Work Text:
Bruce adjusted the towel around his waist and considered whether it was worth pulling the suit back on. He didn’t expect to need it again, and the only people currently aboard the Watchtower already knew who he was. It had been a long enough week that, given a choice in the matter, he wouldn’t be going out again once he got home. He didn’t anticipate an emergency, either--the League meeting had been brief and optimistic, with nothing worrisome on the horizon, and there had been no messages on the comm when he’d checked it before indulging in a sparring session with Diana. Once he’d scrubbed away the sweat he’d worked up in the dojo, he found himself reluctant to weigh himself down again with the armor.
It was tempting to hope that he could slide into the jeans and t-shirt folded neatly in his locker, slip away to the manor, and spend a few hours reminding himself that the world was occasionally a beautiful, peaceful place before something inevitably came up.
Hal started whistling tunelessly from the showers, accompanied only by the rustle and snap of the towel as he dried off, and Bruce gritted his teeth. It had been difficult not to say something before the meeting, during the meeting, after the meeting. Hal had been cagey about the details of the last few missions he’d run for Oa, defensive whenever he wasn’t antagonistic, but whatever he’d been up to had taken its toll. His physique, normally as perfectly balanced and drawn as a neoclassical statue, had been stripped of what little padding he’d had, and his right shoulder was noticeably tighter and higher than his left. He needed a vacation and, if possible, a new physiotherapist.
None of which, Bruce thought, was any of his business.
It was difficult to quiet the nagging voice at the back of his mind asking when his colleagues’ welfare had stopped being his concern, but it wasn’t as if Hal was friendless. Oliver, Dinah, Clark, Kyle--they were all close enough to step in if they felt Hal needed extra support. Even John would say something if he thought the situation warranted it. Given the way in which Hal tended to interpret Bruce expressing an opinion on his personal life, especially when it wasn’t an area in which Bruce was leading by example, it was best left to people whose judgment Hal would accept with less of a reaction. Even if it was patently obvious that he needed something he wasn’t currently getting.
Hal draped the towel over his shoulders and made his way to the bank of lockers opposite, and Bruce kept his eyes resolutely on the gray metal in front of him. There was something about the way Hal walked, the way he flouted the basic rules of decorum with his utterly unnecessary nudity, that seemed designed as a test rather than an irritant. Or perhaps it was a message, meant to remind Bruce that Hal was not in fact blind and did in fact notice when he was being too closely observed. There was a calmness, a calculation to it that Bruce had learned to be wary of in a way that Hal’s jibes and Hal’s chattering and Hal’s fits of pique didn’t warrant.
Bruce considered his suit, and the cowl which occasionally didn’t hide enough, and decided on the jeans. There were times when donning the armor was an act of retreat, a reflexive reach for a bulwark against discomfort rather than danger. He liked to think he was getting better at recognizing those times and resisting the impulse. Behind him, he could hear Hal finally acknowledging the demands of modesty and pulling on some clothes. Sweatpants, from the sound of it.
“You gonna spit it out, or are you short of things to brood silently over today?” Hal asked, his tone too casual by half.
“Spit what out?” Bruce asked. It was the wrong thing to say. He’d known it before he opened his mouth and still hadn’t been able to stop himself from saying it. It was like there was a glitch in his response to Hal’s presence, something that let him recognize that saying “The latter.” and retiring to an area with more privacy to change would terminate the interaction quickly and cleanly and let him get on with his life but utterly incapable of actually following through with it. Instead of going home, taking a walk in the garden, admiring the roses Alfred had somehow coaxed into an unseasonable bloom, having a glass of wine and watching the sun set, he would stand here arguing with Hal over whatever the Lantern had taken offense to this time.
“You’ve been giving me the side-eye for the last two hours,” Hal said. “You’ve got something to say to me, obviously. So, are you going to say it, or are you going to spend the rest of the day grinding your molars into powder over it?”
Bruce turned, ready to give Hal an exasperated look and tell him it was nothing. Bruce recognized it as a mistake the moment his eyes found Hal, who had pulled on a pair of sweatpants, but who’d also made sure they were slung as low over his hips as possible while still being technically decent. The picture it presented, in addition to being a ruthlessly succinct catalogue of Hal’s most attractive physical traits, made the tension coiling asymmetrically in Hal’s shoulder and across his ribs all the more obvious.
“Your physical therapist doesn’t seem to be helping,” Bruce said instead, resigning himself to the discussion.
“My physical therapist?” Hal echoed.
Bruce refrained from sighing as a brief but vicious highlight reel of Hal’s most recent injuries, overexertions, and strains unspooled through his mind. “You don’t have one.”
“Some of us have to work for a living,” Hal pointed out easily. “Kind of limits the amount of time we’ve got to run around seeing doctors we don’t need.”
“A large portion of their job is to keep a patient from spending a week in bed instead of a day when he, for example, mistakes a concrete staircase for an appropriate site to crash land,” Bruce said, trying to keep the heat out of his voice. The ring helped with a great many things, but under the uniform and the constructs, Hal was still a human being, with all the fragility that implied. If it was impossible to entirely avoid injury in the line of duty, they at least sometimes had the option of minimizing suffering from it. “I’ve found using one to be more efficient than the old fallback of NSAIDs and denial.”
“That was one time,” Hal snapped. “And how do you even have an opinion on this? Have you been breaking into my room and counting the advil left in the bottle? Am I going through too much tiger balm for your liking?”
Bruce turned back to his locker and reached for his clothes. There was the questionable wisdom of explaining himself at all, and then there was the questionable wisdom of looking Hal in the face when he gave the only explanation possible. “An unfortunate consequence of your uniform leaving little to the imagination.”
Bruce had spent more effort than he cared to tally up not seeing, or at least not registering, the way the green and black costume stuck to Hal like a second skin. But while it might paper over bruises and lacerations well enough, anything more serious stood out in stark relief, as impossible to ignore as the man himself.
Hal snorted softly, almost to himself, and opened his locker. “You never seemed to have much of a problem with it before.”
Bruce considered the dig. There was no anger or venom to it; if anything, Hal seemed a bit pleased with himself. Bruce wasn’t sure when, precisely, Hal had noticed, just that direct comments on it had been rare and didn’t happen in front of colleagues. The first time had been a blunt challenge, a “Like what you see?” accompanied by a filthy smirk. Bruce had very much liked what he’d seen--Hal had been mid-workout, relaxed and energetic and sporting a faint flush--and it had been difficult not to show it. He’d tried to be more careful after that, to be more mindful of where his gaze landed, rested, returned too often, as it was doing now in spite of his best intentions. Bruce grimaced at the bunched, corded muscles pulling everything else out of balance. He could easily imagine the pain it was causing, and it wasn’t as if it couldn’t be just as easily wiped away. There was such a simple solution, if only Hal would apply the least bit of his customary enthusiasm to the question of his own well-being.
Then again, there was a straightforward remedy to that, his own version of the flip comment followed by walking away. Bruce reached across the divide, put his hand on Hal’s trapezius, and squeezed firmly.
Hal exhaled and didn’t move, and after a few long moments Bruce felt the muscle begin to lose some of its rigidity. He relaxed his grip and let go, and Hal grunted softly. Less of a reaction than Bruce had expected, more of a liberty than Hal usually permitted, but enough for the purposes of making his point and extracting himself from the conversation.
“You should see someone about that, Lantern,” he said, gathering his things.
Hal swallowed and flexed his shoulder, still feeling the warm weight of Bruce’s hand on his skin. It had been a shock, Bruce actually touching him after all this time, and he’d almost resented the distraction the sudden absence of pain had presented.
It had been a gamble, following Bruce into the locker room. Bruce watching him meant Bruce was focusing on some fault just as often as it meant Bruce thought he wasn’t paying attention, wouldn’t feel the weight of Bruce’s eyes on him. Then again, Hal thought, the payoff was always worth it. It took so little to remind Bruce that whatever he had spent his life trying his damnedest to turn himself into--however much of himself he’d whittled away because it wouldn’t fit under that damn mask--underneath it all he was a man, flesh and blood with the occasional desire that had nothing to do with justice or vengeance. And the degree to which Bruce had to deliberately not look, had to deliberately weigh his response, never failed to produce a bright spark of satisfaction.
It had taken him a while to read Bruce right, to quantify the differences between how Bruce behaved with him and how Bruce behaved with people he genuinely disliked, or didn’t respect. Once he’d calibrated the panel properly, though, pushing Bruce’s buttons had become infinitely more rewarding. Hal had been pretty sure if he kept at it, he’d eventually find the one that made something like this happen.
That he hadn’t really come up with a plan for what happened afterwards probably wouldn’t have surprised Bruce one bit, he thought. Good thing he was used to winging it--and that he didn’t have much dignity left to lose after failing to swallow the sudden, desperate noise of protest he’d made after Bruce had stopped.
Hal turned and raised an eyebrow, trying to project more confidence than he felt. Bruce had remained at arm’s length the whole time. Bruce had his clothes in hand and was obviously planning a strategic withdrawal. Bruce had walked away from better opportunities than this.
But this time Bruce had touched him, had reached out unbidden, and Hal hadn’t been teasing him and flirting with him for the past two years to not seize the moment.
“I could see someone about it,” Hal allowed, “or you could just finish what you started.”
Bruce’s lips pursed, and Hal let himself smile. Anybody else, Bruce would be in, or he’d be out. Hal could count on one hand the number of people where Bruce might have to think about his answer, and at least two were in the club because they had a habit of throwing him off very tall buildings when they got the chance. After a moment, Bruce sighed.
“Sit down.”
Hal’s heart beat harder, and he did his best not to betray any untoward eagerness or jangling nerves when he turned and settled onto the bench. When Bruce tested his shoulder again, it was from a more reasonable distance, and Hal could feel the warmth pouring off him in the cool air. He could also feel every careful prod and squeeze across the rest of his back and down his chest, and he was willing to admit privately that maybe Bruce had a point.
Then Bruce started in earnest, kneading the muscle and working at the knots, and Hal slowly became aware of exactly how much pain he’d been in without realizing it, how much it had faded into the background radiation of discomfort and fatigue and strain in the past three months. He’d figured all of it was the natural result of too many missions and too many fights with too little downtime spacing them out, unfortunate but unavoidable. Every expert stroke of Bruce’s hands was chipping away at that assumption, and Hal was even breathing more deeply and easily by the time Bruce moved from his trapezius to the stretch between his shoulder blade and his spine. He tried to memorize precisely how Bruce’s hands felt as they moved over his skin, the particular quality of Bruce being quiet instead of Bruce being silent, how the heat of Bruce’s body felt when there was only a few inches of nothing in between them, just in case.
“Do I even want to know where you picked this up?” Hal asked. Bruce ran the heel of his palm down the edge of Hal’s shoulder blade to what felt like an attachment point and then paused there, keeping the pressure steady until it was butting up against being uncomfortable. When he let up, he repeated the move in the opposite direction, and Hal felt his entire back rearranging itself, everything that had been ever so slightly out of whack sliding back into place.
“A certain knowledge of anatomy is generally recommended for people who do what we do,” Bruce told him.
Hal considered a retort, then decided against it when Bruce gently guided his head to one side and ran his fingertips from the base of his neck to just under his hairline, pressing hard enough that Hal could feel a pleasant tingle all the way down his arm. This was more than Bruce knowing his way around muscle groups, and Bruce damn well knew it. He leaned forward, stooping slightly and letting his bulk curve around Hal’s back, and Hal suppressed a shiver at the intimacy of it. Had Bruce ever let him get this close outside of combat? Hal was sure he’d remember it if Bruce had, positive he wouldn’t have to rack his brain to recall it. Then Bruce pressed the blade of his hand to Hal’s chest just under the collarbone and moved from sternum to ribs in one smooth stroke, and Hal couldn’t bite back a satisfied grunt.
Bruce paused, as if it had suddenly occurred to him that Hal was enjoying it instead of grudgingly tolerating it, and Hal snorted. “It cannot possibly have just dawned on you that massages feel good, Bruce.”
“Hardly the point of this,” Bruce said, his tone sharp. “But I was actually concerned that I’d hurt you.”
“Not even close.” Hal managed to keep himself from groaning when Bruce repeated the move, but it was a near thing. He relaxed, feeling strangely boneless, and let himself lean back against Bruce. Hal could feel him tense, muscles contracting under surprisingly soft skin, and looked up to see Bruce frowning at him. “Oh, please. Like either one of us could make this any weirder without actively trying.”
The barely-there scoff at least sounded amused, and Hal closed his eyes with a smile.
“Seriously, though, this is…” Hal trailed off when Bruce circled his thumb into a particularly stubborn knot where his shoulder met his spine. It was edging on tender, now, but Bruce’s touch just became that much more gentle. This hadn’t been quite what Hal had had in mind all the times he’d tried to pry Bruce out of his shell, but Hal was willing to chalk that up to not knowing it was on the table. “...I could go for another hour or two of this.”
“I somehow doubt that,” Bruce said. “Any residual soreness should be treated with alternating ice packs and heating pads or hot compresses. And you really should follow up with a physical therapist. You didn’t do this in a day--it’s going to take some work to correct. Likely a month or two, in order to do it properly.”
Hal let his head rest against Bruce’s chest. “I feel like you’re going to say something about eating my greens next.”
“Do you want me to, or can we skip that particular embarrassment for today?” Bruce asked. He flexed his hand and rotated his wrist a few times, then slid his fingers between Hal’s back and his own stomach and prodded him upright again.
“Just a few more minutes?” Hal asked.
“That would be counterproductive.” Bruce was already turning away, and Hal drank in the slight blush gracing his cheeks and chest.
“Oh. Well, in that case, never mind,” Hal sighed.
He got to his feet and stretched, and something in his upper back popped, a deeply satisfying feeling that told him several annoying little catches and cricks wouldn’t be bothering him again for a while. He turned and glanced up to find Bruce watching him, not bothering to disguise it as a clinical assessment of his handiwork. Hal stepped over the bench, leaned in, and kissed him gently, all in one smooth motion that gave Bruce as little time as possible to stop and think about whether he wanted to reciprocate. Just once, Hal wanted a reaction instead of a debate, what Bruce wanted instead of what Bruce was willing to let himself have.
Bruce kissed him back, his lips soft on Hal’s and his fingers curling loose in Hal’s hair for the bare moment they had before Bruce stepped back, the flush more marked than it had been a moment ago.
“Thanks, Bruce,” Hal said quietly, smiling. “Same time next week?”
His lips tugged up at the look on Bruce’s face, a perfect blend of astonishment and desire, as Hal turned on his heel and walked away, whistling to himself. There was no way in hell Bruce wouldn’t take that bait, and in the meantime Hal felt like he’d just touched back down on the tarmac after a flawless test-flight.