Chapter Text
Hunter’s apartment was small by most standards, but it was larger than what most students had on campus and had a lot more in the way of privacy. It saved him the trouble of having to worry that a dorm mate might wander into his room and find his vigilante paraphernalia. The number of visitors Hunter had ever had to this apartment since he’d first gotten it could be counted on one hand: the Garricks, the Allens, and Ashley. Of course, he hadn’t exactly had Ashley over since they’d broken up, and Hunter visited the Allens and the Garricks more often than he invited them back to his home. Guests were rare at his place.
So coming back home to his apartment just before midnight only to find Wally sitting outside his door was a bit of a surprise. So much of a surprise, in fact, that despite their last encounter, there wasn’t a single spark of anger. Just confusion and a mild drug-induced haze.
Wally looked up at him, eyebrows raised, looking alert at Hunter’s arrival.
“What are you doing here?” Hunter asked.
“What happened?” Wally responded immediately, scrambling up to his feet nervously. Once he was on his feet, looking down at Hunter, he suddenly looked even more flustered, constantly eyeing the wheelchair with an anxious expression.
“It was a hit and run,” Hunter said, which was true enough. Wally’s eyes shifted to the side, never able maintain contact with Hunter’s for too long. Considering their last meeting, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. “How’d you find out where I lived?”
“Oh, uh, Aunt Iris,” he said. Of course. But Wally didn’t stop the explanation there. “Well, Aunt Iris couldn’t get in contact to let one of your friends know about you, so she asked me to stop by the place she worked. And your friend asked me to get this to you.” He lifted a plastic bag that carried a to-go box inside. “She also says you need to start picking up your phone.”
Hunter immediately went through the bag that sat in his lap. He had changed into a spare change of clothes that had been supplied to him at the mountain, loose-fitted ones. His own clothes were in the bag, bundled up, along with the rest of his personal effects. He found his cell phone and found a number of missed texts messages and calls, most of them from Ashley. There were several missed phone calls from Wally, and a few voice messages that mostly consisted of muted hang-ups.
Hunter looked back at Wally, who was disguising his discomfort as he dusted off the backside of his pants. “So, Ashley’s, um…”
“My ex,” Hunter said.
“I was going to say nice,” he mumbled.
“Then you’d be wrong,” Hunter said. A blatant lie. Ashley was fantastic. At worst, she could be a little firm or way too unyielding at times. Mostly, Hunter just didn’t feel comfortable with the two of them meeting. He wondered if maybe this is what Wally felt when Hunter was with his family.
But as he watched Wally, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, he couldn’t stay mad for too long. Not even with the residual anger from their last argument. Not when Ashley’s shift at her mom’s cafe had probably ended over an hour ago and Hunter couldn’t even begin to guess how long Wally had been sitting outside Hunter’s door waiting for him.
He went through his bag again and pulled out his house keys to unlock the door. With an annoyed face, he ended up backing up his wheelchair, leaning forward to open the door, and pushing himself through the door. When Wally didn’t follow him inside, Hunter twisted his upper body to look back at him. “You coming in?”
“Uh…”
“Or we could eat in the middle of the hallway,” he suggested dryly. Point taken, Wally walked in after him. Wally almost headed toward the couch, but paused, probably wondering whether or not that would be considered too friendly—Hunter had noticed that Wally sometimes had trouble making those distinctions—and the redhead discreetly changed directions towards the small dining room area instead, placing the to-go box on the big of spare space on the table. Wally looked around for a moment, looking unsure of what to do now.
Hunter glanced around his apartment, suddenly self-conscious of the fact that he hadn’t taken the time to clean up lately. He hadn’t bothered, considering how rare visitors were. Not that his apartment was ever really a mess, but he didn’t like the idea of Wally walking in to see, say, a bright yellow costume draped over the back of a chair or anything. Nothing really seemed out in the open except…
Hunter pushed the wheelchair forward as quickly but discreetly as he could towards the table. On the table was a mess of papers, most of them research that could be passed off as research for classes, but there was a map marking off the location of the Kid’s past robberies and suspected next targets laying on the table that Hunter really didn’t want to explain to Wally. Not that the redhead would probably understand what it was he was looking at at the moment, but precautions.
Aware that Hunter didn’t want him going through his work, Wally diverted his attention towards the rest of the apartment, deliberately looking away as Hunter shoved everything into a pile.
“Police stuff?” he asked, his back towards Hunter.
“Uh. Yeah. Confidential,” Hunter said, recalling that he had told Wally about his internship at Central’s police department. His work out of the way and sorted to the side of the table, Hunter put Ashley’s donated to-go box in his lap and rolled himself toward the kitchen. Once there, he stopped the wheelchair and paused, staring up at the cabinet far above his head and wondering how he was going to grab the plates. He glanced over at Wally, who immediately looked away again, as if he hadn’t been staring at Hunter on and off since they were outside.
Eventually, Hunter just rolled his eyes, bracing both hands against the armrests of the wheelchair before making sure his good leg had a good, solid footing, and he stood up to reach for the plate.
Wally was almost immediately there in the kitchen with him, gripping Hunter’s forearm with and staring at him with an abrupt sort of intensity and disbelief.
“What are you doing?” Wally demanded, looking up and down between Hunter and the cast on his leg with an alarmed expression. “Sit down.”
“Let go,” Hunter snapped irritably, in no mood to be babied. He felt an uncomfortable rush in his aching leg and was thankful for the prescribed painkillers Dr. Mid-Night had given him, but he doubted there’d be much of a difference if he stood up just once or twice today. “I’m not putting any weight on it.”
“Just sit!” Wally said, turning around to face Hunter and pushing him back into the chair. To Hunter’s credit, he was only standing on one leg, and Wally actually succeeded in pushing him back down.
“Ow!” Hunter shouted, and Wally immediately flinched and failed, stumbling backwards and bumping into the counter in his rush to put as much distance between himself and Hunter as possible.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry…!” he babbled frantically, with eyes so wide and a face so pale that Hunter actually felt bad for Wally.
“I was just messing with you,” Hunter admitted, only a little sheepishly as Wally glared at him with the most unamused face.
With an annoyed huff, Wally turned around to take the plates down for Hunter and then grabbed some silverware. At least, the tension had been broken. It was almost a relief, compared to the demure version of Wally from earlier. That relief was short lived, because the moment Wally looked back at Hunter, the muted version of Wally had returned.
“So… are you okay?” Wally asked as they walked back to the table, where the box had already been opened. Ashley had gotten him a whole pie. “How bad is it? Your leg?”
Pretty freaking terrible, according to the X-rays. Luckily, the Justice League had technology years beyond its time, so at least there was a decent chance Hunter wasn’t going to be limping around for the rest of his life. Wally wasn’t entirely wrong in making him sit back down though. As much as he hated it, staying on his feet for too long wasn’t a good idea.
“Not good at all,” Hunter said honestly. “But it could be a lot worse.”
“That’s good,” Wally said, looking a little relieved as he cut them pieces of pie. The concern was actually kind of nice.
“Yeah. Still going to catch the asshole who did it,” he said. He watched as Wally paused and then slid the knife over, cutting a larger piece for Hunter. “There’s a really good chance we can get him now.”
“Really?” Wally asked.
“Yeah. Found some new information.”
“New information?” Wally asked, sounding as if he were trying to sound amused, but only coming off as tired. “It’s only been a day.”
“Right. Well,” Hunter shrugged, eating his pie with the plate in one hand, fork in the other. He would have eaten normally, plate on the table, but he didn’t feel like fumbling around to get the chair out of the way to get to the table. “We still have some information on the guy who did this. We’ll catch him.”
Wally shifted uncomfortably again. “I’m sorry about before,” he finally said, stabbing at his own slice. There it was. Hunter had been expecting Wally to broach the subject by now.
Hunter really wasn’t sure what to say. That was usually the problem. What was there to say after their last argument?
He meant to ask Wally why he reacted the way he did to Hunter meeting his mom.
Instead, what he got was, “Why don’t you like me?”
From the way Wally reacted, it sounded as stupid as it felt. Even Wally, with all his anxiety, couldn’t help snickering at the comment. “What?”
“I mean…” Hunter paused and then shook his head. “No, actually, I mean it exactly like that. Why don’t you like me? I mean the things you said—”
“I was just being a dick,” Wally said, fidgeting.
“You were, but you still meant what you said,” he said. “I mean you, you’re—” Territorial as hell. “—really defensive. You don’t like me around.”
“I like you fine,” Wally insisted, which was flattering, but Hunter wasn’t buying it, even if it seemed that Wally was.
“Only when I am nowhere near your family. And then all of a sudden the anxiety is dialed up to eleven. The only explanation is that you’re overprotective and think I’m somehow dangerous to your family—which, by the way, is total bull just in case you haven’t realized—or you’re just… jealous…” His voice trailed off at the realization, and Wally’s brow creased in irritation.
“I am not jealous,” he said, and Hunter would’ve believed him if it hadn’t made so much sense. At Hunter’s deadpan look, Wally agitatedly repeated himself. “I’m not! Why would I be jealous of you?”
That was a good question.
“I don’t know, but you are,” Hunter said evenly.
“You are so full of yourself,” Wally said, though there was no venom to his voice. There was a slight waver to his demeanor, something off in the way he crossed his arms stiffly in front of his chest and rolled his eyes. He was almost convincing, but it felt superficial. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to Wally before, but he was definitely very aware of what Hunter was talking about now. After a moment, he unfolded his arms and went back to eating the pie. “…This is actually really good.”
“How did you get the drugs?” Hunter asked suddenly. He knew it was probably a better idea to just let the subject rest, to ask Wally when he was less antsy, but the question had been plaguing Hunter since he found Wally with the V9, and he was fed up with waiting.
Wally’s eyes widened, just briefly in surprise, probably having assumed the line of questioning had been over with, but then he shrugged. “I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know what it was, at first,” Wally said. “The night that… when my mom got… that East Grey thing.”
“You snuck out?” he asked.
“My mom was missing, you think I was just going to sit around?” Wally asked. Hunter froze and then had to give him that one. “Uncle Barry and Aunt Iris were out there, why would I just stay home when I could help? …But yeah, I snuck out. It’s not as if there was anyone home to make sure I followed curfew…”
“Good point,” Hunter conceded.
“Anyway, I was digging around. And I found this really… nice wallet,” he said, wincing.
Hunter dropped the fork down on his plate, freeing up his hand to cover his face. “Wally.”
“I know, I should’ve turned it in to the clean up crew, but there was no one around,” he said. “And I couldn’t resist. There was some money in there, but I had no idea what the slips of paper were. It wasn’t for writing on, and it had to be important. Or else, well, why carry it around? So I held onto it. Didn’t really decide whether or not to keep it or turn it in until some guys came around. They didn’t see me, but I heard them talking about some wonder drug. V9.”
“Did you get a good look at them?” Hunter asked. “Hear anything important?”
Wally hesitated but shook his head. “No. Sorry. I kind of hightailed it the moment I realized what I had. I mean, these are drug… people. I don’t know if they were dealers or addicts, but I did just steal their wallet. I didn’t want to stick around. And now that I knew what the patches were, I wasn’t just going to give it to someone.”
“Well, you should’ve,” he told Wally. “The side effects of these drugs tend to be fatal, Wally—”
“I know!” Wally said exasperatedly. “Well, I mean, I didn’t. But I did kinda figure on my own that the sudden increase in metabolic rate would have damaging effects on cellular processes. I wasn’t going to use any of it. I just wanted to… pick it apart.”
Wally’s motivations didn’t really come as a surprise to Hunter. He had suspected that Wally hadn’t intended to use the drug when he had resisted touching it. Still, it was a relief to hear it from Wally.
“You know…” Hunter said. “I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when I found the drugs.”
“You mean yelling at me so I couldn’t string two words together in my head?” Wally asked.
“I was talking more about threatening to use the drugs on you because you told me they weren’t drugs,” he said. In retrospect, that had probably been too harsh. “But that, too. Kind of.” Actually, he wasn’t too sorry about the yelling. Considering the severity of the drug’s side effects, he felt that anger had been rather justified.
“Yeah, well…” Wally rested his chin in his palm, leaning against the surface of the table. “…Sorry about your leg.”
It came out as a quite mumble. Hunter rolled his eyes. “I know it’s a thing for people to say they’re sorry about things that they sometimes weren’t even responsible for, but… well, I’m not accepting an apology for something you weren’t even responsible for,” he said.
“Well, I’m still sorry,” Wally said. He stood up, pushing his plate away. “Want me to take yours?” he asked, pointing at Hunter’s now-empty plate.
“I can do it myself,” he said, picking his plate up off his lap and placing it on the table, only for Wally to take it anyway, picking it up and taking it to the sink. “Or not.”
“Am I going to see you in class tomorrow?” Wally asked him.
“I had my leg snapped in half. I think that’s a good enough excuse to spend a day drugged to the gills with painkillers,” Hunter said. “So I think not.”
The next day, he ended up seeing Wally anyway, standing outside his door with a sort of awkward, hesitant grin. If he was a little more pleased by the company than usual, he could blame it on the medication.