Prompt: Medication Bribery

this is silly i know it's silly but work has left me tired and i needed something easy sorry it's so short

Wally liked to pretend that Dick was the only one who was an awful patient. Dick was human, painfully so, and when he didn't take his medication things naturally got worse. Things were a little different when Wally was sick. His body had mutated in such a way that he practically burned the germs away. He could still get your average cold or flu but it was a lot less common and short-lived. 

Medication didn't do much for him. It helped some of the symptoms but it only spared him for half an hour at the most. That wasn't worth suffering through drinking cough syrup or gagging as he tried to swallow a pill. The only way he would take it was through bribery. Whether it be a new game, ice cream or toy, he got it and with how often he had to take the medicine for any sort of relief, it came out to be a pretty sweet deal. 

Then came medicine specifically made for Barry and in turn, made for him. Now he had to do some extra work to get a good deal. He had to be stubborn in not taking it. Unfortunately, he'd ended up with someone just as stubborn as him. 

Dick was quick to catch onto his scheme. Being the loving boyfriend he was, he tried his best to make sure Wally didn't suffer any more than he had to. He'd always eventually give in to the bribery purely because it was harmless but not without a battle of wills first. 

"Dick, I just need you to know how much I love you. Give it at least a month before you go back to the ginger harem," Wally drawled. 

He'd spent most of the morning in bed, skipping exercise and going for the lighter breakfast of a whole cereal box rather than the full continental he had every day. Dick had caught on to him being sick quickly and, despite mourning his loss of cereal, had sent the speedster back to bed along with a glass of water and a packet of pills specifically made for his higher metabolism. He hoped that knowing these would actually work would make Wally take them but he also knew his boyfriend so he wasn't surprised when he found them untouched. At least the glass was empty.

"You're not dying," Dick responded as he picked up the glass. There was no way he was exposed to anything dangerous that was hiding under the symptoms of a cold and it was cold season. He could say with certainty that Wally wasn't dying but that didn't deter his boyfriend from acting the part. "You'd feel better if you took your medicine." The ginger shook his head and dramatically pulled the covers over his head.

"It won't work." He rolled his eyes and pulled the covers back down, revealing a pout followed by a sniffle for added effect.

"It will work because those are made for Barry which means it'll definitely work for you." Another shake of the head.

"I don't wanna." The whine took a minute to register as coming from a grown man rather than a child.

"Are you five?" Dick teased. "When I come back, you're taking those pills."

"Make me." He narrowed his eyes.

"I plan to." 

When Dick returned with a glass of water, he popped out two pills and held them out expectantly. Wally scrunched his nose up at the offer and looked away like they'd evaporate once they were out of sight.

"You're going to take them," the acrobat insisted.

"Nuh-uh."

"Don't nuh-uh me, you're having them. You feel like shit and these will make you feel better. It's a simple solution."

"I don't like pills," he protested. Dick let out a long-suffering sigh and scratched his head in thought.

"What if I crushed them up?"

"They taste gross."

"Just," he paused to channel all the patience he could muster. Thankfully, his family had been training him for years to keep a level head. "Okay, what if I put them in something?" 

"We don't have jello."

"I'll get jello then."

"It has to be strawberry."

"Fine, I'll go get strawberry jello," he said. He went to grab his jacket but his hand was caught before he made it even an inch.

"Nooo, stay here. Order it."

"I'm not paying like fifteen dollars for jello."

"You're a billionaire!"

"I still have limits. One of those is fifteen dollars for jello." He shook off the hand and pressed a kiss against Wally's forehead. Distantly, he registered that he wasn't hot so there was no fever to worry about. There was also no fever to explain away his behaviour but he already guessed that. "I'll be back soon."

"You know time moves slower for me."

"I'll be back... belatedly," he corrected.

Now armed with jello, Dick grabbed the grinder they kept in the cabinet and began crushing up the pills. He hadn't heard of it before he met Wally and realised how bad the speedster was with taking medicine in pill form. He was somehow worse with syrups. Once he was sure the medicine was now a fine powder, he opened one of the small pots of jello and mixed it in until it was untraceable. Of course, they both knew it was in there but half the battle was seeing it.

He re-entered the bedroom with renewed confidence and handed the pot to Wally. He thought since he'd gone through the added hassle of leaving for the store that would be the end of the bribery but it apparently wasn't as instead of eating, Wally just continued to stir it with no real intention. After watching him for a few minutes, Dick sat cross-legged beside him and crossed his arms.

"You said you'd take it if it was in jello."

"You posed a hypothetical question and I answered hypothetically."

"You saw me leave for the store and you didn't think to stop me when you had no plan on following through?"

"I wanted jello."

"You," he pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd take Damian and Bruce being sick at the same time over this dance. "Eat the jello."

"It won't taste right."

"You won't be able to taste it!"

"I will be. I can sniff it out like a bloodhound." He threw his hands up in defeat. 

"You're sick. Sick people take medicine. How is it easier to be sick than take the thing that'll make you feel less sick?" Dick asked seriously. 

"I know you're not talking to me when your favourite magic trick is turning a cold into pneumonia." He clenched his jaw since he didn't have much of an argument for that. 

There were a few options for him. 

A. Give up. He wasn't going to do that. He would be too stubborn to anyway. It was an option but he'd never choose it.

B. He tries to slip the medicine into something else. He'd already shown his hand so he didn't doubt that Wally would just make him take a bite first and obviously he couldn't when there were super drugs in there. 

C. Beg.

D. Force it down his throat. It would be a little hard to do when they had similar strength and one of them could run faster than the speed of sound. That also felt overboard given this wasn't life and death. It was just providing some relief.

"Please? For me?" the acrobat asked. There wasn't much those baby blues couldn't convince Wally to do. His voice left even less. Taking medication was one of those few things. 

"I love you so much but absolutely without a shadow of a doubt, no."

"What will make you take it then?"

"A gun to the head."

"Damn, if only Jay wasn't in Guatemala right now," Dick joked. "Seriously though. I don't like seeing you unwell. What's your price?" 

He thought about it for a moment, mostly just to humour him. He could probably ask for anything right now and get it. There was no point in asking for material things. He could get that if he had a slightly bad day. This was the time to get anything he wanted with little to no fight. 

Dick's phone chimed. He glanced over at the notification and saw Bruce's name. Whilst Wally understood that family was important, they always seemed to wiggle themselves into their alone time. Whether it be last-minute babysitting or unnecessary backup given the small football team of heroes currently living in Gotham, they ate up Dick's free time between work and patrol. Even on the weekends, the speedster was seeing less and less of his boyfriend. He'd kept quiet about it for a while because he knew what he was getting into when they started dating but it was starting to grate on his nerves. Why did he have to share with a family who often left Dick deflated and tired?

"Phone off. No patrol. Just us." Dick didn't hesitate to grab his phone and for a moment, it looked like he rejected the deal. He typed something, sent it and then shut it off. He handed the phone over so Wally could make sure it was turned off. "No patrol?"

"No patrol. You've got me all to yourself today." He glanced at the jello. 

"You didn't buy just one jello cup did you?"

"Got a six-pack. Worked out cheaper and now you have another for your second dose." Wally nodded. "Now will you please eat that? If not for the medicine then for your sugars. We're not dealing with low blood sugar on top of a cold."

"We? Last time I checked, I was the one experiencing that."

"Yeah, but you love to make it my problem too." As if the acrobat was any better.

The next day, Wally was better. Some would say it was because he took his medicine but he was convinced it was because he got to have his boyfriend all to himself. It was nice not to feel that anticipation of their time being cut short. They managed to finish the two-player game they'd been meaning to play for the last two months, finished the series finale that Wally totally didn't already watch because he got impatient and got some much-needed cuddles after spending so long apart. He couldn't remember the last time he got to spoon Dick the entire night. He almost didn't know what to do when they settled down to sleep and there was a body beside him rather than a cold mattress.

It was not as nice when Dick turned his phone back on in the morning and was promptly swamped by messages coming in too fast for him to turn on do not disturb.

"I feel like I need to check if they've put out an amber alert for me," Dick commented. 

"Then I should check if they put a hit out on me."