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The Watchtower
“This is hopeless. Maybe we shouldn't say anything and let them find out at the reading of our wills,” Hal said, shaking his head.
He and Bruce had been debating about their marriage announcements again and he was about to leave for a new mission for the Corps but the whole situation was annoying him to no end.
“I have a better idea,” Bruce mused, as if he had really considered Hal’s suggestion. “You know what ? Go on your mission, I’ll take care of it and when you’ll be back they’ll all know. What do you say to that ?”
“I love you,” Hal said, laughing and kissing him once more. “And I really have to go,” he added when he started feeling Bruce’s hands wandering.
“Right,” Bruce said, pulling him into one more kiss. “I love you too. Take care.”
Blüdhaven
“Hi, I’m home’, Barbara called.
Dick went into the vestibule to greet her and they shared a tender kiss before she put her shoes off with a grimace. Those ones were new and hadn’t stretched enough for comfort yet.
“Hey, darling,” Dick said as she hung her coat on the coat rack before letting herself get lost in his blue eyes for a second or two and brushing a strand of hair away from his eyes tenderly.
“Did you get the mail ?” she eventually asked, fishing her keys in her coat’s pockets.
Dick hummed positively and she put them down on the sideboard in the vestibule before following him to the living-room.
“Oh, yes. You should read this,” he told his fiancé, handing her a thick cream envelope that had been sitting on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “I’ll make you coffee in the meantime.”
“You’re going to make decaf,” Barbara groaned, getting the letter out of the envelope, curious.
A thick envelope, high quality paper.
It looked like an invitation of some sort. Hopefully not another gala. Barbara not so secretly hated those but Dick was Bruce’s son and they were engaged now, which meant her presence was even more required than before, when she was only the Commissioner’s daughter and a friend of the Waynes.
“And you know you should cut your coffee intake,” Dick remarked as Barbara distractedly opened the cream colored card.
“Oh. My. God. Seriously ?” she said, meeting Dick in the kitchen and showing him the inside of the card he had already read.
“It would seem. Have you ever noticed anything ? Because I haven’t.”
“Well, I thought they were acting strange when we told them we were engaged, but I thought it was because they were thinking about it too, not because they had already gotten married behind our backs !” Barbara said, a bit vexed.
“Hey,” her partner said, pushing her still fuming mug toward her and perching himself on a countertop. “They argue about borrowed socks and Damian’s school report distributions. We should have noticed something was up.”
Barbara laughed lightly and went to sit next to him. Dick rested his head against her shoulder.
“You’re right. Why do you think they didn’t tell you about their anniversary in person, though ?” she said, running her fingers through her fiancé’s luscious hair.
Dick shrugged.
“No idea. Maybe Hal had to go off Earth unexpectedly and they didn’t want to report the announcement to let people know about the party early enough ?”
Gotham
“Did you know Father had gotten married, Drake ?”
It wasn’t even the oddest thing Damian had ever asked him in front of breakfast but Tim had barely had the time to take a seat at the kitchen table for this one and had to run the words through his head twice before he could give him an answer.
“What are you talking about ?” he asked, yawning, unsure he hadn’t imagined Damian’s words, really.
“Thomas ?” the younger kid asked, turning toward the other teenager at the table.
Tim and Duke exchanged glances. Damian’s words didn’t make sense for either of them.
“The envelopes by our plates, idiots !” the little demon snapped, and the older boys opened said envelopes and started reading.
“Are you pranking me ?” Duke asked suspiciously.
As the last addition to the family, he was a bit wary of Bruce’s other kids’ mischievous antics, but he didn’t think Tim and Damian would never stop arguing long enough to successfully pull a prank like this together.
“An anniversary implies they’re already married,” Tim said, blinking at the paper.
He needed a cup of coffee or two. It was way too early to think.
“Tt-. Impressive deduction, Drake,” the kid jeered at him.
Tim almost challenged the kid to hand to hand combat but Duke put a heavenly smelling mug down in front of him that distracted him.
“Thanks. Isn’t Bruce upstairs ? Why didn’t he tell us himself ?” Tim asked before drinking half of his first coffee mug in one go.
Duke observed him with concern as he usually did. He had had to get used to many things fastly when he moved in but Barbara’s and to a lesser level Tim’s coffee addictions still worried him.
“I thought he never woke up before noon,” Duke pointed out, answering Tim’s question.
At first, he had thought it was merely a matter of speech, but after having lived at the Manor for six months, he had yet to see Bruce in the morning.
“Well, he could have told us he and Hal had gotten married in person,” Tim mumbled, biting into his toast. “A simple announcement at dinner would have done the trick.”
Gotham
“You’ve got a letter too ?” Steph asked her best friend, showing Cassandra Cain her own envelope.
“A video on my phone,” Cass said, shaking her head.
Steph nodded. It made sense. Cass still struggled with reading and the elegant font would have been hell to read for her, there was no point in sending her a handwritten invitation.
“Did they say why they didn’t tell us anything before ?” Stephanie asked, curious.
“No,” Cass said, shaking her head.
Star City
“Pretty bird, I don’t think I’ve ever been that drunk this year but could I have forgotten that Hal and Bruce have gotten hitched ?” Ollie asked his wife as she went out of the bathroom.
“What are you saying ?” Dinah said, confused, as she got dressed despite her husband’s attempts at preventing her to be.
“We’re invited to their anniversary, this March,” he said, handing her the mail he had just gone through.
She took the invitation card from him and he wrapped his arms around her. She looked just as surprised as he was for a few seconds, but a light soon appeared in her eyes.
“Wasn’t last February -” she started saying, and Oliver caught up.
“- the time when Hal could have gotten seriously injured on a mission but got away with merely a scratch ? I remember,” he said, clicking his fingers. “It was just before Emiko’s birthday.”
“Maybe that’s why they got married. Now what I’d like to know is why they didn’t tell us,” Dinah sighed.
“You know how newlyweds are, and they might not have had much time to themselves between Wayne Enterprises, Gotham, the League and the Corps. Maybe they just wanted to keep it a secret between the two of them a bit longer.”
He had wanted to tell the world the second Dinah had said yes, but some people just worked differently and just because he would have thought that Bruce wouldn’t miss an occasion to point out that Hal was his husband and that Hal would be even worse, it didn’t mean they hadn’t just enjoyed the quiet.
Coast City
“Mom, did you get a letter from Hal ?” Jim Jordan asked his mother on the phone.
“Jimmy ! How are you and the kids ? Are you coming to their little ceremony ?”
Coast City
“Ofe ! My uncles got married !” Helen told her girlfriend the second she caught sight of her in the hallway.
“And they didn’t tell you before ? Odd,” the teenager commented, kissing Helen’s cheek in greeting.
“They’re inviting us to their first anniversary. Do you want to come ?” Hal’s niece asked.
The Watchtower
“You should check your mail when you come home,” Diana told Clark, patting his shoulder. “I assure you it’s worth it. You too, Barry, you’re going to love it.”
The two men looked at her strangely. They both had been on monitor duty for the last hours and Diana and Jess were about to take over.
Diana had been the first one to arrive but Jessica was right behind her.
“Have you told them ?” she asked the Amazon, giggling.
The warrior princess shook her head, laughing too. The two men looked at them with interest but kept their distances.
“What’s so funny ?” Barry eventually asked.
“This,” Jessica said, giving him a bit of paper.
He and Clark looked at the invitation card and took the time to read it. And reread it, just in case.
“They didn’t,” Barry said after a few seconds, looking at the two women for confirmation.
Clark stayed silent, actively trying to remember his recent interactions with the couple. He hadn’t noticed any recent changements in them the way he had noticed the change in their relationship when they had started dating seriously.
“It looks rather serious,” Jessica was saying, shrugging.
“Maybe Bruce’s kids wanted to make a joke,” Barry suggested a bit weakly.
Hal would have told him himself if he had gotten married, right ?
“We can just check with Bruce at the next meeting,” Clark suggested, but the more he thought about it, the more he could see it.
Thomas and Martha Wayne’s marriage had been a happy one. He doubted Bruce had ever thought he could have something like that for himself before he and Hal made things work, somehow. Hal being so close to dying in February must have brought Bruce’s memories back at the forefront of his mind.
It wouldn’t be surprising if his friend had decided that marrying Hal was worth the risk and that they may not have much time to make this decision.
Well, Clark was extrapolating a bit. He focused back on the current discussion he was a part of.
“You want to wait until the next meeting ?” Jessica asked.
Clark wasn’t sure it was a requirement for the job, but so far no Green Lantern he had the pleasure to meet was great at waiting.
“I don’t,” Barry pointed out, grabbing his phone from the console.
“What are you doing ?” Diana asked him, perplexed.
They didn’t have reception, there.
“Making a draft to remember to suggest we get out for drinks tomorrow in the JL conversation when I’ll get reception.”
“What are we celebrating ?” Diana asked, raising an eyebrow.
This was the worst plan she had ever heard about and she had sat at nearly every League meeting since their creation.
“Can’t we just go out as old friends ?” Clark suggested.
“It won’t be suspicious at all,” Diana said, shaking her head.
“Do you have a better plan ?” Jessica opposed gently.
They all looked at her with hopeful eyes but the Amazon warrior couldn’t come up with any plan. Bruce would probably see through it anyway.
“Let’s go out as old friends,” she capitulated.
Gotham
“The things I do for you…” Bruce mumbled, glaring at the framed picture of Hal on his desk next to pictures of the kids as he put his wedding band on.
It was nice to finally be able to do so after months of marriage but he wasn’t looking forward to the trap disguised as a friendly JL outing.
He grabbed a jacket in his closet, reminded himself that Hal wouldn’t be gone for long and readied himself to face his nosy teammates.