Work Text:
Kid Flash jerked his immobilized shoulder over and over again. He just knew he could do it if he tried hard enough. He was gonna do the thing and escape this straight jacket like a badass and save the day, and Bats and Uncle Barry would be so impressed they wouldn't even be mad at him for getting captured in this creepy old hospital in the first place.
“Uh, KF?” Robin called from where he was similarly restrained and lying on his side a few feet away. The baddies had dropped Robin on his face when they dumped them in this closet, and his nose was bleeding sluggishly. It looked pretty gross, but Robin didn't seem too bothered. “What are you doing?”
“The Lethal Weapon 2 thing,” Wally grunted, jerking his shoulder again. Not even a pop.
“Uh, what weapon thing?” Robin asked, a hint of wariness in his voice.
“Not a weapon thing, the Lethal Weapon 2 thing. The movie.”
“I've never seen it.”
“What?” Wally exclaimed. He stopped trying to dislocate his shoulder to catch his breath for a second. “Dude, the Lethal Weapon movies are, like, the greatest buddy cop movies of all time! How have you not seen them?” Robin shrugged. Or at least, Wally thought he did, based on his facial expression. It was kind of hard to tell with the straight jacket.
“I dunno. Never came up, I guess. What's the thing?”
“Riggs, the renegade cop who plays by his own rules, can get out of a straightjacket by dislocating his shoulder. It's badass. So that's what I'm trying to do.” Wally resumed his jerking and flailing.
“Oh, that?” Robin sounded unimpressed. “That's easy.” He grunted softly. There was a loud POP, and the shape of Robin's torso changed.
It took a second for Wally's brain to catch up to what he'd heard. “DUDE!” he yelled. “What the hell! That was awesome! And really gross. But also awesome!”
“Thanks,” Robin said. He flopped down onto his stomach and started wriggling backwards out of the straightjacket.
“Did Batman teach you that?” Wally asked.
Robin snickered. “Batman didn't teach me everything I know,” he said.
“What's that mean?”
“Secret,” Robin said. His voice was slightly muffled by the straightjacket, which was now over his head.
“Dude, everything about you is a secret! We've been friends for almost a year! Aren't you ever gonna tell me anything?”
“Maybe one day,” Robin replied. He popped free of the straightjacket, grinning. His hair was sticking up like porcupine quills, and he had blood smeared all over his face. He looked kind of creepy, but also kind of cool.
Robin shuffled over to Wally, pulled out a series of picks from his belt, and got to work on the locks on Wally's jacket.
“So what happens next?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“In the movie. What happens after the guy gets free?”
“Oh, uh,” Wally felt himself turning red. “I don't actually know? I've never seen it.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, Speedy told me about it, but my parents wouldn't let me watch it. They won't even let me watch Saturday Night Live cuz they say it's too blue.”
Robin giggled. “Dude, that sucks.”
“Don't rub it in, birdbrain.”
There was a click and a rustle of fabric, and suddenly the pressure on his shoulders and back disappeared. Robin helped him tug the straightjacket off. Wally rolled his shoulders forward and sighed in relief.
“Okay,” he said, climbing to his feet and pulling his goggles down over his eyes. “Let's go catch some bad guys.”
Batman and Flash had already caught the bad guys. They were half-way through their sweep of the building when Wally and Robin ran into them.
Batman was still pretty mad. But Wally thought he might also have been a teensy bit proud, because he let Robin come over to Uncle Barry's house for a sleep over a couple of weeks later. They watched Lethal Weapon 2 on Wally's laptop in secret. It was the greatest movie Wally had ever seen. He didn't even close his eyes during the torture scenes.
(Okay, maybe he closed his eyes a little. But Robin probably did, too. Wally just couldn't see it because of his sunglasses.)
During the credits, Robin turned to him, grinning widely. "Hey KF?" he said. “Want me to teach you how to dislocate your shoulder?”
Five minutes later, Uncle Barry burst into the bedroom to find Wally howling on the floor in pain and Robin frantically trying to get him to hold still so he could push his shoulder back in. When everything had calmed down and Wally had been given an ice pack, both boys received a long and emphatic lecture on the meaning of the phrase: “Don't try this at home.”