Dick sent his own selfie of himself laying on his bed amidst a sea of books and printed papers.
Wally whined and closed his eyes, but when he opened them, Dick was still there with his half smile and his wavy hair like a halo around his pretty face.
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
See you in an hour there?
The heart-flutters struck again. Wally smiled at his phone screen, stupidly, dreamily.
Perfect
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Three weeks had passed since Wally had discovered that, no, most people did not traverse life in a perpetual state of panic because people were hot everywhere. It was fine. At one point he didn’t touch a textbook for two days straight and spent all his time reading google scholar abstracts of studies on heterosexuality and the Kinsey scale and the Kinsey scale pitfalls, and he’d filled sixteen onlined quizzes that all said that he definitely was a Michelle Cavill/Henry Rodriguez-oriented person, also he’d found porn, so that had shaved off some more hours on his already out-of-whack schedule.
All this to say that Wally was a bit frazzled that Thursday, what with the TA email answers he had been fielding non-stop because the essay the stats teacher had asked for was due in less than two days, and also the catching up he’d had to do after his little bit of hyperfocusing.
Wally pushed open the door to the gym, knowing that today’s session was going to suck major balls.
The usual wall of plasticy smell mingled with cleaner and the vague undertone of sweat assaulted him, and he looked up, ready to groan in despair.
Dick was talking with Kyle, and today he was wearing the shortest shorts. These running shorts that were a little loose, with a one inch slit on the sides, and that normally would look pretty normal on anyone, but Dick just was…
The door banged behind him, so Dick looked back at the noise, saw Wally there — Great Gatsby Above, Wally hoped Dick hadn’t noticed he had been staring at his ass like a perv — and beamed like sunshine.
“Hey, bro!”
“Hi Dick! Hi Kyle!” He escaped to the changing rooms, where he found Roy with one sock on his hand, fingering a hole at the toe.
Wally marched right up to him.
“Roy, you gotta help me.”
Roy looked at him, part of his pointer finger through his sock hole, perpetual trucker hat on backward. The man had the gall to put his Oakleys on before he asked, “What can I do for you?”
Wally couldn’t fathom that Roy, the most heterosexual-douchebag passing man on earth, had discovered he was bisexual before Wally did.
Seriously.
Anyway.
“I need to solve my Dick problem.”
Roy looked down, frowned, looked back up. “Like…?”
“No. The other Dick problem.” Crickets. “I do not have dick problems. Just one Dick problem, oh for fuck— okay listen—”
Roy was biting his lips, trying hard not to laugh in Wally’s face.
“Listen!”
“I’m listening.”
“Okay. So. Men.”
“Men.”
“How do I…. How does that work?”
“How does what work?” Now Roy looked definitely confused.
“Like, women.” Wally said, and ignored the way Roy opened his mouth to interrupt, because this was important. “Women I can, like, wait it out, okay, most of the time. They’re hot, I look, respectfully, I go talk to them, and it kind of demystifies the whole thing, you know? And at some point I just stop being nervous and it’s all good, it’s fine, so men, is it the same?”
Silence was the only answer as Roy seemed to mull over his words while putting his holey sock on.
“Wally. Do you have brain damage?”
“Ugh.”
He walked out, but Roy quickly put his sneakers on and caught up to him in the rec room soon after.
“Seriously, Walls, you are thinking way too hard about this.”
Wally bounced his leg, and scratched his jeans fabric, just to have something to do.
“Before you had your mini-reveal, you thought of every hot person as people. Not men, not women, not pit stops in between. If you find Dick hot, it’s the same as finding a girl hot, okay?”
From afar, Wally spied Dick finishing his conversation with Kyle. He gave him a smile, and turned. Damn those shorts. “Yeah, okay.” Dick sauntered over to the leg press machine and as he was arranging his towel, spotted Wally looking and waved a little dorkily.
Wally waved back, feeling suddenly shy.
“He’s so dreamy, though.”
Over there in the gym, Dick started his leg presses. Wally closed his eyes respectfully.
“Man, you actually do have brain damage.”
In a bid for immunization via exposure, Wally tried spending more time with Dick. Like he’d told Roy, generally, exposing himself to the girls he’d liked a lot in the past had helped. And if he had to be honest, he had sort of done the same for boys. He’d try to say hi, which already tended to sort people into two groups: assholes and nice people, and he wasn’t attracted to assholes. And then he’d try and befriend them at least superficially, which would further triage out all the assholes, the dull people, the ones who thought Wally was a little weird or a little intense or something.
With that, only a handful of attractive people retained their anxiety-inducing powers on Wally.
But then you had people like Linda.
Like Dick.
Beautiful, nice people who liked Wally for who he was and had no problem engaging with him.
There weren’t too many solutions left: he had to spend some time with Dick to become immune to Dick. They would become friends, bros, and that would solve his heart flutter-slash-hardcore crushing problem.
Wally knew how to auto-friendzone himself. He got this.
“How many?” Wally asked, trying to keep his voice down since they were in the library. Dick had broached the subjects of siblings because he wanted to bring his brother to the gym, and now Wally had to make sure he heard him right, because… “I’m not sure, seven max?” couldn’t be a real answer to “How many kids does your father have?”
“I don’t know! Depends on your definition of—” Wally used his rolled up classical mechanics homework to beat Dick upside the head. “Stop! No wait!” The librarian poked his head around the corner and glared at them both.
It took them a minute or two before they could speak without snort-giggling.
“Okay okay, so seriously, Bruce has like, run the gamut of how to have kids, so depends. I have like four, no six siblings? Wait.” Dick counted on his fingers murmuring indistinctly. “Three and a half?”
“And a half? Like a half-sibling, ‘my brother from another mother’ kind of deal, or like, there was a tragic accident with a lawnmower?”
Dick laughed, a quiet thing that gave him a little nose scrunch and dimples. God, he was so pretty.
Wally totally didn’t got this.
“More like Bruce adopted him and then he got emancipated later on. But, anyway it’s complicated but we’re all tight, whichever way we ended up in B’s home, it’s great.”
Wally couldn’t really fathom such a weird family situation. His frame of reference in terms of siblings was limited to Barry’s surprise baby twins Bart and Thad, and that was it.
“So which one’s the one you’re bringing to the gym today?”
“Jason, the second eldest. He’s a lit major.” Dick got up to put his books back on the shelf, and Wally took this opportunity to ogle him.
Exposure therapy was working… not.
Dick turned. Wally looked up. He was innocent. Pure as the driven snow.
“That’s lit.” Wally quipped, badly, in an attempt to divert Dick’s attention from the very obvious ass ogling — please, please let Dick not have noticed…
Dick snorted and finished packing his stuff. “Oh man, that one was lame.”
Wally sniggered, and shoved all his shit in his backpack. “Shut up, your puns are worse.”
Dick grabbed him by the shoulder in a bro hug that had Wally short-circuit entirely. “Shut up, you love them.”
I love you.
“C’mon, your lil bro’s gonna be waiting for us,” Wally mumbled.
Oh god, he needed to talk to Roy, the situation was DIRE.
It was a sunny day, and they took their sweet time walking to the gym outside campus.
Turned out, this little brother was more of a brick shithouse of a brother. Dick patted Jason on the back as he introduced his brother to the usual gang.
“Guys.” Donna cleared her throat discreetly. “Sorry, Donna. Homies. This is my little brother, Jason.”
“Are you sure it’s your little brother?”
Dick narrowed his eyes at Garth. “He is small, he’s my little brother.”
Next to him, Jason crossed his arms over his chest — maybe he could have a watermelon breaking challenge with Donna?— and declared, “Yeah, I’m babie.” In all seriousness.
While Dick was still trying to convince everyone that this guy was actually his younger brother, the one he constantly said was “nerdy and sweet, you’ll see,” Wally sidled up to Roy to convey his distress and signal that he needed immediate assistance.
Roy’s Oakleys reflected the room and its inhabitants, letting nothing show of Roy’s state of mind.
He needed to tell Roy that he’d seen Dick’s dimples from up close and his exposure plan was backfiring so much…
There was a brief silence after Donna introduced herself to Jason, and then it was Roy’s turn and nothing could have prepared Wally for what happened next.
Silence.
Dick snapped his fingers in front of Roy’s face. “Roy?”
Roy took his Oakleys off, blinked. “Roy? That’s me, yeah. Hi. Uhhhhh, I hear, you… like to read.”
Everyone narrowed their eyes at Roy, and then at Jason when he stumbled through the most awkward, “Yes, yeah, books. I like, books. Are those real?”
Roy nodded, flexed the biceps Jason had pointed at.
Oh no. Roy had succumbed to the bi-panic-disease.
“Donna, Donna, please, I need help.”
The group had separated and everyone had gone to start on their little individual workout. Wally, now sans bi-mentor since Roy and Jason were still standing like two dumb potato sacks having a heart to heart. It was so fucking painful.
“Donna.”
“Wally.”
“Help.”
Donna ignored him in favor of stacking another weight on her squat rack. Wally sent a panicked glance at Dick who — holy shit — was coming over?
“Tell me everything you know about gay men. Please, I’m begging.”
This time, Donna actually looked at Wally.
“Gay men wear assless chaps and spank each other for fun. I know because I drive past them during Dykes on Bikes.”
Wally flapped his mouth uselessly, frankly unsure of what to do with this knowledge.
Assless chaps?
He felt his elbow get grabbed in a strong grip.
Spanking?
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing.” Dick seethed in Wally’s ear. Wally sadly looked on as Dick pulled him further and further from Donna. Dykes? Spank? Did Dick possess assless chaps? He had questions.
Donna waved at him right before he got pulled into the Spy Corner, which was the very special corner of the gym where you could really see everything, even the rec room.
SpAnK?
“I can’t believe my little brother is fucking flirting, like, right there in front of my salad.”
Wally blinked owlishly, half his brain still trying to process and decide what he was supposed to do with Donna’s information.
But Dick wasn’t done.
Glaring at Jason and Roy, who had now taken to doing such things as nodding dumbly and smiling shyly at each other, Dick crossed his arms and got close enough to Wally that he could whisper.
“I bring him here, one time!”
“Uhhhhh…” Wally was still thinking about assless chaps and Dick Grayson, and had yet to recover from his dimple overload from the library, so he wasn’t at his most eloquent. “Gyms, you know.”
Dick hummed as if Wally had said something intelligent and not the first word that had come to mind and wasn’t something very graphic involving his gym bro.
“Yeah, people are ripped in gyms, it was a risk to bring my brother here, I guess.”
Oh maaan, Dick’s arm was rubbing against Wally’s.
“For sure. Hot people go to the gym all the damn time.” Was this how it felt to have a stroke?
“Can’t believe Jason likes redheads, too.” Dick shook his head.
“Redheads?” Redheads redheads redheads.
“Yeah, redheads are hot.” He felt Dick shrug, and was he going crazy or was Dick staring at him from the corner of his eye? Wasn’t Wally the one who was supposed to stare from the corner of his eye?
Redheads are hot.
Oh god, this was like every single sentence spoken was another red string on a corkboard that Wally was trying to decipher in real time, except everything was written in… aramaic or something.
Quick, say something!!
“It’s because the hair is a metaphor for fire.”
???
“Sure, bro.” Dick chuckled. There was a silence that Wally couldn’t for the life of him have decrypted since his mind was just a row of a dozen of those cymbal monkeys going ding-ding-ding.
Some meters away Roy started some sort of mating dance consisting of readjusting his baseball cap — which sat backwards, because this was Roy — and fiddling with his sleeveless shirt. There was a lot of foot shuffling on Jason’s part, and chuckles and neck scratching in shyness or something.
“Fuck, it’s painful to look at,” Dick mumbled. “Imagine if he bags Roy while I stay single.”
Single single single—
Redheads redheads redheads—
“You like Roy?” Wally exclaimed under his breath and whirled to look at Dick.
Dick guffawed. “Bro. Roy? Seriously?” Dick eyerolled.
Wally blinked.
Single, redhead, hot people at the gym, assless chaps.
“I think…” Wally pointed behind him at the wall. “I left an essay on the… stove. I—”
Wally ran away.
Wally had been staring at his computer for a while now, and also staring at the wide tapestry of his jumbled thoughts for just as long.
He had been tempted several times to bury himself in his essays, or maybe just do math for the hell of it. He could also have finished his tumblr post about the fact that any comic book character imbued with speed so high they could run faster than light must be quark soup or maybe just a bundle of strings.
He could have procrastinated.
Wally did another turn on his chair.
Fuck, but Roy, for all that he tried very hard to look like an unapproachable douchebag, was usually the level-headed person Wally went to. The man was twenty-six, had a job and all that shit, he wasn’t a StUdEnT (derogatory) anymore, and even before this whole hot-people-bisexuality debacle, he’d often had good advice on work-life balance. He was like the elder ancient guy in the anime of Wally’s life.
Now without elder counsel at hand, Wally was bereft, lost.
He did another turn, then stopped and typed his query into Google.
“what does it mean when a guy says he likes redheads and you’re a redhead?”
The first link went to a CNN article on why some men were attracted to redheads. He clicked. It was just a guy giving his two cents and speculations also where had the layout gone, was the CSS dead on this page? He scrolled down. Some article that said that another article (?) said that red haired men were less likely to pick up women in a nightclub.
This was fucking useless.
He scrolled down and clicked on the “My boyfriend is attracted to redheads” google suggestion.
Quora again. Some dumb shit. Reddit.
…
Hmmmm.
Wally spent an inordinate amount of time on reddit after this. It wasn’t as bad as falling down a Wikipedia wormhole, but it sure as shit sent him down some dark paths.
With basically no idea how much time he’d spent scrolling and clicking, and having made no fucking progress since he’d escaped from the gym, Wally decided that it was time for some crackers.
Crackers acquired, Wally sat down again at his computer.
Half an hour later, he had two empty packs of crackers to his right, an empty can of monster to his left, a mint-new reddit account and he was shaking his computer upside down to get the crumbs out of his keyboard.
He was also not getting very far with his Dick Grayson problem.
His phone buzzed.
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
J got Roy’s number
Wally read and felt the smile on his face, dumb, and happy.
Your brother’s got game
🌈 Gym bro 🌈
>:(c
Ugh. Dick was just too cute.
And suddenly, he knew what he had to do. He clicked new post, scrolled to r/offmychest, and after a one second pause, started to write.
Help, I think I’m in love with my gym bro
I (22M) am in love with my gym bro (24M). When I met him, I thought I was straight and that he was more beautiful than the sun, and now, I don't think I'm that straight, but he's still just as gorgeous.
This started some months back when........................
Wally was running on approximately three minutes of sleep, a double dose of Adderall, two cans of monster, the wings of freedom and the non-stop messages of a thousand strangers on the internet.
His dumbass message (TL;DR, I discovered I was bisexual because my gym bro is just that gorgeous and amazing, and now I want to kiss him so very badly. Reddit what do I do?) had somehow ended up shared somewhere on Twitter or wherever and gone semi-viral. He’d woken up to an onslaught of support from complete strangers who basically told him to “get that boi, bro!!! GET CONDOMS!” (thank you reddit user hamstersatemabrainzzzzz)
He still had twenty minutes to go on his TA work, and his leg was bouncing on its own, ungovernable and free, as he fielded questions from the students in a haze of stress.
He was going to ask Dick out. He was. He had a plan.
Dick had sent him a message this morning saying “same time tonight right?” and Wally had said “no problemo, bro” in a completely relaxed way (not).
So he would go to the gym (what if a meteor fell on the gym and everyone died?) and then he would spot Dick and they would run for a while and then Dick would do his ring routine while Wally did rowing, this was all perfectly laid out. Then Wally would offer to walk back together to the campus. Yes.
Wally broke another pencil he had been nervously bending and unbending.
The stats professor looked at Wally. “Are you okay, Mr West?”
“Supermega dandy sir, never felt better.”
Fifteen minutes.
What if Dick said no?
What if Dick mocked him in the parking lot? No he wouldn’t, Dick was the best, Dick was warm, Dick is where home’s at.
The last fifteen minutes of work were pure torture. He used his impromptu internet safety net liberally, fielding some of the questions redditors asked him. Several were hella invested, and when he told them he was going to ask his “gym bro” out but still had work for fifteen minutes, a whole twenty different persons answered and cheered.
Well at least, if he got… not dumped, but gently let down, at least he would have these fifteen thousand randos to give him the “there, there” treatment.
Funnily enough, time was relative — thanks Einstein — so right when Wally’s stress levels peaked and he thought “maybe I’d rather never get to the gym so that I can never potentially get pre-dumped, time sped up incredibly fast and it felt like he teleported halfway through his workout.
God he must look like a fucking mess.
“You okay, bro?”
Wally hummed thoughtfully, as he ran on the treadmill next to Dick’s, brain split between a running “howdoIevenaskhimout?howdoIevenaskhimout?howdoIevenaskhimout?” and the other half of his brain still replaying in graphic details how Dick’s sleeveless shirt had slipped a little during his bench presses, revealing some magic side-boob plus under-boob combo that —
“You do look a little pale.”
“It’s because I’m finally becoming one with my physics textbook pages.”
Dick laughed, and only a few minutes later they both climbed off their treadmills.
They both drank. Wally stopped mid-gulp and just looked at Dick, the long line of his neck and his Adam’s apple bobbing and at this fucking sleeveless… he just…
Wally was feeling a little faint.
“Hey, I think I might have to cut the workout short. My blood is like half energy drink and half adrenaline right now.”
Dick looked concerned, and touched Wally’s arm — with his strong strong hand, and warm warm palm, oh my — “Okay, bro, let’s hit the showers then.”
“You don’t have to—”
Wally stopped talking altogether because Dick just started steering him towards the locker room with a gentle bro hug. How was he supposed to think with Dick’s arm around his shoulders?
As he waited for Dick to finish doing his hair he updated his reddit post, now so stressed he’d crossed the stress Rubicon and was now fully seated in the sea of dazed calm that lay beyond anxiety.
Update: I’m in the gym, we should be going soon. We’re walking back ot campus, I’m gonna ask him out then. Thanks for the well wishes and the encouragement, everyone!
Wally looked over at Dick, who was now shoving his towel and hair gel and gym shoes in his bag, bent over the bench he had spread his shit on. He’d never been great at literature, or creative writing or anything, but boy, looking at Dick made Wally feel like he could break into a sonnet any moment soon.
For the life of him, Wally would never be able to remember the inane discussion he maintained as they walked back to the campus. He must have been at least semi-coherent, because by the time they crossed the lawn in front of the dorm buildings, Dick didn’t seem preoccupied by Wally’s health anymore.
He stopped walking and braced himself. He had the power of god and reddit on his side.
“Dick uhhhhhhh…”
Oh man, words, where was his fucking impromptu sonnet now that he fucking needed it?
Dick tilted his head, looked back quizzically.
“Okay okay, so.” Wally put his hands in front of him as if to stop Dick advancing. “Man, I don’t know if you knew, but you’re hot as fuck.” Dick blinked, but Wally bulldozed his way into the weirdest confession known to man. “Just. Best muscles. I thought I wanted to have your muscles by the way, but, turns out, I was bisexual all along and also you’re the nicest person ever, like, cinnamon roll meme levels of nice, you know?”
Dick was the one looking a bit dazed by now, which, okay. Wally still had things to say. Dumb things, but things nonetheless.
“Uh, I thought. Look. every time you text me, I smile like an idiot, and I love working out with you and you have… good hair… and oh god, have you seen yourself? You’re like, so thick, bro.” Dick opened his mouth, but Wally couldn’t let him say something before he had confessed everything. “I just want to kiss you so bad all the time, do you wanna get coffee with me? But not right now because I drank five times more Red Bull than the levels approved by the FDA and I don’t wanna get fined for excessive caffeine consumption.”
Dick swayed on his feet for a second and Wally thought his heart was going to beat out of his chest and fly into the Van Allen belt (although, maybe that was the caffeine?) until Dick started smiling.
Smiling wide, his sunshine beam of a smile that crinkled his eyes.
“I knew it. I caught you staring at my ass so much, it was a little sus, not gonna lie.” He laughed, his nose scrunching and Wally wanted to… just… “God, Wally, I just… Yeah?”
“Yeah?” Yeah what? Wally was so confused, Dick was just the prettiest beefy guy on this planet, he had no brain cells. Was there a question somewhere? “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“You free on Friday?”
Wally re-connected every part of his brain. “What wait, yes, I am, wait you mean?”
Dick took Wally’s hand in his, super gentle and sweet.
“Can I get the special upgrade from gym bro to gym boyfriend?”
Wally nodded. “Fuck yeah.” What was he supposed to do now? With his fingers entwined with Dick’s fingers? Men, how did they even work? Wally shook his head and just went for it, walking into Dick’s arms and giving him a hug.
The hug was nice, until Dick put his arms around Wally, and hugged him back, extra tight, with his head in Wally’s neck. It felt so warm, and so comfortable, like he could stay here forever, with Dick’s soft laugh in his ear. It was like Wally had his entire concept of hugs reset on the spot.
“I’ve never kissed a guy, though.”
Dick chuckled. “Well, I’ve kissed plenty.”
“Well, what are you waiting for, show me, bro.”
Dick unwound himself a little from the hug, just to look at him, biting his lips to stifle his laughter.
“Sorry. Force of habit.”
A chuckle again, and then Dick nudged his nose against Wally, prompting him to tilt his head a little. “No problem—” Oh god, Dick was getting closer, so very close, and Wally was “—bro.”
Wally was toast, because Dick’s lips felt like fucking heaven and all he could do was hold on to Dick’s back, close his eyes and kiss back with all he had.
Update 2: Yoooooooo, guys, gals, and uh, like everyone!! Holy shit? I did it? I asked him out? He said yes? He said yes!!! Man, I was a mess, I couldn’t align two words, pro tip: don’t mainline sodas for a whole night and go to the gym after an all-nighter, lmao, fuck. Fuck! He was waiting for me at the gym and we had to cut it all short cause I wasn’t feeling so good, and he was so worried for me? And then, then, we went to the dorms and while we were walking like I just. Shit I just laid it all out? I have no fucking clue what I said, just don’t ask me. He said my staring at his ass all the time was a little sus, and we laughed together, and he had this little nose scrunch? That is so fucking cute. Bruh. We hugged? Best hug I’ve ever had. Also he kissed me? Holy shit, kissing boys is awesome, who fucking knew?
Anyway, thank you all, I srsly wouldn’t have gotten my shit together w/o you all. Like I’d still be eating crackers in my dorm room admiring him from afar or w/e. We’re having a date on friday, man, idk, life is fantastic, this is dope.