“Ask him out,” Wally tells you, forcing on a smile that he hopes looks convincing enough. “Come on, I’m telling you, Dick likes you back. What more do you have to lose?”

His thoughts wander to the fistful of petals he’s holding behind his back—from earlier, when he’d muffled his coughs from you, hacking them up into his palm so you’d never see—and he knows exactly what you have to lose.

He can’t let you know. He’ll keep it a secret until it kills him.

Literally.