Less Than Guilty

Author: Dimitri Aidan

Series/Universe: The 'Little Things' Verse.

Rating: PG-13 ish…

Fandoms: Justice League: Unlimited with some comic babble mixed in and a touch of Static Shock.

Pairings: Main: John/Wally. Other: Bruce/J'onn, Dick/OMC, Hart/Dove (implication type thingies…)

Warnings: …well, if you've read 'You and I Got Something' than…you should be aware of what's in here already. This follows 'YaIGS' but also takes place after 'Heroes', so if you're reading that…spoilers ahoy. Heh.

Summery: Wally's fine, no one agrees. He and John are sent on a 'quiet' assignment that, naturally, goes wildly out of control when bounty hunters attack them. John's on trial again, only this time he'll gladly admit to the offense.

Notes: This has the potential to be legitimately…angsty. But… well it's my usual 'humor with bite'. I think it's because John and Wally have really sarcastic minds and they are the main characters. Besides the scenario I thought up is just…damn. Funny. But damn.

This part was hard. I wanted to show Wally getting close to the edge, thanks to his overly efficient coping skills, but I didn't want any of that creepy sobbing and 'weak' shit.

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Prelude
Motorcycle Drive By
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John knew about nightmares; he'd had more than a few in his lifetime. He'd been a solider most of his life, for the government in the more traditional sense of the word and later for the Lantern Corps in a slightly more offbeat way. Nightmares seemed to go hand in and hand with such a profession, if you could all it that. Watching people die tended to fuck with your head.

Killing people really fucked with your head.

On the upside being a Lantern rarely, if ever, called for the latter of the two. Sometimes however lack of the latter resulted in too much of the former.

Why, you wonder, was he thinking abut nightmares?

The answer lay with the man sharing his bed at that moment. John was a fairly light sleeper, as most people who shared his bed quickly found out. He'd been wakened by quiet pained noises and had come to awareness fairly quickly to find his lover twisted up in the sheets, skin flushed and slick with sweat. Normally such a thing would be somewhere between amusing and arousing but the grimace of pain combined with his uneven and harsh breathing killed both of those possibilities.

He should have woken him up the moment he realized he was having a nightmare but he was hesitating. What if he didn't want to be woken up? Or, rather, didn't want to be caught having a nightmare. Wally was fond of the 'I'm fine' school of reasoning and to an extent John believed him. Wally was…unique in the way he never seemed to fall into the trap of lying all the time like the rest of them.

He was honest with everyone except for himself. If he said he was fine he probably believed it to be so, but that didn't really mean that it was. Wally could be holding his insides in with his hand and bleeding all over the floor and he'd still wave off concern and say he was fine.

Wally was strangely complex that way.

John reached out and touched abnormally warm skin. He frowned and shook the other man lightly; half fearing he was running some kind of fever. Blue-green eyes snapped open, glazed and staring straight up into nothingness. Breath continued to come raggedly and John sighed. Wally looked like he was in shock.

He rubbed his hands over damp skin, trying to offer comfort without it being too much. It was only a matter of moments before Wally as shivering and blinking owlishly, but able to breath normally once again. He sat up and put a hand to his forehead, wincing.

"Wally-"

"I'm fine." He muttered while brushing his hands away. "Don't. I'm good John, nothing to be concerned about."

"Do you ever stop talking?" John asked, unable to keep the faint amusement from his voice. He hadn't even asked and already Wally was back into his usual response. Wally smiled wryly then closed his eyes, pale red lashes brushing pale skin.

"What's wrong with me?"

John chuckled then pushed Wally back so he was lying back on the bed. He stretched out next to him, not touching him but staying close. What happened next had to be up to Wally. He'd never been really good at making people feel better and maybe his tendency to drift towards 'strong' people was because of that. What he did know of comfort was more for damsels in distress and scared little kids and he doubted Wally would appreciate being treated as either.

"I ask myself that very same question about you frequently."

"I'll bet." Wally muttered and rolled over so they were touching. The redhead rested his head on his shoulder and a hand touched his chest, lightly at first then resting there. John didn't hesitate this time and wound one arm around Wally's shoulder.

He knew that, if he'd tried to make the first move, Wally would be whining that he didn't need to be held or coddled and that John was treating him like a child, which was about as far from John's intent as he could get. He just…wanted him to be okay.

Or as okay as Wally ever was.

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Wally listened to John's even steady breathing and let it begin to tempt him back to sleep. This wasn't the first time he'd had a nightmare, though up until now he could time them well enough to be alone when they occurred.

It was his 'manly pride' of course. That and the fact he didn't know what was going on. He'd been fine until a few weeks ago, when the nightmares had come back. It didn't make sense. He wasn't afraid of Sinestro and he certainly didn't blame himself or any of those other things that people did.

Yet here he was, waking up in a cold sweat and temporarily unaware of what was going on around him and usually unable to return to sleep for the life of him.

John being near him after that dream should have been disturbing but rather it was…nice. He knew John wouldn't think any less of him or try to talk it out until he wanted to talk it out. John was good at 'interpreting Wally's strange moods', which Diana said was some kind of art form. (Like John's scariness, only even more complex because Wally kind of understood why people feared John.) He knew when to indulge his strange whims and when, in those strange moments of silence and almost…sullenness that he had, to just let him be.

Now was a time to let him be.

He'd be better by morning anyway.

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Hmm. And so the sequel begins! I love Wally when he's undercover tramuatized...