submitted for your approval, wally clark is in the (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} twilightendzone) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} junkedic,@ 2025-04-29 19:35:00 |
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| Entry tags: | ! log/thread/narrative, dc (film/tv): monty, school spirits: wally clark, ✷ chapter 04 (new sakaar) |
MONTY & WALLY CLARK
BACKDATED DURING THE TIME LOOP | THE GREEN / KITCHEN
⚠ MINOR FALL FROM A HEIGHT, NO MAJOR INJURY
Monty didn't realize it, but he'd been living the same hour over and over. He came out to the Green to sit, he stretched his wings out, he lay on his stomach to read a few pages of the book he was using to try to occupy his time. He got restless after twenty minutes, so he set the book down and stretched a little more, and then he packed up his blanket and his book and headed back inside.
And then he came out to the Green to sit, he stretched his wings out, he lay on his stomach to read a few pages of the book he was using to try to occupy his time. He got restless after twenty minutes, so he set the book down and stretched a little more, and then he packed up his blanket and his book and headed back inside.
And then he came out to the Green to sit, he stretched his wings out, he lay on his stomach to read a few pages of the book he was using to try to occupy his time. He got restless after twenty minutes, so he set the book down and stretched a little more, and then he packed up his blanket and his book and headed back inside.
He didn't realize this was the tenth time he'd done this. He felt oddly tired the longer it went on, sluggish and his eyelids drooping but he did it again. He packed his blanket, and his book, and headed back inside only to turn around and come out again.
It was the 11th repeat that something different happened. Because Wally was there, screaming at the top of his lungs, wearing nothing but his little blue shorts and his trainers, swinging his sweatshirt and sweatpants around like nunchucks. “I SWEAR TO GOD IF ONE OF YOU DOESN’T END THIS, I WILL END YOU. AGAIN AND AGAIN.” The squirrels, for their part, were unimpressed by the threats of a ghost that could not touch them, either because they knew and were only pretending not to see or hear Wally or… Wally had lost his goddamned mind.
It wasn't the screaming that woke Monty out of it for a second. It wasn't the makeshift clothing weapons. Of course it was the sight of his crush in nothing but tiny little shorts. He was too gay to miss that, even stuck in a time loop. “Wally?” Monty asked him as he spread his blanket out and set his book down, and stretched his wings out the same as he had every time. But Wally had his attention now. “You okay?” he asked, casting a concerned look over at him before he settled onto the blanket for the eleventh time.
Wally turned and stared at Monty. Despite being dead he was panting heavily as though he’d gotten back from a long run. That wasn’t far from the truth. Wally felt like he’d been running the whole time. “Monty! Oh my gosh!” Wally, never one not to do things in half measures, leapt toward his friend and lifted him up by the shoulders, shaking him. “Are we done? Did I fix it? Have the squirrels released us?”
Did Monty have any idea what was happening? No he did not. Did he care? He gazed up at Wally all shirtless and happy to see him and found himself on his feet and it felt wrong, like he was supposed to be doing something else, he was supposed to be reading? Right? He looked down at his blanket and his book and back up at Wally. “What squirrels?” he asked him, still a bit dazed but in a decidedly good way. Wow, Wally looked good without a shirt.
“The squirrels! They’re behind all of this!” Wally let go of Monty’s shoulders to wave at the green surrounding them. “We’re in a time loop. I’ve seen the movie, Monty. I know exactly how this goes. We’ll keep repeating this day, over and over and over again. Sometimes the hour. Sometimes, who knows!! It’s not stopping. You keep reading your book for like an hour and then bouncing.” Wally started to really catch his breath. “...Wait.” He stared. “....I just touched you.”
Monty was trying to understand how squirrels could have anything to do with time when Wally pointed out the obvious. He blinked a few times, reaching out to try to do it. He only let his hand go through Wally's shoulder a little before he pulled it back. “Try it again,” he said. Maybe it was a one way thing, maybe Wally could touch him but he couldn't touch Wally, which seemed so unfair. “And I don't get how the squirrels are doing a time loop,” he added, so Wally could explain it for him better.
Wally tried to grab Monty’s shoulders again. Nothing. He frowned as he tried again and again. He didn’t particularly like the sensation of ghosting through another person, but now that he knew he’d done it, they’d touched, and now that he couldn’t… “Shit.” Wally looked between Monty and The Green. Maybe because they hadn’t tried? Maybe it was a Monty thing? They weren’t thinking about it so they had been able to? Left over from when Monty had been a ghost? He had to force himself to calm down and think. Not Wally’s strongest suit. “Okay. So… I’m pretty sure the squirrels can control time. And I think they’ve put us in a time loop. I know it sounds insane, but like… no one else would do something like this. We just have to figure out what they want. Or threaten them. Or something. I haven’t figured that part out yet.”
Monty's brow furrowed and he sighed, his shoulders falling. It didn't seem fair, Wally had touched him and he hadn't even appreciated it. He tried to gather up his will to figure out what was going on with time control squirrels and not how he could get Wally’s hands on him again. “Okay,” he tucked his hair back behind his ear. “Well, I could probably threaten them,” he reasoned. “Small critters are all kind of universally afraid of big things with wings sweeping down out of the sky,” he looked away, distracted with the plan. “But I don't know what to do after that, I can't really interrogate them or anything.”
“You don’t know any magic spells to talk to animals?” Wally asked. Come to think of it, Wally had never seen Monty actually perform magic. He knew others had. But Monty, despite having an evil witch mom, had never done anything magical in front of him. Besides the wings. Those were probably pretty magical.
“I,” Monty trailed off, frowning down at the ground, biting on his lower lip. He probably did, honestly. He had been able to communicate with Esther when he was a crow, and he'd normally understood Charles or Edwin when they'd been in Esther's house. He chewed his lip, taking another deep breath and steadying himself. “I know I know how, but I'm afraid that doing it, I'll remember all the… everything,” he explained softly. “I want to try, though. I can try,” he said, nodding to himself, not daring to look up at Wally again. He'd talk him out of it, everyone always talked him out of it.
“Wait, no no no no no… I didn’t mean--” Wally tried to grab hold of Monty again, but whether it was doubt or the moment had passed, his fingers slipped through once more. “We’ll find another way, okay? I promise. Monty? You don’t have to. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s totally okay.”
Monty looked up at him, swallowing hard and shaking his head a little. “It's the only - I can't do anything else,” he told him. “I thought you'd understand,” he told him. Wally seemed to feel like he couldn't do anything to help. Monty didn't agree, but he knew Wally felt that way sometimes. He nodded though and tucked his hair behind his ear. “Okay,” he agreed, after he got over it. He could get over things pretty quickly. “Yeah, we'll find another way,” he told him, with a smile that was startlingly real. “You're right.”
“Monty, you can do all sorts of things,” Wally said. “You can fly. And you could do more. You could go out there, you could try to help bring back the others, I just…” Wally put his hands on his hips and looked down. “...I don’t want you to leave without me. I know that’s not fair of me to want or to ask. I just…”
“I can fly, sure, but what am I going to do from up there? Ask them nicely to let everyone go? I'm… I'm tiny, I'm not very strong and I don't even have good aim,” he said with a laugh that was only slightly hysterical and then… then what Wally said caught up to him. He'd never wanted to touch someone so much before in his life, but he was afraid to try again and fail. “You just…?” Monty asked him, wanting him to finish. He didn't expect it was anything romantic like he wished but just knowing that he was important to Wally, that he mattered to him, that meant everything.
“I’d rather be stuck in a timeloop with you, then out of a timeloop without you,” Wally said. Monty wasn’t his best friend. When Wally thought about it, he’d have called George his best friend. Monty was… Monty was something else Wally didn’t know how to put into words yet. A second best friend? No, that wasn’t right. “But also we need to figure this out and fix this probably,” he said.
Monty mattered to Wally. That was all he needed to know. That was enough to make him smile bigger than he had since he'd gotten here. “Right, yeah,” Monty agreed, nodding firmly. “We need to figure this out. How sure are you that it's the squirrels?” he asked him. He didn't doubt him, not at all! But maybe they had to look at all of the possibilities. “I mean, I can probably catch one,” he decided. “Swoop down, get it. Do you think that'd help us figure it out?”
“Nah,” Wally said. “It’d probably just bite you.” He exhaled. As much as a ghost could. “I got another idea. I need your hands. …And the rest of you.” Wally wasn’t sure how weird that sounded and decided not to think too much about it. “Follow me!” He dropped his sweats on the ground and jogged for the dining hall.
Wally was right, it would probably bite him. But he was willing to risk the rabies. Monty's brow raised at what he said, and his jaw dropped just slightly, lips parting as though ready to say something to that but Wally took off. Probably a good thing. He tried to jog behind him, losing sight of him between the Green and the kitchen but figuring that's where he was going, probably. He wasn't nearly as fast as Wally, not at all athletic and the wings slowed him down quite a bit. “Wally?” he called after him, popping into the kitchen.
Wally popped into Monty’s view from behind a tall rolling cart. “Okay, so!” Wally suddenly felt a little undressed. Shirtless in the kitchen? Even though he was a ghost and it couldn’t technically be a health code violation it still felt like one. Wally could feel George’s disapproving frown from wherever he was. “Instead of fighting the squirrels, what about bribing them? We don’t really have seeds but I think we have oatmeal? Squirrels could like oats, right? That’s natural, kinda.”
It was so hard to focus with Wally still not having a shirt on but luckily he didn't seem to notice that Monty was a little dazed. Slightly dazzled. He smiled a bit at the plan. “Really good idea!” he agreed, immediately going to the cupboards to help him look. “I bet they'd like oatmeal. I doubt we have acorns,” he added with a grin. “But squirrels are kind of like raccoons, they'll eat… pretty much anything,” he told him, and if he had to climb up on a countertop on his knees to get into a high cupboard, no one ever needed to tell George. He was like 5’4”, give him a break. “It's a little like an offering, right? At least it's not children,” he added with a glance over his shoulder, through the feathers, at Wally. “But if the squirrels are doing time magic then maybe an offering will get them to lay off.”
Wally opened his mouth and then quickly close it as he watched Monty climb around. Nope, George did not need to know. Wally made a face that was somewhere between a grimace and the slightest acknowledgment that Monty was cute. Maddie. Wally brushed the thought from his head. Nope. Nu uh. There were so many reasons it was a bad idea. Besides, and Monty had already had the talk. Anything else would have been unfair. “Do we have to do anything special for the offering do you think?” Wally asked. Monty probably knew more about that stuff as a former familiar.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully as he dug into the cupboard above his head. “It was all about intent, with witches. Sometimes you'd make a marking or say words to give it intention but sometimes you just had to mean it.” He shifted from his knees up to his feet, carefully leaning up to check on top of the cupboards, maybe they had some packages of oats up there - He'd wash the counter after, he promised. His foot slipped and he lost his balance, and if he fell from there it wasn't like he'd die or anything. Maybe bruise his tailbone. He still made a sound embarrassingly closer to a squawk.
Wally wasn’t thinking. Which was why it almost worked. He saw Monty start to fall, side stepped and held out his arms to catch him. In another life if might have been romantic. In this one? It was a little bit tragic as Monty fell through Wally’s ghostly form with a whoosh and landed at the former jock’s feet. Wally winced and hopped out of the way. “Are you okay. Holy shit. You didn’t break anything did you?” Were the wings delicate? Wally crouched down to get to eye level, frustrated he couldn’t do more than worry. Wait. He had his phone. He could text for— Nope. No he couldn’t. They were trapped in a time loop. Wally made a frustrated noise that might have been more aggressive if he wasn’t also just the tiniest bit scared.
It wasn't like his life was ever going to be a romcom, right? No, this was much more familiar - he fell right on his ass, but he managed not to crush his wings at all. “Ow,” he sighed, wincing a little as he looked up at Wally. “I think I just bruised my butt a little, it's not - nothing to worry about,” he assured him. It was nice he was worried. “I'll sit here and collect the shreds of my dignity from the floor,” he joked lightly. “On the plus side, I definitely saw a bag of peanuts up there on top of the cupboards. Hopefully they aren't too old. I bet nutty oatmeal would be a great offering to the squirrel time gods.”
The relief was visible on Wally’s face. Monty seemed so delicate. Probably not what a guy wanted to hear. …Right? Wally had to resist the urge to ask, as he questioned himself on that assumption. He barely literally shook the thought from his his well coiffed head. “Yeah. Peanuts would be perfect. Unless they have stuff on them. That might be bad for the squirrels.” Wally took his squirrel time gods very seriously. Even if he used the word stuff instead of flavor.
Monty gave him a little smile that was still embarrassed, from where he was still sat on the floor. “Do you think you can check them to make sure they'd be good for the squirrels? And if they are, then I'll brave another attempt at athleticism to go up there and get them,” he joked lightly, tossing his hair back out of his face. Time to get up, probably. It was a bit awkward with his wings but he got to his knees and then his feet, stretching the wings and giving them another little ruffle.
“Yeah, totally!” Wally did not need to climb onto the counters. At six-foot-three, he had plenty of wingspan. He reached in the cupboard and pulled out whatever he could find to take a look. There were a few different varieties, not a lot. Wally frowned at the plain peanuts. They would have been great for cooking. George would understand. “These are good,” Wally said, shaking the bag. Once he set everything down and turned his attention to Monty, everything reset and the food was once again out of reach. “You sure you want to go back up there again?” Wally asked.
Monty wasn't actually mad that Wally could just reach up into the high cupboard by virtue of being a foot taller than he was. He just scowled and huffed for dramatic effect. “Yeah, of course. You can't just fall out of the nest and call it a day,” he informed Wally with a grin. He was a lot more careful the second time, getting up there and down without any issues. He set the peanuts down and brushed his hands off on his pants. “There. Maybe we can end this time loop before falling on my ass becomes part of it.”
“Or, maybe you’re awake through it like me,” Wally said. “We’ll repeat the day but, you’ll see it happening now.” It was still early in the repeating cycle. Maybe not the hours that had repeated over and over on themselves, but the days were still young. “If this doesn’t work, I promise I won’t ask you to climb up on the cabinets again,” Wally added. Wally spoke casually, but there was a hint of worry under his tone. Like he was afraid he’d wake up the next day and Wally wouldn’t be aware again.
Monty didn't know what was worse, being awake through it all or repeating without knowing. He didn't know if he could think about that. “Oh, I,” he trailed off, making his hands busy by opening up the peanuts, getting the oatmeal, “would do pretty much whatever you asked me to do. Cabinets included,” he said with a little laugh like it was all a joke, a toss of his hair, a flippant smile.
“Yeah,” Wally said. “I know.” It wasn’t quite a Han Solo delivered line. There was a tinge of concern in his tone. Only the slightest tinge. Wally was pretty sure he’d find a way to deck anyone that took advantage of the former familiar. “I just think it’s better if it’s both of us, you know? Working together.” Wally looked at the collection of feed Monty gathered and changed the subject quickly before either of them could think too deeply about it. “Okay. So, let’s offer up some squirrel food. How should we do this?”
It was the 11th repeat that something different happened. Because Wally was there, screaming at the top of his lungs, wearing nothing but his little blue shorts and his trainers, swinging his sweatshirt and sweatpants around like nunchucks. “I SWEAR TO GOD IF ONE OF YOU DOESN’T END THIS, I WILL END YOU. AGAIN AND AGAIN.” The squirrels, for their part, were unimpressed by the threats of a ghost that could not touch them, either because they knew and were only pretending not to see or hear Wally or… Wally had lost his goddamned mind.
It wasn't the screaming that woke Monty out of it for a second. It wasn't the makeshift clothing weapons. Of course it was the sight of his crush in nothing but tiny little shorts. He was too gay to miss that, even stuck in a time loop. “Wally?” Monty asked him as he spread his blanket out and set his book down, and stretched his wings out the same as he had every time. But Wally had his attention now. “You okay?” he asked, casting a concerned look over at him before he settled onto the blanket for the eleventh time.
Wally turned and stared at Monty. Despite being dead he was panting heavily as though he’d gotten back from a long run. That wasn’t far from the truth. Wally felt like he’d been running the whole time. “Monty! Oh my gosh!” Wally, never one not to do things in half measures, leapt toward his friend and lifted him up by the shoulders, shaking him. “Are we done? Did I fix it? Have the squirrels released us?”
Did Monty have any idea what was happening? No he did not. Did he care? He gazed up at Wally all shirtless and happy to see him and found himself on his feet and it felt wrong, like he was supposed to be doing something else, he was supposed to be reading? Right? He looked down at his blanket and his book and back up at Wally. “What squirrels?” he asked him, still a bit dazed but in a decidedly good way. Wow, Wally looked good without a shirt.
“The squirrels! They’re behind all of this!” Wally let go of Monty’s shoulders to wave at the green surrounding them. “We’re in a time loop. I’ve seen the movie, Monty. I know exactly how this goes. We’ll keep repeating this day, over and over and over again. Sometimes the hour. Sometimes, who knows!! It’s not stopping. You keep reading your book for like an hour and then bouncing.” Wally started to really catch his breath. “...Wait.” He stared. “....I just touched you.”
Monty was trying to understand how squirrels could have anything to do with time when Wally pointed out the obvious. He blinked a few times, reaching out to try to do it. He only let his hand go through Wally's shoulder a little before he pulled it back. “Try it again,” he said. Maybe it was a one way thing, maybe Wally could touch him but he couldn't touch Wally, which seemed so unfair. “And I don't get how the squirrels are doing a time loop,” he added, so Wally could explain it for him better.
Wally tried to grab Monty’s shoulders again. Nothing. He frowned as he tried again and again. He didn’t particularly like the sensation of ghosting through another person, but now that he knew he’d done it, they’d touched, and now that he couldn’t… “Shit.” Wally looked between Monty and The Green. Maybe because they hadn’t tried? Maybe it was a Monty thing? They weren’t thinking about it so they had been able to? Left over from when Monty had been a ghost? He had to force himself to calm down and think. Not Wally’s strongest suit. “Okay. So… I’m pretty sure the squirrels can control time. And I think they’ve put us in a time loop. I know it sounds insane, but like… no one else would do something like this. We just have to figure out what they want. Or threaten them. Or something. I haven’t figured that part out yet.”
Monty's brow furrowed and he sighed, his shoulders falling. It didn't seem fair, Wally had touched him and he hadn't even appreciated it. He tried to gather up his will to figure out what was going on with time control squirrels and not how he could get Wally’s hands on him again. “Okay,” he tucked his hair back behind his ear. “Well, I could probably threaten them,” he reasoned. “Small critters are all kind of universally afraid of big things with wings sweeping down out of the sky,” he looked away, distracted with the plan. “But I don't know what to do after that, I can't really interrogate them or anything.”
“You don’t know any magic spells to talk to animals?” Wally asked. Come to think of it, Wally had never seen Monty actually perform magic. He knew others had. But Monty, despite having an evil witch mom, had never done anything magical in front of him. Besides the wings. Those were probably pretty magical.
“I,” Monty trailed off, frowning down at the ground, biting on his lower lip. He probably did, honestly. He had been able to communicate with Esther when he was a crow, and he'd normally understood Charles or Edwin when they'd been in Esther's house. He chewed his lip, taking another deep breath and steadying himself. “I know I know how, but I'm afraid that doing it, I'll remember all the… everything,” he explained softly. “I want to try, though. I can try,” he said, nodding to himself, not daring to look up at Wally again. He'd talk him out of it, everyone always talked him out of it.
“Wait, no no no no no… I didn’t mean--” Wally tried to grab hold of Monty again, but whether it was doubt or the moment had passed, his fingers slipped through once more. “We’ll find another way, okay? I promise. Monty? You don’t have to. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s totally okay.”
Monty looked up at him, swallowing hard and shaking his head a little. “It's the only - I can't do anything else,” he told him. “I thought you'd understand,” he told him. Wally seemed to feel like he couldn't do anything to help. Monty didn't agree, but he knew Wally felt that way sometimes. He nodded though and tucked his hair behind his ear. “Okay,” he agreed, after he got over it. He could get over things pretty quickly. “Yeah, we'll find another way,” he told him, with a smile that was startlingly real. “You're right.”
“Monty, you can do all sorts of things,” Wally said. “You can fly. And you could do more. You could go out there, you could try to help bring back the others, I just…” Wally put his hands on his hips and looked down. “...I don’t want you to leave without me. I know that’s not fair of me to want or to ask. I just…”
“I can fly, sure, but what am I going to do from up there? Ask them nicely to let everyone go? I'm… I'm tiny, I'm not very strong and I don't even have good aim,” he said with a laugh that was only slightly hysterical and then… then what Wally said caught up to him. He'd never wanted to touch someone so much before in his life, but he was afraid to try again and fail. “You just…?” Monty asked him, wanting him to finish. He didn't expect it was anything romantic like he wished but just knowing that he was important to Wally, that he mattered to him, that meant everything.
“I’d rather be stuck in a timeloop with you, then out of a timeloop without you,” Wally said. Monty wasn’t his best friend. When Wally thought about it, he’d have called George his best friend. Monty was… Monty was something else Wally didn’t know how to put into words yet. A second best friend? No, that wasn’t right. “But also we need to figure this out and fix this probably,” he said.
Monty mattered to Wally. That was all he needed to know. That was enough to make him smile bigger than he had since he'd gotten here. “Right, yeah,” Monty agreed, nodding firmly. “We need to figure this out. How sure are you that it's the squirrels?” he asked him. He didn't doubt him, not at all! But maybe they had to look at all of the possibilities. “I mean, I can probably catch one,” he decided. “Swoop down, get it. Do you think that'd help us figure it out?”
“Nah,” Wally said. “It’d probably just bite you.” He exhaled. As much as a ghost could. “I got another idea. I need your hands. …And the rest of you.” Wally wasn’t sure how weird that sounded and decided not to think too much about it. “Follow me!” He dropped his sweats on the ground and jogged for the dining hall.
Wally was right, it would probably bite him. But he was willing to risk the rabies. Monty's brow raised at what he said, and his jaw dropped just slightly, lips parting as though ready to say something to that but Wally took off. Probably a good thing. He tried to jog behind him, losing sight of him between the Green and the kitchen but figuring that's where he was going, probably. He wasn't nearly as fast as Wally, not at all athletic and the wings slowed him down quite a bit. “Wally?” he called after him, popping into the kitchen.
Wally popped into Monty’s view from behind a tall rolling cart. “Okay, so!” Wally suddenly felt a little undressed. Shirtless in the kitchen? Even though he was a ghost and it couldn’t technically be a health code violation it still felt like one. Wally could feel George’s disapproving frown from wherever he was. “Instead of fighting the squirrels, what about bribing them? We don’t really have seeds but I think we have oatmeal? Squirrels could like oats, right? That’s natural, kinda.”
It was so hard to focus with Wally still not having a shirt on but luckily he didn't seem to notice that Monty was a little dazed. Slightly dazzled. He smiled a bit at the plan. “Really good idea!” he agreed, immediately going to the cupboards to help him look. “I bet they'd like oatmeal. I doubt we have acorns,” he added with a grin. “But squirrels are kind of like raccoons, they'll eat… pretty much anything,” he told him, and if he had to climb up on a countertop on his knees to get into a high cupboard, no one ever needed to tell George. He was like 5’4”, give him a break. “It's a little like an offering, right? At least it's not children,” he added with a glance over his shoulder, through the feathers, at Wally. “But if the squirrels are doing time magic then maybe an offering will get them to lay off.”
Wally opened his mouth and then quickly close it as he watched Monty climb around. Nope, George did not need to know. Wally made a face that was somewhere between a grimace and the slightest acknowledgment that Monty was cute. Maddie. Wally brushed the thought from his head. Nope. Nu uh. There were so many reasons it was a bad idea. Besides, and Monty had already had the talk. Anything else would have been unfair. “Do we have to do anything special for the offering do you think?” Wally asked. Monty probably knew more about that stuff as a former familiar.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully as he dug into the cupboard above his head. “It was all about intent, with witches. Sometimes you'd make a marking or say words to give it intention but sometimes you just had to mean it.” He shifted from his knees up to his feet, carefully leaning up to check on top of the cupboards, maybe they had some packages of oats up there - He'd wash the counter after, he promised. His foot slipped and he lost his balance, and if he fell from there it wasn't like he'd die or anything. Maybe bruise his tailbone. He still made a sound embarrassingly closer to a squawk.
Wally wasn’t thinking. Which was why it almost worked. He saw Monty start to fall, side stepped and held out his arms to catch him. In another life if might have been romantic. In this one? It was a little bit tragic as Monty fell through Wally’s ghostly form with a whoosh and landed at the former jock’s feet. Wally winced and hopped out of the way. “Are you okay. Holy shit. You didn’t break anything did you?” Were the wings delicate? Wally crouched down to get to eye level, frustrated he couldn’t do more than worry. Wait. He had his phone. He could text for— Nope. No he couldn’t. They were trapped in a time loop. Wally made a frustrated noise that might have been more aggressive if he wasn’t also just the tiniest bit scared.
It wasn't like his life was ever going to be a romcom, right? No, this was much more familiar - he fell right on his ass, but he managed not to crush his wings at all. “Ow,” he sighed, wincing a little as he looked up at Wally. “I think I just bruised my butt a little, it's not - nothing to worry about,” he assured him. It was nice he was worried. “I'll sit here and collect the shreds of my dignity from the floor,” he joked lightly. “On the plus side, I definitely saw a bag of peanuts up there on top of the cupboards. Hopefully they aren't too old. I bet nutty oatmeal would be a great offering to the squirrel time gods.”
The relief was visible on Wally’s face. Monty seemed so delicate. Probably not what a guy wanted to hear. …Right? Wally had to resist the urge to ask, as he questioned himself on that assumption. He barely literally shook the thought from his his well coiffed head. “Yeah. Peanuts would be perfect. Unless they have stuff on them. That might be bad for the squirrels.” Wally took his squirrel time gods very seriously. Even if he used the word stuff instead of flavor.
Monty gave him a little smile that was still embarrassed, from where he was still sat on the floor. “Do you think you can check them to make sure they'd be good for the squirrels? And if they are, then I'll brave another attempt at athleticism to go up there and get them,” he joked lightly, tossing his hair back out of his face. Time to get up, probably. It was a bit awkward with his wings but he got to his knees and then his feet, stretching the wings and giving them another little ruffle.
“Yeah, totally!” Wally did not need to climb onto the counters. At six-foot-three, he had plenty of wingspan. He reached in the cupboard and pulled out whatever he could find to take a look. There were a few different varieties, not a lot. Wally frowned at the plain peanuts. They would have been great for cooking. George would understand. “These are good,” Wally said, shaking the bag. Once he set everything down and turned his attention to Monty, everything reset and the food was once again out of reach. “You sure you want to go back up there again?” Wally asked.
Monty wasn't actually mad that Wally could just reach up into the high cupboard by virtue of being a foot taller than he was. He just scowled and huffed for dramatic effect. “Yeah, of course. You can't just fall out of the nest and call it a day,” he informed Wally with a grin. He was a lot more careful the second time, getting up there and down without any issues. He set the peanuts down and brushed his hands off on his pants. “There. Maybe we can end this time loop before falling on my ass becomes part of it.”
“Or, maybe you’re awake through it like me,” Wally said. “We’ll repeat the day but, you’ll see it happening now.” It was still early in the repeating cycle. Maybe not the hours that had repeated over and over on themselves, but the days were still young. “If this doesn’t work, I promise I won’t ask you to climb up on the cabinets again,” Wally added. Wally spoke casually, but there was a hint of worry under his tone. Like he was afraid he’d wake up the next day and Wally wouldn’t be aware again.
Monty didn't know what was worse, being awake through it all or repeating without knowing. He didn't know if he could think about that. “Oh, I,” he trailed off, making his hands busy by opening up the peanuts, getting the oatmeal, “would do pretty much whatever you asked me to do. Cabinets included,” he said with a little laugh like it was all a joke, a toss of his hair, a flippant smile.
“Yeah,” Wally said. “I know.” It wasn’t quite a Han Solo delivered line. There was a tinge of concern in his tone. Only the slightest tinge. Wally was pretty sure he’d find a way to deck anyone that took advantage of the former familiar. “I just think it’s better if it’s both of us, you know? Working together.” Wally looked at the collection of feed Monty gathered and changed the subject quickly before either of them could think too deeply about it. “Okay. So, let’s offer up some squirrel food. How should we do this?”