Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hal stares at the coat rack, ignoring the tap tap tap off to his right.  The room around him is carefully curated to be generically inviting and trendy, like the waiting room at an expensive dentist.  He’d been to one of those once, back when he’d been dating Carol.  Hal visits other planets on the regular, and that had legitimately been one of the weirdest experiences of his entire life.

Visiting the dentist sounds like a fun time, given what he’s actually doing.  Across from him, bright, bold letters on the wall proclaim “The Nightly Show with Lily Liu!”  He knows next to nothing about the show, besides that it’s the reason he’s here and not off celebrating being back on Earth.  The craft services table’s been decimated, so there’s nothing to do except wait.

Really though, it’s the coat rack that encapsulates the ridiculousness of this entire situation.  Hal glares at it, arms crossed.  Had they expected him to, in some misguided attempt at subtlety, show up with a trench coat over his uniform?

The makeup people hadn’t quite known what to do with his mask, so maybe.

“I can’t believe we have to do this,” Hal grumbles.  “Where does Bats get off, forcing me to grovel on national TV?”

That’s not totally accurate.  By Bruce’s standards, it’s not even that dickish.  But Hal could be draining Ollie’s liquor cabinet right about now, and Ollie’s got some good shit.  He’s entitled to be a little snitty.

Hal had made his opinion plain, in a calm, collected argument with only a little yelling, when Bats had insisted on this whole fiasco.

“You want back into the Justice League?” Bruce had said, after sitting unmoving through Hal’s tirade like the emotionless gargoyle he is. “This is how you prove it.”

The pre-interview prep work had been done by Batman, because apparently Hal’s too stupid to talk about himself for an hour.  One of the Robins had handed him a statement and a list of talking points that essentially boiled down to “Look how responsible I am!  I have all sorts of traits that appeal to the important demographic of Americans ages 18-35!”

He’d thrown the list away as soon as Batman turned his back.  No way is he going to stand in front of a camera with his index cards like a 3rd grader doing a book report.

Speaking of nerds, Barry’s sitting just off to his right. He looks horribly out of place in his uniform, like a Flash sticker placed in an Ikea catalogue.  He doesn't respond but continues tapping a sonnet into the floor in Morse code.

Hal’s frown deepens at the lack of reaction.  “Seriously, it’s got to be some sort of messed up power trip for him.  We let him walk all over us for years, and now he thinks he can order us to do whatever he wants.”  He pauses, staring at Barry who’s staring at the floor.  “Why are you here, anyway?”

Because yeah, Hal might not have been on Earth much recently, but he can’t imagine a scenario where Barry’s so in the dog house that he needs to join Hal on his humiliation tour.

Barry sighs.  The foot tapping, if anything, speeds up.  “I’m here because I agree with Batman.”

“Flash!  I don’t need a babysitter!”

It stings, more than he’s willing to let on.  Barry doing the interview with him had been the one bright spot in this mess.  They hadn’t seen each other since Hal’s been back or talked about Hal’s new assignment, one that has him on Earth for the foreseeable future and cautiously hopeful about certain possibilities.  He’d been psyched enough to overlook Bats’ blatant exploitation of his and Barry’s friendship, writing it off as some much-needed support during the degradation conga.  Now, though…

“You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“I am on your side, GL,” Barry says, despite his words clearly siding him with the enemy.  “I just agree that a widely viewed interview could help your image and make people more comfortable having you back on the team.”

“Sure, comfortable.”  Hal kicks out a foot, rattling the undersized coffee table with its oversized flower arrangement.  “You know what the asshole said when I asked why he booked me on a comedy show?” Hal hunches forward, points his index fingers up from his ears, and in his best chronic smoker voice says, “You’ll fit right in.”

Barry, the traitor, bites his lip like he’s trying not to laugh.

Hal huffs.  It’s hard to be annoyed.  Even he has to grudgingly admit that Bruce executed the burn with perfect, mike drop timing.

Barry leans forward and pats Hal’s knee.  “Okay, I think we can both agree that he could have presented the idea better.”  His foot had calmed down while he’d been getting his face back under control, but now he’s shifting in his seat.  Hal’s in an identical one, and can attest that they’re plenty comfortable, if overdesigned.  “But you have to remember, the last time the general public saw you, Wonder Woman had just punched you through a car.”

Hal juts out his chin.  “She punched Superman through a car too.”

“Not the point.”  Barry shifts again, his fingers momentarily squeezing Hal’s knee.  “People have had three years to get to know her when she’s not brawling with her teammates.  They’ve seen her save people from falling buildings, and let little girls braid her hair.  They feel like they know her.”  He pauses, waiting until he catches Hal’s eye to continue.  “But they don’t know you.”

There’s a lot in there Hal doesn’t want to unpack.  He could snap back that if people didn’t know him after five years on the Justice League, then one TV interview isn’t going to change that.  But it’s not a good time; they have to be going out on stage any minute now.  

“…I’m not letting any kids near my hair.”

Barry laughs, the sound loosening the knots that have been tying themselves in Hal’s chest.  “I know.  I’m sure it takes a lot of work to keep it looking that effortlessly disheveled.”  Despite Barry’s obvious playful tone, Hal finds himself grinning.  God, he’s starved for compliments.  Barry pats his knee again.  “It’s going to be fine.”

That makes Hal pause.  For all his bellyaching, he’d never doubted that .  He’s faced down some pretty powerful dudes with Barry at his side – Darkseid, alternate universe Justice Leagues, the IRS that one time – without worrying about the outcome.  A studio audience can hardly compare.  

It’s Barry’s need to say that at all that’s far more concerning.

“Okay, fine, whatever.  You can stop trying to convince me; we both know I’m going to do the interview.”  He leans in, getting in Barry’s face and capturing his hand before he can pull it away.  “But what are you so nervous about?  You look like you’re about to fidget out of your suit.”

Barry stills immediately at Hal’s accusation.  “I’m sorry.  I just have a bit of stage fright.”

Hal raises an eyebrow.  “You do interviews with Iris all the time.”

“First, that’s different; I know her, and Central.”

Hal takes a moment to appreciate Barry’s ability to be friends with his exes.  He can’t even begin to imagine how much simpler his life would be with that superpower.

“I probably should have led with this,” Barry continues quietly, oblivious to Hal’s aside, “but I’m really happy you want to rejoin the League.  I want the rest of the world to see you as the hero that you are, and not as a dangerous loose cannon.  And while I think this will help, I’m worried I’ll mess it up.”

“ You’ll mess it up?”  That has to be some crazy stage fright talking right now, because both of them know that Hal’s the one who’s going to say something crass, or insensitive, or just come across as a reckless asshole with a nuke on his finger.  

Kind of like he just did with Barry.  The tension that had been building in the room since they started talking vanishes with Barry’s admission.  Hal’s left feeling like a dick, but that’s familiar territory.  Knowing Barry, there won’t be any lasting consequences beyond maybe buying the next time they go to Big Belly Burger, and Hal had been planning to do that anyway.  

A producer pokes his head into the room, signalling that it’s time for their segment.  Barry doesn't move, apparently still caught up in his nerves, so Hal offers him a hand and a lopsided grin.

“You just had to say all that right before we go on stage, didn’t you?”

Barry lets out a shaky laugh and then they’re both heading out to face the crowd.

He really should have seen this coming, Hal thinks as he launches into another story of space heroics.  Because he likes talking, especially about himself.  He’s playing right into Bruce’s hand but he can’t even bring himself to care.  He hopes Bats is having a good time, hanging upside down in whatever belfry he’s watching from.

They’d walked on stage to a roaring crowd and too bright lights.  He’d been glad he was mentally prepared; the last time he’d been in a situation like this with Barry, they’d been in a gladiatorial death match in another galaxy.  Here, though, all they’re facing is an oversized desk, a smiling host, and a row of cameras.

Barry’s nerves had calmed almost immediately.  He’d spotted a kid in head to toe Flash gear, and the quick exchange had been enough for him to seamlessly transition from Barry-Allen-in-a-costume to the Flash.  The crowd and the cameras had eaten up Barry’s Midwestern geniality, scoring them instant points.  The titular Lily Liu is personable and charming, and Hal only flirts a little before getting an elbow in the ribs from Barry and a laugh from the audience.

While they’d kept the powers to a minimum – “To look down to earth, remind people that, underneath it all, we’re just like them” – when prompted, Hal couldn’t resist flying over the audience.  Lily had joked to Barry that he’d have to rescue Hal from the rafters, and Hal may have thrown in an extra showy loop when Barry replied, “You don’t have to worry.  He’s the best flier in the League.”

Best of all, they’d addressed the hard questions early in the interview.  Lily asked him point blank about his fight with Diana and why he’s just now coming back into the public eye.

“Wonder Woman’s a friend.  We’ve long since put that behind us personally, and put systems in place for better internal conflict resolution.  We just haven’t been public about it since I was on a deployment on the other side of the universe.  But I’m back now, and we all want people to know that, while we may have our differences, we’re united in our mission to keep people safe.  That’s the most important thing.”

He’d turned to include Barry in the conversation and had to make a conscious effort not to visibly preen at the proud smile he’d caught on Barry’s face.

Take that, Bats.  His team of backroom Robins couldn’t have come up with anything better.

The next couple questions are about the League's latest run-in with Starro.  Hal’s perfectly fine having missed that one – getting mind controlled by a face hugging starfish will never not be embarrassing – and uses the time to study Barry.  Despite Hal’s comment earlier about doing a lot of interviews, he’s surprised with the ease Barry demonstrates in front of the cameras.  It’s a good look on him, engaged and self-assured in a way Hal usually associates with Barry in nerd mode.

But it also highlights how much Hal’s missed, being millions of lightyears away for the last couple of years.  He’s happy for Barry, sure – who wouldn’t be, seeing a friend’s gained some well deserved confidence? – but he can’t help the creeping feeling in his gut at seeing how well Barry’s done without Hal around complicating his life.

There are a couple of close calls.  Hal really shouldn’t have brought up the Star Sapphires and their uniforms, and Guy Gardner stories aren’t meant for polite company, but Barry swoops in each time to make a joke or steer the story out of questionable territory.  Hal’s grateful Barry’s here; except for maybe the other Earth Lanterns, there’s no one he’s worked with more.  And apparently experience fighting together against the flavor of the week translates to GL and Flash versus public opinion.

Still, he can see Barry slowly losing his adopted ease with each subsequent gaff.  Hal’s twice needed to casually place a hand on Barry’s knee to still his bouncing leg, and there’s a blurring around his left eye that Hal’s pretty sure is a super speed eye twitch.

We might actually pull this off, Hal thinks as he recounts yet another mission while watching the clock tick down out of the corner of his eye.  Yeah, the anecdote probably wasn’t on Bruce’s “approved Lantern stories” list, but it’s one he told Barry, and Barry’s pretty much Hal’s benchmark for all things appropriate.  Hal makes a couple constructs with his ring to emphasize a point, then uses it to poke at Barry.  He’s rewarded with an exasperated smile and laughs from the audience.

“On a more personal note,” Lily says, pivoting into – hopefully – the final topic, “despite your many famous team ups, the two of you are quite the unlikely pair.  How is it working together again?”

Hal glances at the screen showing the stage.  He supposes it’s a natural question, just one he hasn’t been reminded of in a while.  After all, here they are in their complimentary colored onesies, Barry perched politely on the edge of his seat and Hal sprawled on the too-deep chair in a pose that highlights his crotch a bit too much for family friendly programming.

Hal knows what he wants the answer to be, taking in the fond crinkle of Barry’s eyes under his cowl.  But he’s just gotten back, and it’s not something he’s willing to say out loud just yet.  

Instead, he sits forward and grabs Barry around the shoulder.  Barry raises an eyebrow, but he’s smiling and goes along when Hal pulls him close.

“In or out of uniform, this guy’s my best friend.”  Barry fits warm and solid against his side, comfortable despite the heat from the glaring studio lights.  Hal catches Lily’s eye and winks.  “That’s why Bats sent him here to hold my leash.”

Barry freezes under Hal’s arm.

Whoops.  Okay, not too bad.  The audience and host are laughing.  They can totally still salvage this.

Barry huffs.  “If only he’d given me a muzzle.”

Ho-ly shit.   They stare at each other for a long moment before Hal bursts out laughing.

The crowd howls far in the background.  Barry’s eyes are saucers as he gapes, slack jawed and red as his suit.

Hal leans in and whispers conspiratorially into his mic, “No, dude, that’s for tonight.”

The crowd erupts and Barry covers his face with his hands.

“Well, that could have gone worse,” Hal says when they’re finally backstage.  The relief is immense.  He rolls his shoulders, reveling in the ease of movement.

Barry huffs a laugh.  He’d collapsed bonelessly on a brightly colored chair as soon as they’d reached the green room, the air of exhaustion clashing with all the bright colors.  “You really couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

“Hey, that was me helping myself.”  Hal’s grin widens at Barry’s groan.  

He doubts Barry read anything into what he said on stage.  Barry’s used to Hal’s antics, and hasn’t reacted any of the other times Hal’s thrown half-joking propositions his way over the years.

Hal takes a moment to take him in.  Barry’s slumped on the chair, eyes closed.  More experience in front of the cameras or not, Barry’s a textbook wallflower, and he just talked for an hour in front of an audience.  For Hal.

“Big Belly Burger?” Hal’s attempt at casual veers sideways, and he cringes inwardly.  More of his insecurities had bled into his voice than he’d intended.  Right now, he’ll be happy if they can just pick up their friendship where they left off.  To cover himself, he quickly adds, “My treat.”

Barry doesn’t seem to have noticed a thing though and beams at Hal in a way that has his heart stuttering in his chest.  “Absolutely.”

Hal ambles through the Watchtower’s break room, snagging a couple snack packs.  It’s late at night and there’s no one else around.  Yeah, he’s staying with Barry for the week, but he tries not to be a total freeloader.  Barry’s grocery bill is horrendous even when he’s not feeding an extra person, and these free snacks aren’t going to eat themselves.

The interview had aired, and of course they’d kept the entire exchange about the leash.  Hal didn’t mind; it gave him a front row seat to Barry’s mortified blush, with a special encore performance just for him on the couch off to his right.

All in all, Hal’s pretty pleased with himself.  It could have been way worse.  If anything, Bats should be thanking him.

There’s a whooshing behind him and the telltale flutter of a heavy cape.   

“Lantern, we need to talk.”

Shit.

Chapter Text

“Blah blah blah,” Batman lectures. For the stoic image the guy tries so hard to cultivate, he's a real Chatty Cathy when the topic is Hal’s shortcomings.

He’s been going on for at least ten minutes, and Hal’s at the end of his rope. What’s this guy’s deal? If he’s going to force Hal to jump through more hoops to get back into the League, then just out and say it instead of talking Hal’s ear off!

It’s just rude. There’s a reason Bats is never the one in front of the TV cameras.

“Yeah, yeah,” Hal says when he stops to take a breath. “So am I back in or not, Spooky?”

Batman glares at him.

Hal’s out of practice reading Bat Glares, so he just crosses his arms and stares back.

Bats gives first. “You’re in,” he says finally. “Your behavior was childish and unbecoming, but within expected parameters. More importantly, you did well addressing the public’s concerns and promoting the League’s image while doing it. Good job.”

That’s… unexpected. Hal blinks, bewildered.

Bats produces a small wrapped box from his Bat Fanny Pack. “Here. This is for the Flash.”

Hal takes it, still confused. He tears into it immediately; Spooky wouldn’t have given it to him without expecting him to do just that.

It takes Hal a couple seconds to realize what it is. “Really? A muzzle? That’s petty, even for you.”

Hal looks up to find he’s alone in the break room. That wannabe ninja will use any excuse to pull a disappearing act, won’t he?

So Hal cups a hand to his mouth and shouts into the darkness, “I’d get you a dog cone to reciprocate, but it seems redundant since you can’t turn your neck in that cowl anyway!”

Hal winces internally. He’s better than this. He’d agreed to try and get along with Bruce when Barry had brought it up over dinner, but there’s only so much he can take.

But besides Hal being back in the League, Barry’s not hearing about any of this. He can at least count on Bats for that.

Chapter Text

“Hal.  Hal stop that!”

Hal ignores him, tearing another of the stupid circular sensors from his chest.  He winces as it rips a few hairs free, and again when that movement pulls at the stitches above his eye.  The machine whines plaintively at him before being silenced mid-beep.  Hal ignores that too and takes a step towards the door.  His chest may feel like he’s been on the wrong side of a game of Rock’em Sock’em Robots – which isn’t actually that far off – but he’s getting out of this goddamn medbay.

Barry clearly disagrees, and has planted himself between Hal and freedom.  While Hal’s thrilled they’ve been able to pick up as if Hal hadn’t been mostly gone for the last three years, he’s less enthused about this part.

This is not how he’d hoped to spend more time with Barry.

“I’m fine, Bar,” Hal says, taking an agonizing step around Barry and towards the door.

Barry follows him, frustratingly persistent in his man-to-invalid defense.  “I know you heard what J’onn saw on the scans.”

The buzz of the fluorescent overhead lights joins the beeping of the machines in their awful chorus, compounding Hal’s headache.  Seriously, who builds a space station and skimps with crappy office park lighting?  The lights are doing their best to wash out the bright red of Barry’s costume, dulling it down to match the pastel tiles and boxy gray Jetsons equipment.  But Barry’s pulled down his cowl, and dreary lighting is no match for the full force of Barry’s disapproving baby blues.

They’re pretty damn disapproving.  Hal’s only defense is that his vision’s a little blurry.

“…and cracked ribs on top of it all,” Barry finishes.  Hal’s managed about three steps towards the door, his route increasingly circuitous as he continues stubbornly around Barry’s interference.  “Please lie down. With the solution in the IV, you’ll feel better in a couple hours.”  When Hal says nothing, Barry gestures at him.  “Hal, you’re not going anywhere.  You’re one giant bruise.”

This isn’t working.  Time to change tactics.

Hal meets Barry’s concerned frown with a grin.  “You should see the other guy.”

“I did,” Barry says, arms crossed.  “It was a 50 foot tall robotic nutcracker, and it looked fine after smacking you into the pavement.”

“It didn’t smack me into anything!”

“Because I caught you before you could hit the ground.”

Barry looks super unimpressed, which is just wrong.  Ollie’s the unimpressed friend.  Barry’s the friend who’s good for Hal’s ego.

Hal purses his lips.  Why won’t Barry move?  He knows Hal hates it here.  The entire League does.  They’ve had betting pools on how long it’ll take him to escape, for crying out loud.

But they’d brought him here without asking.  And yeah, maybe he’d been “unresponsive,” and “bleeding internally,” but that wasn’t any excuse.

This is way simpler in the Corp.  Just Hal, floating alone in space with his will being the only thing keeping his insides on his inside.

And while he knows Barry’s doing this for Hal’s best interests, knowing Barry would do this for any of his friends is doing nothing for the pit in his stomach.

“What am I going to do here?”  Hal throws up his arms and regrets it when fire lances through his chest.  “Sit around and do nothing, is what.”

Barry’s lips twitch, but he has them back to disapproving schoolmarm almost immediately. “Yes, that is the idea.”

“I can do that anywhere!  If I’m going to sit around doing nothing, I’m going to do it at home, thank you very much.”

“Hal, your lease lapsed.  I barely rescued your stuff from the landfill.”

Huh.  Funny how those things still happen when he’s only away from Earth for a week at a time.

“Okay, whatever, so I can’t go home.  But I can definitely go somewhere not here.”   He’s shaking as he struggles to keep himself vertical, though that’s less distressing than the growing antsy feeling under his skin.  He smiles harder, focusing on the pain to power through it.  “Like your place.  Or a sunny beach in Cancun.  We can get drinks.  Work on our tans.”

“Why am I there?”

Hal wiggles his eyebrows.  The pain stabbing through his face probably ruins the effect.  “Because it’s more fun that way.  Obviously.”

Barry sighs.  “As flattered as I am that you included me in your delusion, that’s not happening.”

“Too bad.  I’m checking myself out and there’s not a thing you can do to stop me.”  There’s plenty Barry can do to stop him and they both know it.  At the rate Hal’s going, it would take him ten minutes to get out of the room without any interference, like Barry standing in his way or the recycling bin that just rudely jumped out in front of him.

Hal tips forward, barely catching himself on the IV pole.  His free arm flails, smacking against a rolling supply cabinet before it’s whooshed out of the way.

Barry’s there and back so quickly that Hal doesn’t see him move from where he’s hovering, clearly on the verge of dumping Hal back on the cot after his barely averted nosedive.

Barry watches him carefully, jaw clenching and unclenching as he runs a hand through his hair.  It’s just long enough to stick up at funny angles.  “Look,” Barry says, his voice dropping in volume, and that’s when Hal knows he’s in for it.  “I know you don’t need another lecture on being reckless.  You have your own way of doing things, and it works for you most of the time, which is as much as any of us can say.”

He sighs again.  Hal wonders, briefly, if Barry sighed this much the entire time Hal was off in space, but quickly abandons that train of thought.  It doesn’t lead anywhere good.  

“You dropped three stories before I could catch you,”  Barry continues quietly.  “I know we’ve been doing this for a while, and this should be getting easier.  But it also means I know how hard something has to hit you to knock you out.  It’s not… it scares me.”

This is so much worse than the “don’t be reckless” talk. 

Barry takes a half step closer, and Hal doesn’t try to move away.  “You know I wouldn’t play this card if I didn’t think staying here would help.  It’s only a few hours.  Please.”

Hal inhales sharply, the stabbing feeling around his ribs far more pleasant than the strong whiff of industrial cleaner.  His heart pounds in his ears, and one of the machines starts beeping faster in time.  Hal reaches for the treacherous sensor to tear it off, but Barry’s faster, removing it with a lot more care than Hal would have afforded it.

If it involved anything besides the goddamn medbay, Hal would fold at that.  But he’s still buzzing with nervous energy that has nothing to do with being a head to toe walking bruise.  He can’t stay here another minute.

Because he hates lying there, the passage of time only marked by the monitors and his growing antsiness.  Much better to accept the pain of moving than the gaping hollow gnawing at his chest as he passively marinates in the fakey smelling lemon cleaner – one his brain oh so helpfully connects with Coast City General’s, even though they can’t possibly be the same.

It occurs to Hal that Barry doesn’t know any of this.  He probably suspects, but Hal hasn’t actually told him.  They’d talked about some of it, late at night in the middle of nowhere, the two of them alone with the open sky.  Those feelings of helplessness aren’t uncommon among the world’s finest.  Even the Fastest Man Alive could arrive too late.  Even the most powerful weapon in the universe could not be enough.

And okay, Hal still doesn’t want to say most of that, particularly with his growing headache.  But maybe there’s something he can give.  

“I just can’t stand being in here, Bar.”

“So it’s the medbay?” Barry asks, picking up on Hal’s meaning immediately.  “Not the treatment?” 

Hal could kiss him.  But that would definitely result in him tipping face first into the cleaner saturated tiles, and even Hal’s more romantic than that .

“Yeah.  I mean, I don’t love being stuck full of needles either, but…”

Barry jumps in at Hal’s slightest hesitation.  “It’s fine.  Is the cot okay?  We can bring it somewhere else.”

Hal would rather leave that too, but Barry’s offering him a lifeline, and Hal is more than happy to take it.

––––

They end up in the gym.  It smells like floor polish, which isn’t great, and a cold draft blows right past Hal’s cot, but Hal’s already feeling worlds better than he did in the medbay.  The bright lights shine off the glossy floor and scattered exercise equipment.  The whole Watchtower seems empty except for the two of them, though Hal wouldn’t have expected anyone else here this late.

After checking Hal’s IV, Barry disappears for a second and reappears with Hal’s jacket, which he lays gently on a bench with Hal’s shirt and ring.  When he comes back a second time he’s proudly wielding a legal pad, a roll of tape, and a box of paper clips.

His grin lights up his entire face, and Hal can’t help the one that creeps onto his own in response.  “Care to demonstrate that paper airplane prowess you’re always bragging about?”

Barry says it like Hal brought it up yesterday.  He hadn’t.  By Hal’s recollection, he probably hasn’t mentioned it in years.

His heart does a little flip that has nothing to do with his injuries.  Hal ignores it.  That’s normal friend stuff, and Hal hasn’t managed to find anything definitive since he’s been back to tell him he’s not firmly in the friend zone.

It’s already screwed up some of the limited time they’ve had together since Hal’s been back. Hal would be taken by a sweet gesture, or the way Barry’s face lit up at something cool Hal brought him from another galaxy, or the light catching in Barry’s hair and framing him in ethereal light.  Then Hal would spend the rest of their time trying to pick up something, anything , from Barry to indicate that he might feel the same.

So far, he’s come up empty.

But he’s not doing any of that this time.  He’s got paper airplanes to make.

“Always,” he says, waving Barry over.  “Bring that here.”

It’s a little awkward, with the IV jammed in one arm and his entire body being one giant ache, but he puts the plane together in record time.  He hasn’t made a real one in a while, but he’s smacked random assholes with green glowing versions far more recently.  He lifts the plane, ignoring the twinge in his chest as he gives it the final systems check.

He’s barely pulled back his arm before the plane is zipped out of his hand.  “Hey!”

Barry smiles at him apologetically.  “You can throw some after you heal up a bit.”  He assesses the plane in his hand and turns back to Hal.  “Anything special I should know about throwing this?”

“Nah, just chuck it like a football.”

Barry nods, then takes a few steps forward and throws the plane, putting his whole body and a hint of super speed into the movement.

Maybe letting Barry throw isn’t so bad, Hal thinks.  He has a fantastic view of Barry’s fantastic ass.  The Flash suit hugs it in all the right places – i.e. everywhere – and Hal watches the enticing ripple of muscle in fascination.

He tears his gaze away in time to catch his creation’s downward descent.  Barry has a hell of a throwing arm; the thing made it most of the way across the gym before coasting smoothly to the polished floor.

“Wow,” Barry says, eyes locked on the distant plane.  Hal’s more pleased than he has any right to be by the awe in Barry’s voice.  “You weren’t kidding about being good at making those.”

Hal shrugs.  “I look up the world record holder whenever I’m back Earthside.”

Barry walks back to lean against the cot, eyeing Hal sceptically.  “You know the world record holding paper airplane, but not who the President is?”

“Hey, I’m staying up to date with advancements in my field.”  He pushes the paper towards Barry.  “Want to show me what you’ve got?”

“Oh geez, I haven’t made one of these since I was a kid.”  But Barry takes the paper anyway.  He mangles it into a vaguely triangular shape in a whirlwind of movement, and then launches it straight into the ground.

“Huh,” he says, staring at it.

Barry’s frown is so serious that Hal can’t help laughing, then groaning as his lungs aggravate his battered ribs.  “Bar, that is straight up embarrassing.  What the hell were you even doing in middle school?”

“Taking notes,” Barry says dryly, but he comes over and hands Hal the paper.  “Care to show me how it’s done, flyboy?”

Hal grins jauntily, then scooches over to the edge of the cot and pats beside him.  The cot’s thin padding dips slightly as Barry climbs up to join him.  It’s wide enough for the two of them, but only barely; they’re pressed together shoulder to knee.

He’d be more distracted by every point of contact if he wasn’t preoccupied by how damn good it feels.  Barry’s accelerating metabolism makes him a natural hot pack, and Hal can practically feel his bruises melting away where they touch.  Hal swallows the groan of relief; much as he’s been downplaying his injuries, every breath reminds him how he feels like he’d been flattened by a steam roller.  This feels amazing.  It’s only through sheer force of will that he doesn’t drape himself over Barry.

Before he can be tempted again, he focuses back on the materials strewn around the cot’s little fold out desk.  “Can you make me another plane?”

Barry nods, speeding through one.  He hands it to Hal.

“So this is traditional, but it’s not engineered for flying.  See this thing?”  He wiggles a loose flap of paper.  “That’s pure drag.  Same with these limp folds you made.  You want to make sure to get a good, crisp crease.  Like this.”

He folds a new sheet in half, demonstrating the technique.  Barry tries to copy him, but the weak fold wobbles pathetically in the drafty gym.

Hal leans in to take Barry’s hands.  They’re really warm against his palms.  Barry relaxes immediately, shifting closer and letting Hal guide him.  “You can go at it harder than that,” Hal says, pressing the side of Barry's nail against the fold.  “You don’t want that flopping around while it’s flying.”  He glances at Barry.  “I know I don’t have to tell you about air resistance.”

Barry grins at him.  “Yeah, it’s a real drag.”

Hal groans, dropping his head to Barry’s shoulder.  What a nerd.  But the heat from Barry’s shoulder is doing wonders for his receding headache.  “Okay, wise guy.  You can tell me how we make a better plane.”

“So the four forces affecting the plane are gravity, drag, thrust, and lift,” Barry says.  Hal doesn’t lift his head from its comfortable resting spot, but from his voice Hal can easily picture Barry’s furrowed brow and sparkling eyes.  “Gravity and thrust are constant.  So we need better folding and a redesign to reduce drag, and bigger wings to increase lift.”

Hal feels Barry shift to look at him and raises his head to nod.  “Right.  We want them to glide farther, so we need to increase wing loading.”  He grins.  “That’s not what we want for fighter jets.  Those are all about the thrust.”

“Of course they are,” Barry says, rolling his eyes.

Hal wiggles his eyebrows.  It barely hurts this time.  Whatever’s in that IV is some good shit.

Hal grabs the paper and starts folding again.  “There’s actually a lot of really specific engineering that goes into optimizing these babies.”  He picks it up, studying it.

“Keep going,” Barry urges him.  “This is all fascinating.”

Hal glances at Barry.  The manipulation is clear; Barry wants to keep him talking so he sits still and heals faster.  But he’s watching Hal intently, and, as far as Hal knows, has never met a nerdy topic that doesn’t leave him weak at the knees.

Well, Hal’s not above performing for attention.

“Alright, you asked for it.  So, we want a positive dihedral angle…”

It’s been a while since Hal’s talked about this stuff; it came up all the time at Ferris, but the Green Lanterns largely ignore the laws of physics.  Barry’s engaged the whole time, speaking up occasionally with a question or to suggest an example.  Hal barely has to bring up a concept before Barry’s nodding along.  It’s gratifying being on the other side of the Flash Facts, with someone so interested with everything he has to say.

He picks up his plane.  As much fun as all this theory talk has been, Hal’s more about the practical applications.

He cocks his arm, winking at Barry before focusing on a point at the opposite side of the gym.  “Thrust.”  He drives forward, releasing in a fluid motion.  “And lift.” 

The plane flies straight and true, gliding across the room before plowing into a wayward piece of equipment.

Hal turns back to Barry, grinning.

Barry’s staring at him.  The tips of his ears have gone pink.  His eyes are dark, and his tongue flicks out to wet his lips absentmindedly.

“Uh…”  Hal mirrors the movement, staring back.  Is he reading this right?  What the hell could have…?

Barry blinks and goes blurry for a second.  He coughs into his hand, then roughly tugs another sheet from the legal pad.  The harsh tearing sound seems to snap him out of it, because he smiles back at Hal.  Hal does his best to return it, and not let it show on his face how that expression is going to haunt his dreams.

“Let me try.”  Barry’s voice comes out husky and Hal can’t take his eyes off him.  

–––––––

Hal shrugs on his jacket, welcoming the familiar weight after hours of sitting around in a drafty gym without a shirt.

They’re back at the medbay.  Or, more accurately, Hal’s waiting outside while Barry finishes putting everything away.  They’d worked their way through the entire legal pad.  Between that and clean up, it’s really late.  Hal’s barely tired, but he’d also been unconscious for the hours prior.  He’s sure Barry’s wiped out. 

Barry pops out of the medbay, closing the door behind him and smiling at Hal.  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“No,” Hal agrees.  He’s actually feeling pretty damn good.  Having his jacket and ring back help, and so does his body no longer feeling like it’ll fall apart if he moves wrong.  But he knows none of those are the real reason.  “Thanks for staying.  I know you could have run off to Cancun without me.”

Barry shakes his head.  “No thanks.  And you were hardly interrupting my busy Friday night.  I would have ended up back in the lab,” he says like it’s a joke.  

They both know it’s not.

“Ready to get out of here?”  Barry continues after a moment’s silence.  “You know you’re welcome to stay with me, if you want to.”

“I was counting on it,” Hal replies, soaking in Barry’s pleased smile.

They’re mostly silent as they head to the zeta tubes.  It’s late, and the low whirring of the space station more than fills the space.

Still, there’s something Hal can’t get off his mind.

“Hey.” His quiet tone must have caught Barry’s attention, because he turns immediately.  Hal takes one red gloved hand, squeezing it gently.  “I’m not going anywhere.  You know that, right?”

Because floating, injured, millions of lightyears from anything doesn’t have the same appeal when he knows that he has this to return to.  Whether it becomes anything else or not, he treasures nights like this.

The concern falls away from Barry’s face, replaced by something warm and fond.  He squeezes Hal’s hand back.  “I know.”  He stares at their linked hands for a long moment before releasing Hal and continuing down the hall.  His tone is light when he speaks again.  “You couldn’t have, anyway.  We disabled your access codes so you couldn’t leave without a clean bill of health.”

“Bar!”  As affronted as he is, Hal can’t hold back the laugh.  “That’s awful!  You all trust me that little?”

Barry’s eyes sparkle as he grins back at him.  “Only when it comes to your own health.  I’ve had houseplants better at keeping themselves alive.”

“Rude.”

He’s glad the mood always swings so easily back to joking friendship with them.  He’s not against real talk, but he’s had enough for tonight.

And if they’re joking around, then he might as well test something.

So Hal leans right up to Barry’s ear, so close that the fine golden hairs tickle his nose when he says, “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?  We can talk some more… aerodynamics.”

Barry’s ears turn a bright, flaming red, and then he bursts out laughing.  Hal joins in, snickering into his hand, and knocks into Barry’s shoulders as they reach the end of the narrow hallway.

They teleport down to Central City, Hal’s eyes glued on the flush riding up the back of Barry’s neck as he tucks some thoughts away for later.  He can work with this.

Chapter Text

“Bar, you better get here soon.  This place is the worst and I need to tell you all about it.”

Hal sends the text and stretches out his legs.  The cracked vinyl chair squeaks in protest and takes its revenge by stabbing its metal frame into his lower back.

Around him, a steady stream of travelers rush by.  It's like watching one of those time lapse ant colonies in a nature documentary, except with less military precision and more yelling into phones.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and he’s in the main terminal of Southern United International Airport, which is more than living up to its abbreviation.  Hal hates airports; they’re the public bus stations of air travel, with smells, incomprehensible PA systems, and pushy crowds to match.  The plastic chair clings to his skin, the air’s been conditioned to hell and back, drying his throat to a shriveled husk, and the family behind him is egging their kid on as she kicks at Hal’s seat.

Barry’s supposed to be here too, but he’s nowhere to be seen.  It’s not like Barry would make the place any less of a hell hole, but it would make complaining about it more satisfying.

His phone buzzes.

“Sorry, I’m running late.  Text me about how bad it is?”

Running late.  What a surprise.

“Everyone’s rushing everywhere, and for what?  Crappy airport chairs, then crappy plane chairs, and then crappy chairs in their crappy cab when they get to their crappy destination.  My toes have been crushed three times already.”  He grits his teeth as a monster suitcase bangs into his foot.  “Four times.”

“Maybe they’re rushing to get seats with foot protection.”

“Ha ha.  You’re hilarious.”

“Are you sitting with your legs sticking out into a walkway?”

Hal surreptitiously rearranges his legs.  “No.”

Not wanting to continue talking about how his injuries aren’t his own fault, Hal texts, “This whole trip is a waste of time anyway.  The team’s full of argumentative assholes, and doing trust falls in a hotel basement in Effingham Illinois isn’t going to change that.”  Hal sends an exploding bomb emoji, realizing a moment too late that it’s not the best choice for an airport.  The TSA already read him the riot act for having the gall to bring mouthwash on a trip with the guy he’s interested in.

Because Hal came prepared.  He’s got a book of science riddles stashed in his bag, and a list of awful nerdy pick up lines rattling around in his head.  He’d even headed straight to the Gotham News when he’d arrived to pick up a bright red ergonomic neck pillow, because it seemed like the sort of practical, yet tragically uncool thing that Barry would like.

Barry’s response pops onto the screen.  “I think we’ve got trust falls mastered.  And it's been a while since we did anything like this,” Barry continues.  “It’ll be good for everyone.”

Hal fumes.  “You sound like Clark.”

Hal can hear Barry’s frown through the text.  “You should apologize to him when we get there.”

Ugh.  Clark.  This whole fiasco is his brainchild.  Someone had made a joke about a corporate team building retreat, and he’d glommed on to the idea with every ounce of his super strength. 

So what if Ollie and Hawkman had gotten into another pointless, repetitive, noisy argument over… Hal can’t even remember.  Just put them on different teams.  It’s fine .  Hal’s two best friends can’t stand being in a room together, and Hal isn’t booking rope courses and organizing cookouts.

But Supes being Supes, he couldn’t stand the infighting.  And Hal being Hal, he’d taken one for the team and argued the counterpoint.

If anything should have gotten him out of this debacle, it’s that.  That was an act of pure selflessness.  Because arguing with Supes is worse than arguing with Bats.  When he argues with Batman, everyone knows Bats is the asshole.  But Superman is so earnest , he’s trying to help .  Who cares how terrible his idea is?  How dare Hal make him sad by disagreeing with him.

Even when he’s blatantly wrong and wasting everyone’s time.

To add insult to injury, Clark had insisted that they all travel muggle style.  In coach .

Outside the dirty window, a plane lumbers towards the gate.  It swings wide, and he watches as it backs up and tries the turn again.  After three torturous attempts, it finally reaches the gate.  It’s like watching a teenager parallel park, but ten times worse because it’s a perversion of everything Hal loves.

“Barry, these planes hurt my soul.  Send help.”

The thing is bulbous and top heavy, lacking the sleek grace of the X-42 Carol refused to let him take up when he’d stopped by Ferris.  Apparently she’s worried about things like “liability insurance” and “protecting the company’s investments” that she’d never cared much for before.

But things are different now; he doesn’t have boyfriend privileges, and the pressure of running the company is clearly weighing on her more now that she’s the owner rather than the owner’s daughter.  Years ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice about cajoling her into letting him take the plane up for a joyride, and then take her out on a date afterwards, HR team be damned.  Last week he’d joked with her about making sure he’s on the schedule and then gotten out of her hair.

Huh.  Well, he doesn’t want to dwell on that any more than he wants to think about the smattering of grey hairs he’d found by his temples.  Those had been pulled posthaste, never to be thought of again.

He checks his phone.  Three whole minutes have passed since his last message, and still no response.  

“Where are you?  You remember you need time to get through airport security, right?  After you made sure to remind ME to get here two hours before the flight?”

The response is immediate this time.  “Okay, okay.  I’m leaving now.  See you soon?”

God, what a dork.  He always ends his texts like that, like they’re letters or some shit.

“Just get over here already.”

His stomach growls.  Of fucking course.  He’d run out the door and hadn’t had time to supplement the trio of ketchup packets that had stared up at him mockingly from his otherwise empty fridge.  There’s a sandwich kiosk nearby, but it looks like it’s trying too hard to be trendy, which means that he’ll be able to afford half a sandwich with the fifteen dollars and twenty three cents in his pocket.  He heads for the Gotham News instead.

He wanders over unenthusiastically.  There’s a table with the obligatory trite Coast City souvenirs t-shirts and baseball caps.  He studies the table with the Green Lantern merch a little more closely.

It occurs to him that he has no idea who licenses his merchandise, or any of the heroes’ emblems.

It’s got to be Bruce, right?  If it isn’t, then he hasn’t a clue.  No one’s served him with a cease and desist for wearing his uniform so far.  But if Bats is making bank off the copyrights, then he’s that much more of a dick for cheaping out on the plane tickets.

Ugh.  Even Hal can’t stay mad at Supes.  Being pissed at Bats just comes so much more naturally.

He’s heading for the snacks in the back corner when a brightly colored shelf catches his attention.  He takes a step closer and almost chokes.

Neatly arranged on the top of the shelf are a collection of Justice League themed romance novels.

Oh, sorry.  “Champions of Justice.”  Apparently they didn’t want to pay Bats for the Justice League branding.

Staring up at him are a line of sultry, shirtless models wearing off-brand versions of his friends’ outfits.  The first book features a tattooed, long haired hunk with a trident.  The next has an oiled up dude in suspenders and badly photoshopped eagle wings he assumes is supposed to be Hawkman.  He’d be lying if he said he isn’t familiar with the porn parodies, but this is his first encounter with this particular market.

Hal sends a picture of the line of books to Oliver, along with the caption “See what you’re missing on your private jet?”

Because if Bats isn’t going to pay for his leg room, he’s going to pay for Hal’s data plan.

He immediately shuffles the books around to find the Green Lantern knockoff.  The cover model’s okay, Hal supposes, but then they were always going to have trouble finding someone with his natural good looks, great hair, and amazing muscle definition.  The guy’s tiny Halloween mask also isn’t doing him any favors.  Hal briefly considers all the times he’s been told the same about his own mask, but quickly dismisses the thought.

He flips the book over, skimming the summary.  “Devilishly handsome,” obviously.  “Recklessly throwing himself into danger,” sure, he’ll take that, and… Oh, come on!  They could have come up with a better name than Green Gladiator!  They’re not even trying!

He’s barely finished the summary before he gets a reply.

Predictably, Ollie asks, “Where’s the Green Arrow one?”  And then, a couple seconds later, “You’re welcome to join me.  Just admit that the Arrowplane is a fantastic name, and far superior to any you suggested.”

“No.  It’s the worst.  And you’re the worst for liking it.”

The books are stacked three deep on the shelf, and Hal flips through each one to make sure he’s absorbing the full range of options.  This is really expanding his horizons.  Because apparently someone’s romantic fantasy is to bang Guy Gardner.

He sets that one aside.  It’s got a very important date with the Oa break room.

After a thorough search, he’s ready to call it.  “Nope, nada.”  As an afterthought, he adds, “The next shelf is rich asshole romances.  You’re probably in there.”

His phone bings.  “It’s cute, how funny you think you are.”  Then, “I can’t believe Booster Gold got one and I didn’t.”

Hal stashes his phone.  Ollie’s going to be sulking for a bit, which gives him plenty of time to look at…

A woman wanders over, glancing over Hal’s shoulder.  He snatches the book up before she can get it.

Lovestruck by Lightning.   The cover artist had the good sense to photograph their model from behind, obviously familiar with their inspiration’s assets.  Even without immediate reference, Hal’s comfortable saying it can’t compare.  Granted, he’s been uniquely blessed with access and opportunity to view the original.

Hal gathers his purchases.  There’s a bit of a line, so he pulls out his phone.  Looks like Ollie’s still sulking, which is rich, considering that he’s the reason Hal’s here.

“In case you need more reasons you’re the worst, add this trip to the list.  You just couldn’t keep your opinions in your pants in front of Clark, could you?”

Ollie’s rebuttal is as swift as it is biting.

“For a guy intergalactically known for his will, you sure get talked into a lot of shit you don’t want to do.”

And this is why Hal prefers complaining to Barry.

Where the hell is Barry?  If Hal has to sit for hours on a commercial airplane by himself, he’s going to lose it.

First class boarding had come and gone, along with a bunch of random categories that Hal’s pretty sure the airline just made up.  He’s glancing over his shoulder every thirty seconds by the time his section’s called.  He checks his phone for the fiftieth time, but no, nothing since Ollie’s feelings of inadequacy.

Mostly Hal’s annoyed with himself.  Why’d he let Supes talk him into this?  He should have powered up his ring and flown like he’d originally intended, subsequent chewing out be damned.

There’s a scuffle on the main walkway, and a familiar voice apologizes profusely.  Hal’s eyes snap up and immediately spot Barry helping a family collect their scattered luggage.

Right.  There’s why.

Hal jogs over as Barry apologizes again.  The family ignores him, the parents more interested in wrangling their children and power walking away.

“Dude, where were you?  Come on, we need to–“

He cuts himself off as Barry lifts his head and Hal finally gets a good look at him.  

Barry’s a mess.  His hair’s windswept like he ran through a wind tunnel, and his shaded eyes are picking up the color of the heavy circles beneath them.  He relaxes when he recognizes Hal, but the dopey half-smile doesn’t do anything to calm Hal’s racing nerves.

Hal frowns.  He knows Barry’s not great at taking care of himself, but he usually does better than this .

“Come on,” he says, grabbing Barry’s bag and ignoring his protests.  He guides them back into line by his own abandoned luggage, ignoring the glare from the guy behind him.  He reaches up, smoothing Barry’s mussed hair into something vaguely presentable.  “What happened, man?  You’re dead on your feet.  You should have called if something came up.”

Barry gapes at him for a moment before shaking his head.  Hal wonders if he even noticed he did it.  The handful of times he’s dealt with a totally zonked Barry, he had trouble maintaining human speed.  Barry knows it too; from what Hal can tell, that’s the main reason Barry tries to get a decent night’s sleep.

“I would have, but it was all lab work,” Barry says.  He’s blinking a lot, clearly trying to wake himself up.  “I didn’t want cases sitting around because I was away.”

A guy lugging a massive carry-on veers towards Barry.  Hal grabs Barry by the shoulders, pulling him out of the way.  “Hey, watch it!” he snarls at the man’s back.  If this airport thing is meant to help them connect with the civilians they shuttle out of harm’s way on a daily basis, then it’s backfiring.

Hal takes a long breath.  Now that he knows Barry’s answer, he wonders why he even bothered to ask.  Still, he lowers his voice and leans in to say, “If you’re this dead on your feet, why didn’t you just run over tomorrow?  It’s not like people aren’t already expecting you to be late.”

Barry’s puppy dog eyes freeze Hal where he stands.  Or maybe they’re panda eyes, given the dark circles under them?  Raccoon?  “I told you I’d be here.” Hal’s heart melts, even as he wants to smack him.  Barry’s lips quirk up, though it only serves to make him look more tired.  “You know, to support you through your awful fear of flying.”

Hal barks a laugh, ignoring the annoyed heads of the other passengers swiveling his way.  He pats Barry’s back.  “Hilarious.  Just try to stay upright for a couple more minutes and then you can sleep on the plane.  You’re not going to be missing anything.”

“You’ll have to tell me all about it.”  Barry cuts himself off to yawn into his hand.  “On the trip back.”

“Oh, hell no.  I’ve had more than enough of this, thanks.  I don’t care what Clark says, as soon as it hits 3pm on Friday, I’m lighting up and getting out of there.”

“Oh, I’d been meaning to ask.”  This finally wakes Barry up, if only marginally.  “I called the hotel, and they’re able to extend the rooms through the weekend.  If you wanted to hang around for another couple of days.  A few of the others are doing it.”

Barry’s talking too much, giving way too many details for the seemingly innocuous request.  They hang out all the time.  Half the time they finish a mission they stick around to try the local chow, or visit some landmark Barry always wanted to see.

Should he be reading into this?

Who is he kidding?  None of that matters; he’s doing it either way.  “Yeah, sure Bar.”

Barry’s smile is bleary eyed but bright, and Hal leaves him alone while they board.

The inside of the plane is even worse than the outside.  After getting blasted by the desert heat waiting at the gate, the over-processed, over-conditioned air of the cabin is stifling.  He can already smell feet, and the plane’s only half full.  He spares a longing look at the spacious first class seats before trudging farther back.  And hey, look, a bunch of assholes jumped the line and are already seated.  They get to stay packed in this tuna can longer than they have to; he doubts their ill-gotten overhead compartment space is worth it.

Barry takes the middle seat because he’s a saint, and is half asleep by the time Hal sits down.  Predictably, they have negative leg room; Hal’s 6’2” and Barry’s all leg, so their knees will definitely have tray table indents by the end of the trip.  

Hal’s stomach growls again, and he’s met with a bag of trail mix that Barry hands over wordlessly. Hal digs out the “U” shaped pillow and hands it to Barry, who smiles appreciatively and adjusts it for full ergonomic potential.  Despite the noise and the jostling of the seats as boarding continues, he immediately dozes off.

He must have been exhausted , Hal thinks, studying the tiny movements of Barry’s eyelashes.  Hal’s not sure he’s ever seen Barry sleep in public before.

Hal lets out a breath, trying to let go of his disappointment with it.  He’d been looking forward to spending the couple uninterrupted hours with Barry; despite Hal mostly being on Earth these days, between their jobs, their “jobs,” and every other sort of distraction, they still don’t get to spend much time together.  And maybe Hal’s a little greedy for Barry’s time and attention.

Lacking anything else to do, Hal reaches into his bag.  Oh right, the ridiculous novels.  The red and gold cover of the off brand Flash romance greets him.  Hal smirks and flips it open.

It’s not bad.  Yeah, the audience surrogate protagonist is a little bland, and the author clearly hasn’t experienced the disorientation of being moved at super speed, but he can think of worse ways to pass a couple hours.

Something warm presses against his shoulder.  Hal turns.  Barry’s slid over into his space, face pressed into the fur collar of Hal’s jacket.  He shifts as Hal watches, nestling his body as close as his flight attendant approved seat belt will allow.

Okay, Hal can definitely spend a couple hours like this, circulation be damned.

He gets a whiff of cologne, and frowns.  Actually, now that he’s looking, Barry’s dressed pretty nicely, the fitted jeans and polo the same blue as his eyes clearly not what he would have worn to work.  Who dresses up for the airport?

There’s a shutter snap and Hal’s eyes snap forward.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Dinah says from behind her phone.  She’s seated two rows forward on the other side of the aisle, where she uncrosses and re-crosses her legs to show off her ample leg room her shorter legs allow.  “You two look like you’re having a good time.”

“What are you even doing here?” Hal asks.  “You didn’t ride with Ollie?”

“I had a gig down here.  And I don’t get to ride in the jet unless I tell Ollie its nickname isn’t terrible.”  She smirks.  “But I also told him I’d never lie to his face, so, here I am.”

“That hypocrite, punishing us for standing by our convictions,” Hal says, grinning.  “I’m still surprised Bruce didn’t get you a better seat.”

“Oh, he had me in business class, but I downgraded.  He said the savings would go towards HQ upgrades.”

“That asshole.  He originally had me all the way in the back, in a middle seat too!”

What the hell, Spooky?  He’s actively trying to get on Hal’s nerves, right?  There’s no other explanation.

“Really?  I figured you’d both downgraded.”  She pointed at Barry.  “He did.”

Hal turns his head slightly, blond hair tickling his cheek.  If Dinah was in first class, Bruce definitely would have put Barry there too.  Barry hadn’t said a thing, even though Hal had been moaning about this for weeks.

That heart stutter’s back again.

Dinah rests her head on a hand casually.  “So what are you reading?”

Hal smirks.  “Oh, you know.  Just a little something I picked up for the trip.”  He’d pass her the book, but the dude’s ass on the cover is pretty blatant, even from where she’s sitting.  The lightning effects act as arrows, pointing straight to it.  “I’m reading this one, but I got some others.”

He digs into his bag and tosses her a book.

She starts laughing when she sees the cover.  It’s the shiniest, plastic-iest version of her suit outside a bondage shop, with Tough Lovebirds printed boldly across it.  “I see you’re a man of high culture.”

“You know it,” Hal says with a wink.

She smiles back, softer this time.  “I’ll send you the picture when we land.  And then delete it before Ollie ‘accidentally’ finds it on my phone.”

“Thanks.”  He hadn’t told Dinah about his feelings, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she knew everything anyway.  Hell, she probably knew before he did.  But she’s his friend.  One he even trusts not to be an asshole about it.

He shifts in his seat as much as he can without dislodging Barry.  “Now when’s this thing getting going?  I want out of here already.”

The intercom system crackles to life and Hal’s stomach drops.

“This is your captain speaking.  Due to technical difficulties, we will be returning to the gate for a maintenance check.  We will keep you updated as we receive additional information.  Thank you for your patience.”

Dinah bursts out laughing.

Hal would sink into his seat, but that would wake Barry.  The guy’s exhausted; Hal can’t disturb him up when he so clearly needs the sleep.  And if Hal ends up a little closer to their shared armrest, well, then he can just blame it on his fear of flying.

Chapter Text

Lovestruck by Lightning

Daisy is burned out from her hectic life in Gotham.  She needs a change of pace, and jumps at the chance to spend half a year in Central City.  She’s looking forward to kicking back, sunbathing on the roof of her highrise, and living life in the slow lane.

But after being rescued from a holdup gone wrong, Daisy is swept into a whirlwind romance with The Bolt, Central City’s resident superhero and most eligible bachelor.  His life is the opposite of everything Daisy thinks she wants, but she can’t deny the electric chemistry sparking between them.

Malcolm Underwood is a racecar driver by day, super-powered vigilante by night.  He’s used to a life of fast cars and faster women.  But when a chance encounter puts Daisy in his path, he begins to wonder if he can continue his life without stopping to smell the roses.

Highball Reviewed Lovestruck by Lightning (4 out of 5 stars)

Reviewed at 8:33PM

Heroine and plot are fine, but didn’t read a Flash romance for the Flash to be an asshole.  3 stars overall, added 1 for creative uses of the vibrating ****.

Tough Lovebirds

Rockstar vigilante Hannah Hawking loves three things: singing, her motorcycle, and her gal pals who all go as hard as she does.  They all fit right in with her life of kicking ass and taking names.  She’d like a man too, but isn’t going to settle.  He has to be able to keep up or he’ll be left behind.

But when a friend goes missing, Hannah’s thrown together with Flint Steele, a mysterious bad boy with a dark past.  He’s the sort of stud wearing, bench pressing, leather scented badass she always pictured herself with.  Their attraction is undeniable, but Hannah can’t be sure how involved he is in the organization behind her friend’s disappearance.  But as the plot thickens, she needs to decide if she can trust him with her mission… or with her heart.

Dinah Reviewed Tough Lovebirds (4 out of 5 stars)

Reviewed at 8:45PM

The highlight of this book was Hannah’s relationship with her gals.  I was happy to find that they all have their own books in the series, all of which I’m looking forward to reading and sharing with my own group of friends.

Where this book fell short for me was in the plot.  It never quite figured out if it wanted to be a romance or a thriller, and… Read More>

GREEN IN Reviewed Tough Lovebirds (2 out of 5 stars)

Reviewed at 8:49PM

Flint Steel is a ridiculuos **** name and shuld not be toleated!

Highball Reviewed Tough Lovebirds (5 out of 5 stars)

Reviewed at 8:52PM

Should be ten stars.  Amazing.  Hannah is a badass. 

I love how MANLY Flint Steel is and how he doens’t have tiny facial hair. He lives up 2 his pr0n name and his motorcylce doesn’t have a stupid nickname because he’s not insecure LIKE SOME PEOPLE.     

The Star City public library has three copies of this and only 1 of Lovestruck By Cupid’s Arrow.  Realy sayz all you need 2 no

By This Power Ring

Jillian Jones’ life is cupcakes and frosting, literally.  She runs her own cupcake bakery, and likes her life sweet and fluffy just like her confections.  She just wants to meet a nice guy and settle down.  Unfortunately her notoriously bad taste in men has come back to haunt her when a particularly big mistake from her past comes back to town.  But the encounter also lands her in the strong arms of Green Gladiator.  He seems to feel what she’s feeling, but with his bad boy attitude will this just be another in a string of mistakes?

Mild mannered accountant Bryan Reynolds has a secret: he’s actually Coast City’s devilishly handsome super vigilante Green Gladiator.  After a long hard day of balancing the books, nothing tops it off better than cleaning some guy’s clock.  But as much as he can rely on his power ring when recklessly throwing himself into danger will he be able to be as fearless when the thing in jeopardy isn’t his life, but his heart?

Highball Reviewed By This Power Ring (1 out of 5 stars)

Reviewed at 9:23PM

U guys hav SEEN Green Lantern, right?  That guys smoking hot, confident, aerial superiority.  He s NOT a ACCOUNTANT.  Accountants WISH they could be half as cool, suave, sm3xy, confident, and secure in ther masculinity as Green Lantern’s LITLE FINGER!!1!   

Gren Lanter s Top Gun.  This boks version is sum extra who showed up 2 late and dint get 2 b in the movie!  He can take his Hallween msk nd pocket protector and shov them up his...  Read more>

* This review has been deleted by Mr. Sarcastic of the moderation team

Chapter Text

Hal hugs his jacket tighter around him as he stares through the shrubbery with singular intent.  The lone man ambles from one end of the parking lot to the other, idly scratching at his stomach under his black tank top.

Tank top guy reaches into his pocket. 

Hal leans forward expectantly.

Tank Top pulls out his phone.

Hal groans, collapsing forward in a heap.  The frigid steering wheel digging into his forehead stings almost enough to hold his attention, and that’s more than he can say about the rest of this train wreck of a mission.  But that’s not right.  Train wrecks are interesting.  This mission is more like getting stuck in traffic, on the way to the DMV, while some monotone asshole on the radio drones on about golf.

“Stakeouts are the fucking worst .”

“They are,” Barry says. He doesn’t even try to find a silver lining, which says volumes about how dire a situation they’re facing.

Fucking Amazo.  The android had been harassing the League for weeks, popping its robo-buzz cut head up to steal a component or incinerate a factory.  It had the powers of the entire League, which is the only thing taking the sting out of being smacked around by a robot that looks like an elvish trapeze artist.  By the end of the week, they’d all been fed up enough with the thing continually slipping their trackers to go old school with their tactics.

So here they were, camped out in front of a nondescript warehouse in The Middle of Nowhere, Canada watching a bored security guard scroll through Instagram.  There’s a dinky one lane highway between it and Hal and Barry’s conspicuously placed rental.  They’d tried arranging the car discreetly, but there’s really only so much to do when all they had was a gray sedan and a whole lot of trees.  Currently, the long shadows from the setting sun disguise them in a way the abundant foliage had totally failed to earlier in the day.  Unfortunately for Hal, Tank Top’s predecessors in incompetent security – codenamed Baseball Cap and Sweat Bands, because he’s creative like that – hadn’t taken advantage and given Hal a reason to just search the place already.

Not to say they hadn’t come prepared.  Armed with all the road trip staples and a mountain of snacks, they’d settled in for the long haul.  They’d played I Spy.  They’d played Hangman.  They would have played the license plate game, but maybe two cars had gone by since they’d been out here, which really puts their cover in jeopardy, doesn’t it?  But, inevitably, they’d run out of games, run out of snacks, and were stuck waiting for Tank Top to do something interesting.  Or, if history was any indicator, not.

Hal still has the chemistry pick up lines rattling around in his head.   He’d practiced his delivery in the mirror, even, but he’s saving those for when times get truly desperate.

Now that he thinks about it, being in the Justice League is boring .  For every ten minutes of intergalactic blowhards trying to eat the Earth, there’s three hours of meetings, paperwork, and monitor duty.  But stakeouts are hands down the worst.  They combine the heart pounding action of sitting in front of a screen with the five star amenities any three foot by five foot box would provide.

And on top of everything else, he’s fucking freezing.

“If these evil geniuses are so smart, why can’t they set up shop somewhere that doesn’t suck?” Hal says before his lips can go numb.  “Maybe somewhere near civilization, where they, and any hypothetical stakers outers, could get a Sundollar and a bathroom break.”

Barry snorts.  He looks perfectly toasty in his light jacket, the jerk.  “It’s better that they don’t.  These operations would be much more dangerous in a city than ten miles outside a town with a hundred and thirty four people.”

“I’m going to ignore why you were so specific right there because it’s not the point,” Hal says as he sits up.  He wishes it were lighter out; he’d been able to get away with making seat cushions for them earlier in the day, but the green light of a construct heating pad would be too obvious now.  So instead his butt is going numb, and he’s blaming that on Amazo too.  “It’s about consideration .  That’s all I want.  They don’t need to be downtown.  They could be in a suburb or something.  Maybe somewhere with a little cafe across the street.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to get a pastry while sitting around watching some asshole in a tank top pick his nose?”

“Alleged asshole,” Barry corrects, playing along because he’s the best.  The binoculars in his lap flicker as he looks across the street at super speed, as they have every five minutes or so since they’ve been out here.  He’s interrupted by an impressively loud stomach growl and winces.  “And stop reminding me that we’re out of snacks.”

After the initial shock, the weird anti-Cheetos they’d picked up had been hard nuggets of cheesy goodness.  They’d spent way longer than necessary in the tiny convenience store three towns back, snickering and pointing out wine flavored gummies and other Canadian specialties.  A smile tugs at Hal’s lips but he tamps it down; he’s busy being cold and miserable right now, thanks.

“Okay, no more talking about how you’d be able to stop at a taco truck, or hot dog stand, or burger joint—” he cuts off with a cackle at Barry’s glare.  “And sure, let’s go with your scenario: remote and hidden.  Why not put your generic warehouse in the tropics?  Or Southern California?  That’s a great place for an evil scientist’s lair!”

“Hal, you know exactly what type of criminals set up shop in Southern California.  That’s half your beat when you’re on Earth.”

“Yeah, but I understand my guys, and they understand me.  And maybe they're fleshy over-evolved sharks, or a little too into dead things, or take having a big head too literally.  But even if they’re trying to kill and eat me, at least they’re not freezing my ass off while doing it.”

“How considerate.  I can’t believe I never realized.  You should send them thank you cards; once that gets around it’ll encourage the other supervillains to follow suit.”

Hal scoffs.  “Whatever.  Mock me all you want, but you know it’d be great to just once do our thing in a temperature controlled building without having to worry about where you put your big yellow boots.”

Barry’s binoculars flicker again and he chuckles.  Hal glances over to the warehouse.  Wow, of all the things for Tank Top to oblige Hal for, it had to be the nose picking.  If he really wanted to be agreeable, he’d put on a Kobra hood or reveal a robot arm so Hal would have an excuse to get out of this goddamn car.

“You know,” Barry says, after the excitement of watching an adult man explore his nasal cavity has worn off, “that was a really roundabout way of saying you’re cold.”

Hal rubs the frozen back of his neck with a frozen hand.  It’s great for his hand and shit for his neck.  “Yeah, well, I’ve been told I complain too much.”  It’s usually Guy doing the telling, in which case Hal doubles down.  Unsurprisingly, coworkers trying to out-stubborn each other is pretty common in the Corp.  “So I wasn’t complaining.  I was… offering constructive criticism.”  He’s trying to get through this with a straight face, and is only half succeeding.  But he can see the amused crinkle around Barry’s eyes, so he’s not that put out.  “It’s not my fault these jokers aren’t living up to my high standards for villainy.”

“I can see why.  They’re pretty high standards,” Barry deadpans.  But his expression softens immediately after.  “You should have mentioned that earlier.  I brought you something.”

Barry reaches into the back of the car, rifling through the empty snack bags to hand him a paper box.

Hal pulls the lid off, apprehensive at first, then curious when what’s inside isn’t the expected hat with a massive pompom or flannel lined sweater vest.  No, instead it’s a simple pair of leather gloves and a dark red scarf.

“It’s a modern take on the classic aviator scarves,” Barry says.  “Or, at least that’s what Iris and the saleswoman said.  I figured you’d appreciate their help, since I know you hate every piece of clothing I own.”

“Not every piece,” Hal says, thinking about how the Flash suit’s pointy belt invited onlookers to direct their eyes to certain, very specific, locations.  He pulls on a glove.  It fits snug but not tight, the lining soft against his skin.  He curls his fingers experimentally, savoring the prickle as he gets some feeling back.  He loops the scarf around his neck next.  It slides in between his skin and the collar of his coat, perfectly filling the space and blocking the perpetual draft.  “These are really nice, Bar.  I… thanks.”

“I thought it would be a good investment.”  Barry’s eyes glint in the low red light.  “So you’re not whining every time the temperature drops below 70.”

“Hey!”  He slings the tail end of the scarf over his shoulder, but it ruins his dramatic moment by hitting the ceiling and pooling on his shoulder.  “Even I’m not that bad.  I wait for it to get to 65.”  Because the car clearly hates him, the roof collides with his elbows when he tries to salvage his look.

Barry laughs. “I know.  You’re a model of stoicism.  Now let me help you with that.”  When Hal stills, he reaches out and carefully wraps the scarf around Hal’s neck.  

Hal tries not to swallow too obviously whenever the relative chill of Barry’s fingers brush his skin.  He’s sure however Barry’s wrapping it is the scarf equivalent of a bow tie, but he knows better than to argue with Barry about better looking knots that could potentially strangle him.

Barry’s fiddling near his collarbone when it occurs to Hal that it’s June.  So yeah, Hal’s freezing, because it’s Canada and it’s – he glances at the car thermometer – 64 degrees, but Central definitely wouldn’t have winter weather clothing now.  He shifts, enjoying the caress of the wool against his skin.

The sun’s dipped below the horizon now, vanishing completely behind the dense line of trees and leaving them in the dark.  The flood lights illuminate a semicircle around the warehouse, but don’t reach the two of them.  Only the brightest stars glint against the strip of sky above them, peeking through at the darkest parts.  The car mutes the chorus of insects and rustling of the leaves, amplifying the sound of each breath.  It’s like the world has contracted to just the two of them.

And Tank Top.  Hal can see him stretching under the floodlights.  Hal really shouldn’t keep forgetting about him.

“Keep this up and I’ll think you want to keep me around,” Hal says, smoothing the front of the scarf and tucking the ends into his jacket.  “I should complain about things more often, if it means I get presents.”

“You complain plenty.”

He can hear the smile in Barry’s voice, but...  “Too much?”

Barry chuckles.  “I like listening to you.  I learn something new about you each time.  Even if it’s only what you’ll come up with to distract yourself from the cold.”

Hal hadn’t even thought of that.  Warmth spreads in his chest that has nothing to do with his new accessories.

“You know, you’re allowed to, too,” Hal says.  “Complain.”

Barry pauses, his mouth hanging open as if Hal had suggested he start a circus with his Rogues. 

When Hal’s banished that mental image and Barry still hasn’t responded, he smirks. “Come on , I know you can.  You wouldn’t shut up about how much Central City hated you when you first started.”

“They didn’t hate me!”  Barry lets out a huff that’s clearly stifling a laugh.  “Though I can’t say they were that fond of you.”

“Which I knew because you wouldn’t shut up about it.”  When Barry stays silent, Hal bumps him with his shoulder and smirks when he looks over.  “If you’re out of practice, start small.  Did those rock hard cheesy things stick in your teeth?  Are you cursing Dinah for ducking out on stakeout duty?  Did your charming, handsome, debonair best friend cheat at Hangman earlier?”

“I maintain that ‘kvetch’ isn’t English.”

“And I maintain that you’re just a sore loser.  It’s not my fault that having brothers was better preparation for extreme Hangman than the spelling bee.”

Barry rolls his eyes, but goes back to staring blankly at his knees instead of continuing.

Hal sighs and runs a hand through his hair.  Unsurprisingly, it’s not at its best after marinating all day in a metal box, despite the extra care he might have put in this morning.  “I only bring it up because you’ve seemed extra exhausted lately.  I know you’re busy with your job, and I’m grateful we’ve been able to spend as much time together as we have, but whatever you’re doing is clearly not working.” 

Because Barry’s usually much better at managing the well curated image of being a functional adult than Hal, who’s mostly accepted that his personal life is a dumpster fire. He’d forced Barry to nap through half of the afternoon, because despite not wanting the time alone watching Sweat Bands pace the parking lot or thinking about the impending disaster of Jim’s cookout, he saw the pattern and didn't like it one bit.

“I don’t know that I have much to complain about,” Barry says slowly, though Hal can see him frowning in the low light.  “I like my job, and ten years ago I never could have even imagined everything I’ve gotten out of my second one.  Compared to all that, something like work-life balance, as a superhero, with super speed, just seems…”  He shrugs.

It takes another minute, but Barry finally takes a deep breath and continues, “Patty’s getting married.”  He must see something in Hal’s reaction, because he quickly adds, “I’m happy for her.  Really.  It’s just one of those events that makes you take a hard look at your own life.

“What worked for me 5 years ago doesn’t work anymore.  But I still want to be able to give my cases the time they deserve, put in the hours needed for the League, have time to spend with you.  It’s painfully boring, but that doesn’t make it easier to solve.”  He turns to Hal, wry smile on his lips.  “But you’re right; I’ve been neglecting Barry Allen and his problems.  It’s so easy to put them aside when there’s always another bank alarm going off, or another call from the League.”

Yeah, Hal can relate.

“If it were me, I’d go smash some asteroids.  But I don’t know that that’s quite your speed.”  Hal’s only half joking.  At some point, thinking about Carol with someone else had stopped triggering the whirlwind of emotions, but he can’t say what helped that, besides time, distance, and new perspective about what he wants out of life.  He knows Barry and Patty haven’t been together for a while, but even Hal doubts that “You’ve got options!  In this car, even!!” would be well received.

“You know, I did ask myself what you’d do in my situation.”  Barry chuckles.  “It created an... interesting mental image.”

Barry thinks about what Hal would do?  Now there’s a terrifying thought.  He definitely doesn’t want Barry running off to space for three years.

“Jim’s throwing a cookout next weekend, and said I could bring a plus one.  Maybe that could be a Barry Allen thing.”  Hal says instead.  He knows it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as it’s out of his mouth, but he just can’t stop talking.   “I know parties aren’t your favorite, and it’ll be a lot of chasing after the kids, but—“

“I’d like that,” Barry says, cutting Hal off before he can ramble further or recoil in horror at his mouth betraying him.  “And I’m not going to say that stakeouts are great, because they’re not, but I’ve had a good day.”  Barry shifts so he’s sitting sideways, facing Hal.  The moonlight traces the curve of his smile. “Even if you do cheat at Hangman.”

And Hal can’t find it in himself to disagree.

They lapse into silence again, though more contemplative this time.  

Hal stares up at the stars through the windshield.  They shine bright against the patch of sky visible between the silhouetted trees, pushed to the background by the near full moon hanging right above the treeline. The scarf rustles around his neck as he tilts his head back to appreciate them.  The conversation, the world contracting around them, the moonlight on Barry’s face, it’s reminding him of that night, three years ago, shortly before he’d left Earth.

He revisited the memory often while floating through space with nothing around him for lightyears.  Despite it being just one in a string of similar nights – they’d often wind up together, after missions, and talk – he can easily conjure this one.  He recalls the crisp bite of the air, that in-between feeling, like it couldn’t decide on a season and was taking it out on him.  Above them, the stars had been splayed out across the sky, layers on top of each other so deep it felt like he could see straight through to the other side of the universe.

The previous month had been a constant stream of retrospectives and ceremonies marking the five year anniversary of the Apokalips invasion and the formation of the League.  It all had been a sudden and unwelcome reminder that Hal had been with the Justice League longer than he’d been in the Air Force.  The uncomfortable antsy feeling exacerbated everything that had already been wearing at him: the League’s increasing politicization, the interpersonal issues they’d sidestepped but never actually addressed, the unrealistic expectations heaped upon them by the press and the public.  And with troubling reports out of the far sectors and the growing number of superheroes on Earth, everything pointed toward it being time to go.

Barry had agreed with him about all of that, and had mostly seemed relieved that Hal hadn’t quit the League on a whim.  He hadn’t really pushed when Hal had said it felt like it was time to move on.

He remembers Barry casting Hal’s actions in a generous light, more generous than Hal had deserved.  He remembers pushing back, and Barry saying “I’ll be rooting for you, too,” like it was a given, something obvious Hal should expect from everyone.

Mostly though, Hal remembers staring at Barry lit silver by the moonlight and thinking I love him .

He’d left for space not long after, the act equal parts cowardice and uncharacteristic responsibility.  Because Barry was the best person Hal knew and Hal was the crappy best friend he hadn’t wanted to tell he was with someone else.  And if he’s not ready to be all in on this, what’s the point of gambling the best friendship he’s ever had?

But he thinks that, now, maybe he is.

And maybe ergonomic pillows and chemistry pickup lines aren’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s like Barry said; they’re not anything he’d have imagined himself doing three or eight or ten years ago.

The ceiling of the car is too close to his head, his legroom is negligible, and his butt’s numb, but it’s not the expanse of the universe outside the windshield that he’s drawn to right now.

He looks over at Barry.  The moonlight could have been straight from his memory, the darkness obscuring the changes from the intervening years.  Gone are the worn eyes and the worry lines on Barry’s brow.  If he wanted, Hal could paint them back in his mind; he knows his face well enough.  But the illusion of the past meeting the present feels appropriate, like this moment is the culmination of all that time.  

Hal swallows.

“Do you know?”  Hal hears himself ask.  “What you want?”

Because Hal knows what he wants.  He’s so close he can almost taste it, is already leaning into the no man’s land between the seats in its pursuit.

Barry’s right there too, inches away.  Hal’s not sure when he’d moved in, but his eyes are glued to him.  Barry’s tongue flicks out, shimmers in the low light.  Hal’s eyes follow the movement greedily, mirroring it with his own dry tongue.

Barry’s hands snake out again to fiddle with the scarf around Hal’s neck.  They brush the sensitive skin at the back of his neck and Hal shivers, wondering if Barry can feel his thundering pulse through the brief touch.  The tiny movement is enough for Barry’s fingers to ghost against his skin, heat flaring in their wake.

“I do,” Barry whispers, leaving Hal with no doubts that he feels whatever this intimate moment between them is.  Barry’s breath caresses his face.

It’s gone from freezing to sweltering in here in a few short minutes, and boy is it not helping. Hal never thought he’d ask for the cold, but his overheated face is currently doing its best to boil his brain.

He should say something.  He needs to say something, has been thinking about what to say, because he knows Barry and knows he’d want to start this off right.  Three years ago Hal would have just kissed him, but three years ago Hal couldn’t find his way into a stable relationship with a flashlight and a map.

But the proximity has forced all conscious thought out of Hal’s head.  For fuck’s sake, he’d even practiced for this moment, but each hot puff of breath against his face, every little tremor that passes between them is taking up too much of Hal’s limited brain capacity.

But no.  He’s got this.

“Barry, you—“ he starts.  He swallows, trying to unstick his tongue from his mouth so he can get the whole thing out.  “You’re like an exothermic reaction.  You spread hotness everywhere.”

Shiiiiiiiit .

Barry jerks back in surprise, staring at him incredulously.  Hal’s face is on fire and his mind is racing, trying to come up with something, anything, to salvage the moment.

“And according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, you’re supposed to share that hotness with me.”

There’s a horrible, terrible, awful moment of silence in the car, and then Barry’s rocking forward, shaking from laughter.

“You had science pickup lines this whole time?” he manages to get out between guffaws.  “That you sat on all day?  And people think you have no impulse control!”

“Yeah, that’s me, master of restraint,” Hal says, scrubbing his hand through his hair as if it could erase the last thirty seconds.  He’s not sure whether he should be relieved or disappointed.  

Barry puts a hand on Hal’s shoulder to steady himself through his snickering, searing even through the layers of leather and cotton.  “And to your actual question, what do you think the scarf was for?”

Hal groans.  “Leave it to you to find the pun in anything.”

“You set me up for it,” Barry chuckles into the space between them. “What did you expect?”

Which, okay, fair.

The laughter finally dies down, but Hal realizes Barry’s still right up against him.  He’s playing with the collar of Hal’s coat, using the gentle pressure to tilt Hal’s head towards him.

There’s something there.  Hal’s not quite ready to give up on the moment. “You never told me.”  His voice rasps coming out of his throat, dropping half an octave.  “What it was you wanted.”

“Well –”

The pressure on Hal’s collar disappears and Hal’s heart drops into his stomach.  

Then there’s a flash of red and gold lightning, a mechanical fizzle, and a clang right outside Hal’s window.

Hal’s suited up in the next second and throws open the car door.  Tank Top’s lying in the dirt a couple feet away, smoke pouring out of his face.

“Flash!”  He gapes at Barry, who’s next to him before the syllable is entirely out of his mouth.  “What did you do to him?  I mean, yeah, he was as exciting as a League status meeting, but you didn’t need to fry his face off!”

Barry’s voice is amazingly calm for the horrible violence he’d just performed.  “GL, take a closer look.  It’s some sort of early model Amazo.”

Oh.  Yeah, now that Hal’s shining his ring past the oily smoke he can see that Tank Top’s faceplate has completely popped off, the metal expression underneath just as dull and lifeless as his face had been.  To think, this whole time he’d been a dastardly boring evil robot instead of a bored, boring employee.  Apparently they’d forgone the Vulcan ears for the sake of discretion, but under his tank top and jeans he’s got those same high waisted circus pants Amazo always wore.  Who knew they were a vital design element?

“Damn, the dude who makes these really is an evil genius.  I didn’t notice a thing.”

Barry appears next to him, Speed Force crackling off his suit as he slides to a stop.  “Me neither. Who knew we’d become so predictable?”  He chuckles, the extra vibrations making it echo out of his throat.  “Also, I took a peek inside.  It’s a whole factory; we’re lucky we found this before they had more than a handful operational.  It could have been catastrophic.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hal says unenthusiastically.  Ugh.  Twenty minutes ago there was nothing he wanted more than to light up and kick some ass.  Now he’s having trouble getting back into that headspace, the unanswered question still bouncing around unimpeded.

Barry must be picking up on Hal’s discomfort, because he reaches over and puts a hand on Hal’s shoulder.  Hal’s as aware of the gesture through his Green Lantern uniform as he was through his jacket, but with an added buzz of Speed Force energy.

“Hal,” he says.  Hal can see his face clearer now, lit by the lightning barely contained by his suit and by Hal’s ring.  The Flash suit changes the shape of his face, and his voice has an edge of that vibrate-y disguise thing he does, but his eyes are pure Barry, warm around the edges in the way that still leaves Hal a little weak at the knees.  “We can finish this discussion whenever you want, okay?”  He grins.  “We’ve even got a date on the books.”

The tense feeling calms, and Hal’s ring flares brighter, then brighter still at the little smile he catches from Barry at the sight.  “Yeah.  Yeah we do.”

Chapter Text

This is a bad idea.

And not just because Barry brought potato salad.

“Seriously, who does that?” Hal grouses as they exit his beat up sedan at the ass end of the parking lot.  The merciless Californian sun beats down, but it’s a relief after his stifling dutch oven of a car.  Barry had thankfully brought his horrifying Midwestern potluck stereotype packed in ice in a cooler, so at least they hadn’t been marinating in eau de mayonnaise, or celery, or whatever goes into potato salad.  The metric fuckton of sunscreen Barry had doused himself in had more than compensated.

They’d only been in the car for ten minutes so they hadn’t really been able to stew in it, but still.

“Are you secretly from the 50s?  Is that what’s going on here?”

“Potato salad’s a cookout staple,” Barry says, eyebrows furrowed in inexplicable confusion.  “We brought it to every potluck when I was a kid.” 

Hal opens the trunk and winces at the wave of hot air that blasts out at him.  “Yeah, and brought it all back with you too, along with a healthy dose of food poisoning.  No one eats potato salad.  It’s like the one wrong thing to do with potatoes.”

He extracts the other two coolers — filled with ice and water, like a normal person — and slams the trunk closed.  The whole car rocks on its crappy suspension.  Hal wiggles his fingers, giving them a couple seconds to recover from the stinging burn left by the overheated metal before subjecting them to the unyielding plastic torture devices of the cooler handles.

“Well,” Barry says airily as he rounds the car, gracefully avoiding touching the baked metal and flaking paint despite his cooler and bag of gifts, “I would have made a Snickers salad, but I didn’t think your delicate Californian sensibilities could handle that.”

Hal hopes he’s joking.

Normally, he’d be able to tell, but his every nerve is jumpier than a chihuahua in a fireworks factory.  He mentally reviews which local supervillains are loose and might oblige him by  jumping out of the bushes; he needs some resolution to these needling, on edge jitters, and Barry’s dated culinary choices can only provide so much distraction.

He sighs, trying and failing to release the tension with the exhale.  “C’mon.  Let’s go subject my family to your Midwestern atrocities.”

It takes them a couple minutes to trek through the parking lot.  The heat radiating off the asphalt, the choking smog, and the dissonant city noises filtering through the haze don’t do much for his mood.

It’s marginally cooler in the park proper, the grass and concrete walkways baking them from one direction instead of two.  The sun glares against the aggressive green of the grass and blue of the ocean off in the distance.  His eyes dart between the scattered groups of park goers; it’s the Stepford Wives of Coast City suburban splendor in every direction.  He watches as a group of children toss a football, the sling of an arm over a shoulder, a taunting performative facade against the postcard of a backdrop.  The coolers hang from his abused fingers like lead weights.

“Is everything alright?” Barry asks.  Of course he’s noticed something’s up, despite Hal’s best attempts to make things seem otherwise.

Hal bites his lip, fiddling with the frayed edges of his jean pockets. This afternoon is doomed, and he’d known it even before the invitation had left his mouth.

But Barry needs this, and it’s way too late to uninvite him.  Who knows?  Maybe Sue was right when she’d encouraged him to bring someone.  “So you’re not bored when we’re all chasing the kids,” she’d said.  Hal had read between the lines; she’d been telling him that his older brother would be there, and that if he brought a buffer, things might not go to shit the moment they got within shouting distance.

It isn’t a terrible idea.  The more non-Jordans around, the more likely Jack is to act as if Hal doesn’t exist.  Hal’s more than willing to return the favor.

But it’s not fair to Barry, at all.  Even as the unofficial breaker upper of League internal disputes, Barry’s here today because he needs to have a normal Saturday, doing normal things with normal people to try and get some perspective outside the lab.  He’s not here so Hal can hide behind him to avoid a slugfest with his brother.

And that’s not even considering all the things left open-ended during their stakeout, things neither of them had brought up since.  Barry clearly had something on his mind on the ride over, too.  Hal likes to think it’s that.  Hal himself certainly hasn’t gotten their maybe-sorta-almost kiss out of his mind for the entire intervening week.

Hal glances over to Barry, who’s watching him expectantly.  He already looks so much more rested than he did a week ago.  Even though Hal knows there are plenty of possible reasons, he likes to think he had a hand in that, and doesn't want to be the one to mess that up.

“Everything’s fine,” Hal says, turning away under the guise of finding his family.

Hal scans the stock footage tableau, and of course the first relative he spots is Jack.

Jack doesn’t see him.  He’s too busy schmoozing with the sort of upstanding citizens who go to the beach in business suits.  Jack fits right in with them, glad handing and laughing boisterously as if he’s at some networking happy hour instead of a family cookout. Typical: playing the patriarch while ignoring that family to advance his political career.

“Were you not supposed to bring anyone?” Barry asks, eyes studying Hal’s face.  “If I’m not supposed to be here—“

Hal forces a smile and elbows Barry in the ribs.  “They’ll be thrilled to see you.  Hell, they’ll probably be happier to see you than me.”

Barry’s eyes crinkle as he looks deliberately over Hal’s shoulder.  “I don’t know about that.”

“Uncle Hal!”

His arms are suddenly free of the coolers and he turns just in time to see Howie hurl himself into the air.  Hal catches him easily, swinging him around in a circle as the eight year old giggles.

Jason and Helen are right behind, running up and tackling Hal around the waist as soon as he sets Howie back on his feet.  They’ve both grown a lot since he’s last seen them.  Even Howie looks taller, and Hal saw him a couple weeks ago.  He kneels down, exchanging hugs and greetings with his niece and nephews.

Before they can all start talking at once, he gathers them around him conspiratorially.  The furtive look he swings over the park is part show, part to make sure there isn’t anyone close enough to overhear.  “Guys, I brought you the best action figure ever.”

Howie’s eyes widen.  “Is it the Black Canary with the kung fu kick?  A kid in my class has one, and it popped her Green Arrow’s head right off!”

Barry chuckles behind him.  “I might have to get one of those.”

All of the kids’ eyes go wide in unison.  Barry kneels down beside Hal, giving the kids a wave and the dorkiest smile.

“You guys remember my friend Barry?” he asks, as if it’s not completely clear from their faces.  Helen and Jason look excited.  Howie’s hidden himself behind his cousins, but his mouth is hanging open in awe.  He’s the shyest with strangers, so Hal catches him around the shoulders and whispers, “He’s the Flash.”

Barry’s wearing his Flash Face, the one he uses for parades or his many child fans, but when he looks over at Hal it’s with a mischievous glint in his eye.  “Wait, so I’m the present?”  He lifts his arm, the one with the bag straining with gifts.  “Then what are we going to do with all these,” he pauses, pulling out a box and reading, “Green Lantern Extreme Supertech Giga-Punch Megafigures?”

“Green Lantern Extreme Supertech Giga-Punch Megafigures!” 

Hal hands out the presents, drinking in his niece and nephews’ excited expressions and happy he hadn’t given into fear facing down the toy aisle.  He’s confronted supervillains less intimidating than the sheer number of choices that had stared down at him from their orderly hooks.  The variety had been astounding: combining suits of armor, launchers, themed monster trucks, building sets with highly inaccurate secret bases, and so many more.

The designers clearly hadn’t been limited by reality, or logic — because really, why would the Flash need a car slower than he is?  Not that Hal would have said no to a Lantern Mission Control, complete with shark diving cage, Lanternmobile, and command center straight off the Starship Enterprise, all rendered in clear green plastic.  A superhero HQ would be a step up from his actual base of operations, which he supposes is his apartment.  Other than the high likelihood any surface in either would end up slightly sticky, there’s not much overlap.

And all that didn’t even include the next aisle over, populated by larger dolls with the combable hair, changeable clothing, and uncanny valley not-quite-child faces.  He’d honestly preferred the Green Lantern action figure a snickering Barry had proudly displayed whose facial features looked like they were dripping down its face.  After that, he’d had to find the grodiest Flash figure available… and yeah, they’d probably spent half an hour longer there than they’d needed to.

And maybe the spending spree had erased his recent attempts to settle his Barry tab.  But he’s going to say it was worth it, and not only for Ollie’s reaction to the styling suggestions for his doll’s brush-able facial hair.

Barry hands him another box, which he passes to Helen over the others’ heads.  Eventually he’s going to show up with gifts and she and Jason will declare they’re too old for toys.  It’s not this time.  She beams at him.

“How many Green Lanterns do you all have now?” Barry asks as the kids tear into the boxes.  The shiny green plastic looks almost metallic in the sunlight — whatever they’re making those things out of is way nicer than the gummy figures he remembers from his own childhood.  Barry shares another amused glance with Hal. “Are you sure you don’t want a Batman or Superman to go along with those?”

Howie rolls his eyes with a look of pure disdain that would make any teenager jealous.  His eyes land on Hal, the look screaming Can you believe this guy?  “Green Lantern’s the best,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  “Why would I want Batman?  Batman can’t even fly.”

Barry’s disapproving eyebrow would be much more convincing without the clear amusement on his face.

Hal throws up his hands anyway.  “Hey!  I didn’t say anything!”

Howie’s eyes widen, just now remembering who he’s talking too.  He looks at Barry worriedly.  “Not that the Flash isn’t super cool too!”

“Thanks for sparing my pride,” Barry says wryly to a relieved Howie.

“Uncle Hal didn’t have to say anything,” Helen chimes in.  She’s plastered herself to Hal’s side again.  “Everyone in Coast thinks Green Lantern’s the best.”

“Which is why he should be at the top of the combining figure!” Jason declares.  “Why’s Batman always the head on those, anyway?”

Hal grins at Barry, who’s shaking now with how hard he’s trying not to laugh, and ruffles Jason’s hair.  “Because Batman owns the toy rights and thinks he’s being subtle.  But I’ll tell him you have some constructive criticism.”

As the kids start dragging them towards the Jordan family setup, Barry leans in, apprehension clear in his voice as he whispers, “Please tell me you’re not planning to bring that up with Bruce.  We don’t need another team building seminar over the toy aisle.”

“I thought you said those were good for team cohesion,” Hal says, cackling at Barry’s expression before clapping a friendly hand to his back and following the kids further into the park.

The kids continue to chatter at them as they pull them over to the tables the Jordan family had claimed.  It’s a seating area on the edge of the park, the concrete barriers separating the grassy area from the street and the beach allowing more privacy than Hal had expected given the public setting.

Sue and Janice sit at the nearby picnic table, chatting with Jane nestled between them.  They look up and call out their greetings as the group approaches.  Sue jumps up to show Barry where to put the coolers, and Jane runs over to hug Hal enthusiastically.

Jim waves at Hal from the grill.  His glasses slip down his nose and he pushes them back up with the base of his palm to keep from smudging the lenses, just as he had when they were kids.  “Hal!  I’m glad you could make it!” he says, giving Hal a half hug to avoid touching him with his apron or tongs.  “And Barry, thanks for coming!  It’s great to see you outside a planetary crisis.”

Barry shouts something back, but is drowned out by Howie.

“Dad!” Howie shouts, pushing his way through the group.  He brandishes his action figure like a trophy.  “Look what Uncle Hal got us!”

Hal takes a moment to be thankful Barry talked him out of the arm mounted fist construct shooters.  Despite objectively being the best thing in the toy aisle, Jim might not have forgiven Hal for that one.

Sue looks up from rearranging the food on the table.  “And did you say “thank you” for the presents?”

“Thanks Uncle Hal and Uncle Barry!”

“Even the kids know who paid,” Jim whispers, grinning at Hal and nudging him with his elbow, eyes crinkling behind his glasses.

Hal snorts, poking Jim right back.  “They’re smart.  Guess they take after their mothers.”

“We already knew that!” Janice shouts.

After helping redistribute the ice and disparage Barry’s food choices to a snort from Barry and admonishing noises from Sue and Janice, he heads over to talk to Jim.  Jim’s working through an impressive pile of chopped vegetables, skewering and charring them with practiced ease.  Hal takes over preparing new skewers despite Jim’s observation that the kids had done better keeping the cubes on straight.

“I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating,“ Jim says when they’ve settled into a routine.  “Sue and I have really appreciated how much you’ve been helping out recently.  And I don’t think I need to tell you how excited the kids are to get to see more of their Uncle Hal.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Hal catches Jack turn slightly from his conversation with Sue and Janice.  His next skewer comes out so crooked he needs to re-stick the zucchini disk.  

“I know I haven’t been that good about it over the years—“

“But you’re here now,” Jim says, staring Hal down through his glasses.  “That’s why I keep saying it.  You should understand what a weight off it is for me and Sue to have someone we can call on short notice.”  He takes the veggie kabob from Hal’s limp fingers and rotates the zucchini disk 90 degrees to slide it onto the skewer.  “Jane’s been talking nonstop about how you took her flying.”

Hal smiles at the memory.  Jane had been recovering from a cold, but they’d quickly worked out a deal that if she ate her soup and took a nap, he’d show her something cool when she felt better.  The afternoon had been filled with cartoons, and Hal swapping sanitized stories from space for her adventures with the neighbor’s dog.   He’d stopped by that weekend to make good on his end of the deal, flying low and fast over the desert with her cheering and whooping the whole way.

It’s… nice, not having a year’s worth of life events and stories to catch up on.  He can make fun of Jim’s new haircut with relative certainty it isn’t a change he made months ago, or comment on Sue’s salad knowing she’s trying out a new recipe.

“Hey, I’m just glad someone else in this family enjoys flying.  You know I’ll take them up any chance I get.“

Jim laughs.  “Don’t tell them that; you’ll never have time for anything else.”

They’re interrupted by smoke pouring out of the grill.  Hal coughs, waving his hands to clear the air, and then he’s shoved to the side.  He blinks rapidly to get rid of the residual sting.  When his vision clears, he finds Jimmy standing outside the dark plume and Jack’s back looming over the grill.

“Watch what you’re doing,” Jack growls, the bite in his tone clearly directed towards Hal despite not turning from whatever he’s doing at the grill.  “Only you could turn a cookout into a call to the fire department in ten minutes flat.”

Jim says something back that Hal can’t hear and Jack turns his attention to him.  

Something dark curls in Hal’s gut.  His instincts scream at him to fight , to push past Jim and get in Jack’s face.  The words are on the tip of his tongue, raring to go.

Instead he steps back and heads to get a drink, and to cool off, in more ways than one.

He ignores the beer cooler for a bottle of water, unscrewing the tiny plastic cap with enough force that water splashes over his shirt as he pulls it open.  He lets out another aggrieved breath and takes a long pull from the bottle.  The anger’s drained out of him, but the gnawing hole left in its place isn’t great either.

“Those grills are the worst,” Sue comments, offering him a paper napkin for his shirt.  

From the bemused look on her face, she’d been watching his internal debate.  He focuses on mopping the water from his shirt rather than think about any of that.  

“Honestly I’m surprised it took this long to become a fire hazard,” she continues.  Then she takes Hal’s arm and directs him towards the circle of Barry, Janice, and the kids.  “Let them figure that out, and help me talk the kids out of a water fight.”

Hal casts the first water balloon.

It’s not until later, when Hal’s subbing in at the grill, that he realizes how good everything’s been.  Even including a scraped knee and a ten minute hunt through the grass for a Green Lantern Extreme Supertech Giga-Punch Megafigure projectile fist construct, the disaster Hal had been anticipating hasn’t materialized.  Instead, the afternoon was full of Helen’s questions about the solar system, a cookie eating contest, Sue’s admission that they’d told the kids he and Barry had a dog — “We had to explain all that ‘leash’ talk during the interview.  You brought this on yourself.” — and increasingly nonsensical stories about said dog, which they’d decided was a poodle-stegosaurus mix, to Howie’s wide-eyed wonder.

Besides the encounter at the grill, things have even gone okay with Jack.  He and Hal have barely exchanged a couple of words, but Jack had an extended conversation with Barry earlier.  Jack hadn’t known what to make of Barry the first time Hal brought him to one of these years ago; clearly the put together, amiable man with the respectable job hadn’t fit with his view of the degenerates Hal ran with.  Since then, Jack’s been surprisingly civil, outside the inevitable passive aggressive jabs aimed in Hal's direction.  But for all his self-diagnosed awkwardness, Barry had pivoted like a seasoned diplomat, expressing his gratitude towards Hal for dragging him here, and Hal may have had to stop eavesdropping after that.

Currently, Barry and Jim are talking quietly by one of the picnic tables.  Jane, who’s perched on Barry’s shoulders, makes a face and exclaims something about sunscreen.  Barry says he’s not as good in the sun as the native Californians, and Jane asks if Hal poured an entire bottle over him.  Barry and Jim laugh as she casts a dirty look Hal’s way.  Hal holds a hand to his heart innocently, trying to keep a straight face as her expression turns more accusatory than a five year old should be able to manage.

Barry glances over.  He looks so much better in the sunlight, eyes shining, full of energy, the smile spread across his entire face causing Hal’s heart to thud against his chest.  Hal smiles back, reveling in the fond crinkle of Barry’s eyes he can see even from across the lawn.

The grill spits and Hal turns back to it, poking at the sizzling patties with his tongs.  Today’s untangling knots within him he’d assumed had long ago calcified into permanent features.  The sunlight soaks into him, leaving him warm and tingly with satisfied contentment.  A breeze tickles his skin, the briny air a perfect offset when the sun feels like it’s almost too much.

Jim comes over, thanking him for the break, and hands him a plate that includes some of Barry’s potato salad.  Hal takes a bite.  It’s tangy and bright and not at all the slimy mush he’d been expecting.  Mostly, it’s just really good .

He takes another bite.

During an extended debate over whether King Shark would win in a fight against The Shark, Hal notices that Barry’s withdrawn to his usual party-pooper corner.  Even in the wide open area of the park, Barry somehow makes the end of the picnic bench where he’s sequestered himself have the distinct feel of the dark corner of a ballroom, or far wall of a bar.

When the conversation reaches its conclusion — The Shark eeks out a victory on account of psychic bullshit — Hal grabs a bottle of water and heads over.  The pungent smell of sunscreen assaults him as he approaches and Hal bites back a grin.  He reaches out with the bottle when he gets within touching distance, holding it against Barry’s forehead.  Barry blinks and looks up at him, but doesn't move away.

“Overheat?” Hal asks, watching the bead of condensation as it drips between Barry’s eyes. 

“That’s a good excuse.  I’ll take it,” Barry says. He accepts the water bottle and takes a long drink.  “Maybe I’ll adopt that for Justice League parties too.”

“You’ll have to do better than that.  The Watchtower’s always fucking freezing.”  Hal glances back at his family. Janice has joined Jim by the grill, and the kids and Jack are watching something on a phone.  And Barry mostly sequesters himself in his corner for a break from people, so… “Want to take a lap around the park?”

Barry rolls upright before Hal’s done speaking, brushing nonexistent dust off his pants.  “Sure.”

There’s a path that runs around the perimeter of the park, and Hal heads for it.  Besides a few couples, they have the walkway to themselves.

The sun hangs low, the sunlight gentler but the sky still a wide expanse of unbroken blue.  The park’s filled up a bit since they’d arrived, little pockets of laughter and activity scattered across the bright green of the grass.

“How are you doing?  I know it’s a lot of people all at once.”

“You know your nieces and nephews are great, Green Lantern obsession aside.”  Barry’s eyes search Hal’s face.  “But I feel like I should be asking you.”

“Why?” Hal says, then mentally kicks himself for how defensive he sounds.

Barry shrugs, apparently not willing to make a thing out of it.  “You seemed tense when you got here.  But you also seemed to be having a good time getting on your brother’s case, so what do I know?”

Hal snorts.  “Barry, your only child is showing.  That level of brotherly harassment is just saying hello.  It’s not my fault that you have no frame of reference because your speedster get-togethers are so tame.”

Hal’s been to a handful.  They always featured a crap ton of food, the gazillion activities needed to occupy kid speedsters, and, even with powers kept to a minimum, the sort of energized chaos of any good party.

Overall, they’re fun, intimate, uncomplicated affairs.  Even when Iris and Wallace were steamed at Barry, they’d either stepped away to quietly talk things out, or put their feelings aside for the sake of the group.  If anyone was the odd man out, it’s been Barry’s father after his release from prison.  Barry had quietly confided in Hal that they were still figuring out how they fit into each other’s lives.  It’s the strongest he’s seen Barry’s social awkwardness come out recently, only exacerbated by his father’s similar demeanor.

From the look on his face, Barry’s not making any negative comparisons.  “Well,” Barry says, “I am at a disadvantage, not being the ‘coolest uncle ever.’”

“It’s not your fault you don’t have my awesome power set.  After all, how can you compete when you can’t even fly?”

Barry huffs a laugh, bumping Hal’s shoulder with his.  Their hands brush.

The low sun lengthens the shadows. Theirs stretch long over the grass, intertwining, making them look like they’re pressed together hand in hand.  

He follows the shadows back to Barry.  Despite the excessive sunscreening, red’s still creeping in high on his cheekbones and the tips of his ears.  But his eyes are clear and unclouded as he stares back at Hal.

Maybe he should say something.  The thought has his throat closing up like he’s literally allergic to the idea.

But… it didn’t actually go that badly last time for anything besides Hal’s ego.  And he’s got plenty of that to spare.

“Are you doing anything Friday?” he asks, then smirks.  “Besides work that could wait until next week?”

Barry snorts.  “You caught me.  That was my plan exactly.”

“Let me cook for you.  I feel like such a freeloader at this thing, with you paying for the gifts, and bringing a side and all.”

“You’re here because your family wants to see you, Hal,” Barry says like it’s obvious.  “And besides, I’m bringing all that potato salad home with me, right?”

He’s not, because it’s gone.  Hal finished it earlier.

Instead, he says, “Maybe I’m just horrified by your eating habits, if Snickers salad is something you eat regularly.”

“It’s strictly a special occasion food,” Barry replies breezily.  He can only keep it up for about half a second before his expression softens and he beams at Hal.  “But to your actual question; yes, barring work emergency or alien invasion, I’ll happily have dinner with you.”

“Well, then prepare to be blown away by my mad pasta skills,” Hal says.  He’s probably grinning like an idiot, but so what?  Barry’s hand brushes against his again, and he scoops it up on a whim.  It fits naturally into his own, hot against his sun-warmed skin.

And okay, maybe what he’d actually asked is pretty vague, and yeah, maybe he could have accomplished the same thing by stopping by Central.  

But Barry gives his hand a little squeeze and Hal can’t find it in himself to care.

Hal jogs towards the parking lot, scanning the line of cars for Jim’s minivan and periodically pinging with the key fob.  This thing is super convenient.  Hal’s car is way too old for this kind of luxury, and he may have had to whip out his ring to find it twice in the last week.

He’d left Barry with Jim and Sue to round up the kids, and is on his own quest to grab some extra plates and utensils from the car.  He spots Jim’s car in the second row, and wonders briefly how early they got here to grab such a good place.  The next car over is excessively polished for the generic, mid range sedan it is, and practically screams that its owner has their lawyer on speed dial.  He circles around the other side to unlock Jim’s trunk.

He extracts the boxes, stacks them on the asphalt, and comes face to face with Jack.

Jack blinks, clearly as blindsided as Hal.

Then his lip curls.  The movement is familiar, one Hal’s seen so many times, with the only real change over the years being the addition of the mustache.  The contempt underneath is constant.

Hal draws in a slow breath, trying to focus on his breathing instead of the way his pulse picks up and blood pounds in his ears despite neither of them saying a word.  He purses his lips, setting down the boxes to let his eyes slide off Jack’s disdain to the cheery greens and blues of the park behind him.  

“So what’s with this saintly act you’re putting on for Jim?  It’s pretty underhanded, enlisting him to do your family PR.”

Usually, Hal would laugh and make some comment about how it sounds like they’re about to have the corporate version of a shootout at high noon.  But his warring impulses cause the words to distort on the way to his mouth.  All he can manage is “Can we not?  Just this once?”

Jack scoffs.  “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me all afternoon?  And here I’d thought you’d finally grown up enough to feel ashamed for showing your face here.”

Something about talking to Jack inevitably leaves Hal feeling ten years old.  His face heats and shoulders tense on instinct, a visceral response to the edge in Jack’s voice.

“Why should I?  Jim invited me.  I have as much right to be here as you do.”

Jack’s flat stare is undeniable in the harsh sunlight.  He’s turned three shades redder since the encounter began.

“You don’t ,”  Jack practically spits, his voice low even as he shoves his finger in Hal’s face.  “You’re a freeloader.  Sure, you’re around when everything’s hunky dory, but where were you when Jim didn’t know how he’d make his mortgage payments?  Or when Jane's day care shut down?  Off joyriding because you’ve never met a responsibility you couldn’t shirk.”

Hal hadn’t heard about any of that.  The guilt sits heavy in his gut, but it channels naturally back into rage.  He barely restrains the petty impulse to snap his teeth at Jack’s intruding finger.

He doesn’t want this.  Had taken notes in that goddamn Justice League de-escalation seminar for this very situation.  But it’s all drowned out by the blood rushing in his ears.

“With so much incentive, why would I?” he snaps back, reveling in Jack’s flinch and quick glance around at his raised voice.  “When I make an effort it’s more fuel for you to throw back in my face!”

They both go silent at the sound of footsteps.  Another family emerges from the line of cars and heads towards the park, chattering among themselves and ignoring them completely.  

As soon as they’re out of earshot, Jack hisses,  “Why should I believe you’ve changed?  You’ve put on this act before, getting Jim’s hopes up and then bailing when he needs something real.  You’re not worth his time, or mine.”

Fuck this.

“Stop pretending this is about Jim,” Hal snarls, getting right in Jack’s face.  “It’s about you .  You just use him to give yourself the moral high ground, so you don’t look like a fucking bully who can’t stand that someone doesn’t cave the second you start yelling —“

“It is about Jim, and the sacrifices I’ve made for this family, which you’d understand if you weren’t such a worthless —“

There’s another crunch, and they both freeze.

“Oh, uh, sorry,” Barry says.  “Jim asked me to help unload the car.”

Hal goes cold.  How much had Barry heard?  Barry’s expression is carefully blank, but to Hal the wariness radiates off him as clear as day.  Their eyes meet, the unspoken question of Should I step in? plain in Barry’s gaze.

If it were Hal and Bats, Barry would already be between them.  But it’s not, so instead he’s poised to jump in at Hal’s signal.

Hal marshals his face and lets out a breath.

“I’ve got the boxes right here,” Hal says.  Grabbing one off the top of the stack, he hands it to Barry, then snatches the rest for himself and slams the car door.  It bangs shut with such force a group off to their left turns to see what the commotion is.  He can’t summon the energy to turn for Jack’s clear disapproval, but it doesn’t matter; he can feel it burning just out of view.  “Come on, let’s get back.”

The silent walk to the picnic tables stretches even longer than when they’d first arrived, the walkway extending endlessly away from him.  Hal’s wracking his brain for what he’s told Barry about his relationship with his older brother; he knows Barry knows they don’t talk much, but the exhausted haze hanging over his brain obscures any other detail.

“Anything you want to talk about?” Barry finally asks when they’re halfway back.  

“Par for the course,” Hal says.  He can feel his heart pounding against his ribcage again even at the suggestion, because he doesn’t want to have this conversation now on top of everything else.  “But… can we not?  I don’t… It’s just—“

“Of course,” Barry cuts in.  “Whatever you want.”

The gratitude is immediate, buoying his mood out of the depths the last five minutes have plummeted it down into.  He dares to glance back at Barry, who smiles back at him.  He searches Barry’s face for pity, or frustration, or… he doesn’t even know what.  He doesn’t find it, though, only a kind of wry understanding.

“You didn’t run into Jack, did you?” Jim asks, eyes wide behind his glasses.  “I asked him not to start any fights, so if he said anything—“

“Everything’s fine, Jimmy,” Hal says, setting down his box and handing Jim a stack of plates.  The fake smile plasters itself to his face automatically, sliding into place as naturally as the rage had with Jack, or the sick feeling in his stomach at Jim’s responding strained expression.  Hal reaches down to ruffle Jason’s hair.  “Now come on, we know what happens if we get between these little monsters and their food.”

He plays into Jason’s indignant reply, making increasingly ridiculous claims until all the kids have joined in and Jim’s distracted by the ensuing chaos of setting the table.  Hal laughs as Jason chucks packages of napkins, powering through the queasy feeling in his stomach.  

All the while he can feel Barry’s eyes on the back of his head.

Howie’s made a complete 180 from his earlier timidness, deciding Barry’s his personal adult and talking to him nonstop since they’d sat down.  Hal had acted appropriately offended by the choice, even as he’d been secretly grateful for his nephew distracting Barry’s attention.  Howie’s talked about, in no particular order: his friends, disjointed questions about whether Barry can do this or that with his powers, and which dinosaurs he’d visit with time travel.  The current topic is some video game Hal never knew existed but is apparently a Very Important Status Symbol among 3rd graders.  Honestly, from what little he’s heard, Hal wouldn’t be surprised to learn next week that it’s some convoluted scheme Toyman dreamed up.

Jim’s across the table from him, and has been trying to catch Hal’s eye for the last twenty minutes.  Hal keeps prompting Helen next to him and she chatters on obligingly, giving Jim no opportunity to cut in.  She wants to be an astronaut, and has already planned out everything she needs to do to get there.  Even though her preferred profession has changed every time he’s seen her, he recognizes that drive.  He tries to be encouraging despite his distraction, because he doubts she’s getting much support at home.

Jack talks animatedly to Sue In a chair he’s pulled up to be the head of the table, carrying on like everything’s fucking normal which, Hal thinks sourly, it basically is.

Hal fumes.  He can’t bring up his argument with Jack without starting another one, and then it’ll be his fault when dinner is ruined.  So he’s not going to acknowledge it.  He stabs at his plate with more force than the cooked potato can take.  It splits down the middle, leaving nothing on his fork but onion and regret.

At a lull in the chatter, Sue asks for everyone’s attention.

“So, we have an announcement to make,” Sue says, cheeks flushed as she looks at Jim, who takes her hand encouragingly.   “We’re having another baby!”

The table erupts with congratulations.  Hal leans over to clap Jimmy on the shoulder.  Janice reaches over and hugs Sue, and Helen bounces up and down in her seat.  Hal catches Barry ask Howie how he feels about having another sibling, to which Howie responds with a resounding “Eh,” before going back to talking about his video game.

Jack rises and walks over to stand behind the expecting parents and claps Jim on the back.  “Time to start up another 529 plan.”  He starts rattling off a bunch of pretentious financial gibberish, punctuating each with a self-satisfied laugh and another round of congratulations.  Then his eyes flick up to level a challenging gaze directly at Hal.

Hal grips his thigh under the table, the pads of his fingers crushed between nail and bone.  He’s going to pull something in his palm, and he doesn’t care, because that’s the only way he’s going to stop himself from making a scene during a moment that’s supposed to be about Jim and Sue.  He can see Barry shifting in his peripheral vision, and nearly jumps when a hand slides over his under the table.

It’s Barry’s; he knows that immediately from the heat and the complete lack of calluses.  His fingers protest as he extracts them from the indents in his thigh, flipping it over to slot his hand into Barry’s.  His grip has to be too tight for comfort, but Barry just squeezes his hand back.

Jack pauses, turning his goading smile directly at Hal.  Jim turns too, face open in his happiness.  

Hal swallows, forcing it all down and willing a convincing smile onto his face for Jimmy.

“Congratulations.”

The goodbyes go quickly, a line of “Bye Uncle Hal!  Punch the bad guys good!” and Jim and Sue’s insistence that he’s welcome to drop by whenever he’d like.  Janice seems to be the only one who notices the tense handshake between Hal and her husband, and responds with a scoff and pulling Hal in for a hug.  She does the same with Barry, who’s followed Hal down the line of family members on their way out of the park.

Helen’s at the end of the line.  She throws herself into Hal’s arms and he hugs her back just as fiercely.

“You’ll come back and visit soon, right Uncle Hal?”

She ends every visit with a similar request, but her tone is different this time.  Looks like she’s gotten too old to remain ignorant of the tension between him and her father.  He hadn’t realized he’d miss that.

He pets her hair and kneels down so he can place her back on her feet.  He gives her one last hug, trying to pour into it the affection and reassurance he’s not sure he can manage on his face right now.  “Of course I will,” he says like always, trying not to think about how the last time he saw her was over a year ago.

Neither of them say anything until the doors of Hal’s crappy sedan slam shut.  Boy is Hal glad they hadn’t done their stake out in this junker; between the asthmatic fan, the constant creaking, and the cheap vinyl smell baked into every surface, he would have been charging out of here within the hour.

“You can go,” Hal says with as much composure as he can manage.  “There’s really no reason for you to sit in this piece of shit just to get home twenty minutes later.”

Barry’s silent for a long moment, long enough that Hal glances over to make sure he’s still there.  Of course he is; Barry’s not the one who runs away from his problems.

Barry considers him a moment longer.  “Do you want me to?” 

“Yes,” Hal says, because being alone with his misery is comfortably familiar, because this whole afternoon was a godawful stupid fucking mistake, and because Barry sticking around only compounds that.  But moping by himself is also the single most depressing thing he can think of right now, and if he’s already blown everything up, why not take a little extra comfort before fucking off to space, or wherever he winds up this time?  He sinks back against the thin padding of his seat.  “No.  I don’t know.  Do what you want.”

Barry sits quietly, seemingly unperturbed by Hal’s indecision.

Hal doesn’t need to say anything.  He can just sit here, with Barry, until he’s relieved enough of this horrible pressure in his chest to drive home.

But Barry’s had plenty of opportunity to judge him over the years, and despite Hal giving him plenty of opportunity, he’s never taken the bait.

Maybe it’s worth taking that chance.

“He always does this,” Hal says quietly.  He hears Barry perk up in the seat next to him, but soldiers on rather than looking over and losing his nerve.  “Has since we were kids.  He’d find something wrong with everything I did.  I was stressing out Mom, wasn’t helping with Jimmy, was being a pain, or a nuisance, or a burden.  And I know I was a lot to deal with,” he does glance over this time, smile brittle, “hell, I still am — but I did what I could.  But whenever I tried, he’d use it as one more thing I’d fucked up.”

Barry’s hand rests on Hal’s shoulder, a steady weight unobtrusively resting there as it has so often before.  As if none of this is out of the ordinary.  And it isn’t, Hal supposes, except for Barry being here at all.

“I don’t know how he still knows exactly what buttons to push.  We barely even see each other anymore,” Hal continues.  He doesn’t bother trying to hide the frown that creeps onto his face.  “Or maybe my soft targets are that obvious.  Who knows.”  A shrink might have said it’s because he and Jack are alike; one he’d dated had tried to use that as a way for them to find common ground and a mutual understanding.  Unsurprisingly, neither she nor her advice had worked out.  “Because I’m unreliable, and never around, and show up for the good times so I can be the fun uncle without actually doing anything to earn it.  It’s like he can pluck the thoughts right out of my head, then turn them into ammunition to throw straight back in my face.”

“Something feeling true doesn’t mean it is,” Barry says.  Hal has to turn at the note in his voice, but all he can find on Barry’s face is earnest conviction. “All of those things you’ve pointed out?  I’ve seen you actively work against every single one, especially these last couple of months.

“And maybe it’s not always the easiest, and maybe you complain about it sometimes.”  He smiles, which Hal returns as best he can, appreciating the effort even if it barely touches the deep discomfort roiling in his gut. “But from what I see, and from everything I heard from Jim and Sue today, you’re succeeding much more than Jack, or you, are giving yourself credit for.”

“I just…”  Hal takes a deep breath, “I want to be in Jim’s life.  I want to be in Helen’s, and Jason’s.  But I don’t know how to do that with how things are with Jack.  I’d even thought I’d done everything right this time.  I didn’t have a drop to drink.  I tried to stay away from him.”  He glances over at Barry.  If he’s dumping all of this on him, might as well be honest about this too.  “Sue suggested I bring someone as a buffer, by the way.  Sorry about that.”

Barry waves it off, dismissing Hal’s selfishness in the face of his obvious distress, because Barry’s the kind of person who can do that.  

He doesn’t know why he keeps talking, but at this point, what difference would it make?  Everything in him feels heavy, drained, and totally exhausted.  “But somehow I’m still stupid enough to want something from him.  Some idiotic part of me won’t give up on the idea that he’s my older brother and that that’s supposed to mean something.”  Because it means something to Hal, with Jimmy.  And from how Jack is with Jim, it clearly means something to him, too.

“I think…” Barry’s back to picking his words carefully, and Hal suddenly hates how he’s made his best friend feel the need to walk on eggshells around him.  He should have kept his fucking mouth shut, sucked it up, and taken his miserable ride home.  “I think it can be harder, with family.  There’s a natural expectation of a certain relationship, even if that’s not what you actually have.  But at some point, you have to choose whether to accept the pain every time that relationship proves it’s not what you hoped, or to step back, reassess, and figure out how to get that most from what you do have.”

Hal knows, logically, that Barry’s drawing from his own experiences with his father, but Hal barely hears as Barry continues talking about how Hal’s taking steps already by prioritizing his relationships.  As sympathetically as it’s said, Hal can’t help extrapolating Barry’s words to the two of them, that their friendship has lured him into wanting things that aren’t possible.  

They’re so different.  He can see so easily what the two of them look like from the outside: like all the times Barry’s pulled him out of a bar as a sloppy, drunken mess. Barry’s stable, reliable, dependable, and Hal’s not any of those things.

Why had he ever thought this would work?  It feels so horribly naive, and for all Hal’s failings, that’s not one he’s attributed to himself in a long time.  He’s already accepted, deep down, that he and Jack probably won’t ever be the sort of family that he’d hoped, but for some stupid fucking reason he’d let himself believe that maybe he could have this .

Because if Hal can barely have a relationship with the people required to try, why should things work with anyone else?

He’s too much of a coward to say it, so instead he drops his head into his hands, covering his stinging eyes, and focuses on the steady heat from Barry’s hand warming his shoulder.  For this moment, he’ll let himself have this.

And tomorrow… He doesn’t know.

Chapter Text

Monday

2:45PM

We’re still on for Friday, right?

2:47PM

If you still want to, I mean.  

No pressure. 

2:48PM

We can just talk if you'd rather.

That’s fine too.

Hal stares at the texts.  He has been all afternoon.

It’s two days after the disastrous cookout.  He doesn’t know how long he sat with Barry that night.  Barry had ridden with him until Hal stashed his car, then said his goodbyes as Hal lit up and flew for the sake of flying.  Eventually, Hal had crashed back at his apartment and slept like the dead.

It’s a familiar pattern.  He goes into every interaction with his brother thinking that he’s spent enough time away, eaten enough purple mystery mush on the other side of the universe, and solved a sufficient number of other people’s problems that he’s conquered his Jack intolerance.  Instead, everything goes straight to the crapper.  Then he sleeps it off and goes right back to the status quo.

So basically, dealing with Jack is like food poisoning: intensely awful in the moment, but passes as if nothing ever happened. 

The Sword of Damocles hanging over his head is how to handle things with Barry.  Which is ridiculous; he’s been captured by supervillains in literal death traps that have caused him less angst.  But he can’t summon that same devil-may-care, damning-of-the-consequences attitude when faced with a text from Barry, who still inexplicably wants to spend time with him and is bending over backward to not put any pressure on Hal.

He should text back.

Because Hal wants the answer to be yes.  But he knows confirming will just make things that much worse if he disappears when the time comes.  And even in the five lines of text, Hal can read that Barry’s thinking the same thing.

He’s already spent half a day listening to Corp chatter through his ring, and he’s checking in twice as frequently since receiving The Texts.  Things have been pretty quiet, but there’s some concerning chatter out of Sector 586…

He looks back at the messages, and Barry’s sleeping face staring up at him from its little circle.  It’s the picture Dinah took before the team building event. The way Barry’s neck twists to conform to Hal’s shoulder looks horrendously uncomfortable, though Hal wouldn’t know it from Barry’s face.   Barry's mouth hangs slack, the beginning of a line of drool evident even at the low resolution.

Hal had needed to crop himself out.   As much as he’d scoffed at Dinah when she’d called him smitten, in the picture it’s hard to call him anything but.

He puts down the phone with a sigh.

Fuck.

Tuesday

“Yeah, you’re a mess.”

Hal takes a swig of beer, some artisanal nanobrewery that Ollie swears by.  It’s ridiculously expensive and tastes like someone distilled pure, uncut Kool Aid into a can of Bud Lite.  He swallows as quickly as possible, but the sickly sweet aftertaste lingers, coating his tongue.  “Wow, thanks bro.”

They’re sitting on a rooftop in construct lawn chairs on a rare clear night in Star City.  He’d come here to blow off some steam; instead, it had taken him all of half a can to spill everything that had gone down with Jack, the disastrous cookout, and his subsequent spewing of pent-up familial issues all over Barry.

Ollie’s been showing about the level of compassion Hal’s come to expect.

“Hey, if you wanted someone to tell you this shit doesn’t stink, you would have gone to your inferior best friend.  Instead you’re here, because you know this is fucked up and need to hear it from someone else.”

Actually, Hal’s here because he still hasn’t responded to Barry, and is hiding in Star.  Avoiding Barry’s hardly rocket science —  outside of a natural disaster, multiverse ending crisis, or League administrative BS, all he has to do is stay out of Central City, or more specifically, one particular room in the CCPD.

Discomfort roils in his chest.  He drinks more nasty beer.

“I don’t need your lawn chair psychology,” Hal grouses, pointing his can in Ollie’s general direction.  

He might be a little drunk.  He’s talking about this stuff, for one.  Also, this overpriced swill is 20% alcohol.

“But you do need to hear that it’s okay to write off your asshole of a brother.”  Ollie strokes his tiny beard as if he’s going to impart some profound wisdom.   Then he says, “I think Dinah decked my mom the last time they were in a room together.”

“Your mom’s a literal supervillain.”

“Yeah.”  Ollie’s voice edges on wistful.  “Honestly, that’s way simpler than sitting down and working through decades worth of bullshit.”

Tipsy or not, Ollie’s probably right.  Hal stares out over the Star City skyline morosely.  It says something about his mood that he can’t find the humor in Jack’s mustache sticking out of a colorful balaclava.

“And if you’re worried about how things went with Swifty,” Ollie continues, “don’t bother.  All you have to do is prostrate yourself at the altar of Saint Bartholomew, and everything goes back to normal.  That man has all the conviction of wet toilet pape—“

“For fuck’s sake, Ollie, can you not?”

Hal crushes his can and chucks it at Ollie.  He misses by a foot, but some leftover drops fly out and land in Ollie’s beard.

Ollie splutters, swiping at his face ineffectually and muttering something about a waste of good beer, despite that most definitely not being the case.  “Is this what you’re like with Barry after we fight?  Because if so, then don’t even bother groveling, because clearly he just puts up with you to feel superior.”

“Whatever man,” Hal gripes.  Defending Barry to Ollie – or Ollie to Barry, honestly – is a lost cause, and Hal’s got plenty of his own to deal with tonight.  “I just wanted to vent, not feed your stupid one-sided feud.  Can’t you just drink your snooty beer and shut the hell up for once in your life?”

“Hell no.  Who else is going to tell you you’re owning crap that doesn’t belong to you?”  Ollie takes an extra long pull from his can, smacking his lips just to be obnoxious.  Hal grabs another empty can and tosses that at him too.  “You have plenty of your own; you don’t need your brother’s too.  Though speaking of his crap, don’t even get me started on—“

As Ollie begins version 753 of his rant about the social cancer Jack’s platform embodies, Hal’s suddenly, intensely aware of what’s weird about all this.  Because he doesn’t talk about Jack, not just with Barry or Ollie, but with anyone.  Even with Jim it’s usually a couple sentences about how Jack promised to really try this time, before Hal manages to change the subject.

But instead of the compulsion to go pick a fight, he’s a bit annoyed, kind of tired, and mostly just…fine. 

Except for his face.  That’s feeling a little numb.

In fact, thinking back on the cookout, what comes to mind isn’t Jack’s insults but the grounding pressure of Barry’s hand in his.

He can almost feel it now.  His fingers twitch, one after another, wanting to squeeze back.

He might be more drunk than he thought.

Wednesday

“As much as I appreciate seeing who I’m punching,” Dinah says as she takes down a thug with a mean left hook, “I can’t help but wonder why you’ve been in Star so much this week.”

Hal has been in Star a lot this week, but that’s because massive hangovers and procrastination are the alternative to immediately hightailing it to Oa.  If that’s not personal growth, he doesn’t know what is.

Dinah’s duking it out with half a dozen big, angry dudes in one of Star City’s convenient dark alleys.  From how often he’s witnessed this exact scene, Hal assumes the city planners designed them for this exact purpose.  The light from his ring casts their attackers and all the usual alley accoutrements in bright greens and harsh blacks.

Hal himself floats six feet up.  It’s crowded enough down there without adding another body to the mix. 

“What, GA didn’t tell you?” Hal asks as he scoops up two thugs in a glowing green bug net.  He’d drop to ground level to really engage, but he’s more interested in Dinah’s opinion than beating up… he doesn’t know who these guys are.  They’re all wearing hoodies.  It feels like he’s putting in the appropriate amount of effort.

Dinah pivots on one foot, slamming the other into the chest of an oncoming attacker.  “Oh, he did.  Said you came by to talk about some family stuff.”  Another of the hoodlums runs at her from behind, but Dinah reaches back, grabs the guy by his shirt, and hurls him into the alley’s obligatory dumpster.  “But I doubt that’s why you’re still hanging around.”

“Maybe I just missed your company,” Hal says.  A dude in the back pulls out his phone to call for backup.  Hal plucks it out of his hand with a construct one, then picks the guy up by his hood and dumps him in the net with his pals.  “I can’t spend time with my friends without my motives being questioned?”

Dinah kicks the last guy in the face and turns to Hal.  

She looks supremely unimpressed.  She’s got Ollie to practice on, so Hal’s not surprised she’s got it down.

They dump the rest of the hoodie brigade into the bug net in a moaning mess of limbs.  They’re dropping these guys off with the police, so he makes Dinah a platform, morphs the net into a soundproof hamster ball, and takes off into the sky.

They’re outside Star City proper, so they quickly rise above building level and into the open air.  The city skyline sparkles in the distance, like clusters of stars poking through the heavy cloud cover.  He’s been here enough over the years to pick out the landmarks, so he takes off, flying low over the tops of the buildings.

After some increasingly incredulous probing, Dinah wears him down enough that he gives a quick rundown of the past couple days, after-credits word vomit, text ghosting, and all.  He finishes with, “Like Barry needs more reminders that he’s totally out of my league.”

“For a guy who’s totally out of your league, he sure spends a lot of time with you.”  

He can hear the smirk in her voice as she says it, but the creeping discomfort is back regardless.  This is why he doesn’t talk about this stuff; vocalizing the problem leaves him longing for the sweet emptiness of space all over again.

“Hal!”  Dinah’s tone of voice allows no argument, and he turns to look at her.  She grins at him, a little wry, but not as exasperated as he’d expected.  “You’ve been spending too much time with Barry.  You’re overthinking it.  You might not have explicitly said anything about your family issues before, but believe me, we all had some sort of an idea.”  

That discomfort’s back, clawing at his chest from the inside.   “You all knew?”

“Not the specifics, but yeah.  Those of us who spend any time with you, anyway.  The other Lanterns.  Me and Ollie.  Barry.”  She stares him down, one side of her lips quirking up.  “You’re not as closed a book as you think, Jordan.”

Hal snorts.

“The point is, any deep dark secrets you think you’re keeping?  You never were.  We just didn’t ask because you’re allowed to have stuff you don’t talk about.”   She crosses her arms.  “So did you ask him out?”

Hal almost falls out of the air.  “No!  Not after that!”

“Why not?  From what you just said, your family loves him, he actively helped when your brother was being shitty, and from the sound of those texts — not going to say a thing about how you have those memorized — he doesn’t agree about the whole thing being a lost cause.  So what’s the problem?”

“Ollie understood.”  Hal grumbles.  “He told me to grovel a bit and wait for things to blow over.”

“Ollie still thinks he’s competing with Barry for the title of number one best bro!”   

“Oh.”  That explains a lot.  “Yeah, Ollie’s always been crap at picking up that sort of thing.”

“Imagine being that oblivious about your best friend being into someone.”  She gives him a look that would probably be significant if he had any idea what she meant.  Hal had known immediately that Ollie was into Dinah, mostly because, Ollie being Ollie, he’d said so every chance he got.  “Also, never take romantic advice from him.  Did I ever tell you about the William Tell date?”

“The what?”

“William Tell.  Shot an apple off his kid’s head?  Anyway, we’d just started dating, and he thought it would be super romantic to replicate that.  He hit it, of course, but the apple exploded everywhere.  I was finding chunks in my hair for days.”

Hal snickers.  “Why are you dating him again?”

“No, you don’t get to bring this stuff up and then change the subject.  Or cast stones about dating screw ups.”  Apparently he looks pathetic enough that she takes pity on him, because her tone softens significantly when she continues, “Look, if you need to do something, tell him how much he means to you.  People don’t hear that enough, and it splits the difference between your idiotic idea and my better idea that you’re not willing to do.”

It’s not a bad plan.  She’s right that he rarely says that out loud, and that he’s got plenty to say on the matter.  It feels more like moving forward than apologizing does, and Dinah’s way better at this stuff than him or Ollie.

And she’s right: Barry does know Hal’s hangups.  He thinks back to how easily they worked together in the interview, or how quickly Barry intuited Hal’s issues in the medbay.  Or how Hal knows when Barry needs to get out of his head, or the lab.  That stuff doesn’t stick out to him anymore because it’s been like that for years, but not talking about something didn’t mean they don’t know .

“Hal.  Hal!”

Hal looks up just in time to veer away from the building about to smash into his face.

Thursday

The call comes on Thursday morning.  Hal wakes to his ring attempting to shake his finger out of its socket.

“Whuzzit?” Hal exclaims blearily as his eyes focus enough to make out the glowing red letters.  4:23AM.  Fuck.

He slaps himself in the face a few times, willing his suit on and floating a foot off the bed for good measure.  Gotta have at least a veneer of professionalism as a senior Lantern, even if that veneer’s razor thin because 4 in the fucking morning.

Professionalism goes out the window when Guy asks him what time it is on Earth. Hal flips him off.  The ass wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t already know.

It’s an Earth Lantern call, one they have weekly, though usually at more humane hours.  John leads the briefing, with Kyle jumping in with his firsthand report.

Hal listens intently.  The longer they talk, the more of that familiar thrill builds in his chest; it’s the promise of a new adventure, of the final systems check before a flight.  The Lanterns have been on the trail of some Darkstar stragglers for the past year, and the communications blackout Kyle describes is exactly the sort of thing they’d expect to see if they’re establishing a new base of operations.

And if that is what’s going on, Kyle and Guy are heading directly into an ambush with only rookie Lanterns as backup.

His gut’s telling him that this is it.  He should volunteer.  He’s the best person if things go sideways.  The routine check should only take about a week, maybe a month if things get really out of hand.  The words form on his tongue.

But.

He can see his phone from his floating vantage point.  It lights up on the half hour, bright among the handful of items on the cardboard box he’s using as a nightstand.   He can see Barry’s texts at the top of his notifications.

It’s enough to make him pause and reconsider.  The Corp investigate dozens of similar cases every year, and only a fraction turn into the massive shoot out he’s envisioning.  Did Kyle say anything to suggest Darkstar involvement, or is Hal fabricating that connection so he’s got an excuse to run away from his personal problems?

The more he thinks about it, the harder it is to deny it’s the latter.

So instead, as everything wraps up, he wishes them luck and says they know where to find him if they need backup.  The words feel strange in his mouth. It's not the easiest decision, as the queasy knot in his stomach is helpfully reminding him, but the more he thinks about it the more convinced he is that it’s the right one.

Guy’s figure flickers out before Hal’s even finished talking, and Kyle’s disappears a moment after.  

John turns straight to Hal.  Hal swallows.

“I’m surprised.”  John smiles and Hal braces for it.  “Thought you’d jump at any chance to get off-world.”

“So you don’t think they can handle a routine inspection?”

John’s eyebrow is enough to tell Hal he’s not taking the bait.  “Nice try.  Usually after a couple months planet-side you can’t take a mission fast enough.”

“I—“   He wants to protest.  But John knows him, and Hal knows he’s right.  Instead, he says, “You remember the chat we had before I came back to Earth?”

John chuckles.  “That’s not how I would describe that conversation.”

Okay, so maybe there’d been a little yelling, some name calling, and accusations of John pulling rank.  But what had he expected, telling Hal he’s benched on Earth until further notice?

“You’re better as a Lantern when you have a personal life,” John had told him bluntly.  “You still have connections on Earth.  Go make the best of them while you still can.”

Hal had been completely flabbergasted.  “…did you just tell me I need to work on my work-life balance?  As a Green Lantern?”

The tiniest twist of John’s lips had at least told Hal he knew how ridiculous that sounded.  But he also hadn’t been willing to budge.  And with that he’d left Hal to slink off back to Earth.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that John had been right.  He’d reconnected with Jim, rejoined the League, and Barry…

Hal takes a deep breath.  This is John; he can be more honest.  “There’s an… opportunity that I want to follow up on.  Something I’d like to see through to its conclusion.”

“Really?”  Hal’s instantly suspicious with the amount of amusement he can hear in John’s voice.  “Is this ‘opportunity’ blonde or brunette?”

“Oh come on!  I’m not that bad!”  And then, because he can’t help himself, “Also, blond.”

John laughs and is about to reply, but is rudely interrupted.

“Let me guess,” Kyle says, his disembodied head appearing next to John, barely contained snicker obvious on his face, “Legs for days?  Looks good in blue?  Cheesiest cheese ball to ever cheese ball?  Am I close?”

“Is Hal finally making a move?”  Guy yells before Hal has a chance to splutter a response.   “Thank fuck !  I’m so tired of listening to you bitch and moan about how he’s too good for you and you’re going to fuck it up.  That’s what you do , Jordan!  You fuck everything up, and then figure something out anyway!   So pull your head out of your ass!“

Kyle snorts.  “And I thought Hal gave bad pep talks.“

“Fuck off!  This has nothing to do with—“

“And god, the moping , and the sighing .”  Guy’s voice rises to an alarming falsetto.  “Oh, Barry !  When will you notice my blatant pining and rescue me from my own self delusion?  Because I can’t do it my own damn self like a grown ass adult and—”

John’s voice cuts him off.  “Ring, mute Lanterns 2814.2 and 2814.4.”

Hal snorts.  “Getting used to making the hard calls, I see.”

Guy’s voice stops abruptly, though Hal can still see his hologram gesticulating wildly.  Kyle joins in, clearly horrified at being lumped in with Guy.  When Guy turns his ire from John onto Hal, Hal flips him off again.

“If you feel that strongly about this ‘opportunity,’ then best of luck.”  That sneaky half smile is back.  “Though expect some follow up questions on next week’s call.”

“I’m well aware of what horrible gossips you all are.  Thanks for the words of encouragement, but I know what I’m going to do.”  As much as he grumbles about their interest, he really does appreciate the support.  Dinah had been right; apparently he has no secrets whatsoever.  But instead of feeling exposed, or even embarrassed that all his baggage is right out there in the open, he’s just grateful to have all these meddling busybodies in his life.  “Good flying out there.”  He turns to Guy’s pouting hologram.  “Except you, Guy.  Fuck you.”  And then he signs off before they can respond.

The knot of tension that’s been bothering him all week finally releases, and it feels fantastic.  Certainly way better than he has any right to at 4:45AM.

He lets himself drop onto his mattress.  It’s set directly on the floor and does nothing to break his fall. Without the light of the ring, the alarm clock is the only light in the room.  But it doesn’t matter if it’s still ass o’clock in the morning, because he’s wide awake with a lighter heart than he’s had in years.

Hal can take a hint.  And yeah, maybe it’s been a week of increasingly blatant ones, but he’s got a hard head.

And, he realizes, the thought of maybe sticking around has its own sort of adventurous thrill.  It’s paired with an anxious little flutter — the kind he never gets when guys reveal a superweapon aimed right at his face — and possibility, so close he can practically taste it.

When he wakes again it’s at a more human hour, and he barely hesitates before grabbing his phone. “Hope you’re hungry, because I’m bringing my A game.”

The response is immediate: a single thumbs up.  

It’s one of three whole emojis Barry uses, and Hal has memories for each.  This one’s from shortly after they met, of Barry, in his Flash suit, lying next to Hal in a pile of rubble.  Hal’s head had been fuzzy, but he’d managed a mumbled question asking whether they’d won.  Barry had flopped his head to face Hal, grinned a wide, dopey grin, and raised his forearm in a sideways thumbs up.

In retrospect, they’d probably both had concussions, but he’s past the point of blaming that for the giddy feeling he gets thinking back on the memory.

God, he misses him.

Time to go face his fears.

Friday

“But that’s where you’re wrong! I’m not Magenta Crimson!  I’m her identical twin sister who was separated at birth!”  

Hal snickers through the musical sting as Fuchsia Cerise continues her monologue.  He needs to check out the show’s credits to see what minor supervillain they’ve recruited for the writing room.  Someone in the life has to be involved, because this is way too close to genuine — and equally hammy — villainous speeches he’s heard over the years.

He had no idea The Brave and the Bold was still running.  Hal has some vague memories of his mother watching it back before everything.  Best he can recall, the two leads have barely changed, besides being significantly more orange after marinating in self tanner for a couple decades.

Also, they’re all superheroes now.  Six year old him would have been more inclined to watch if flying and throwing terrible CGI fireballs had been mixed in with the genre standards of amnesia, forgotten relatives, and improbable resurrections.

He glances at his watch.  Twenty minutes since he finished cooking, maybe fifteen since his reminder to Barry.

All that’s left to do is wait.

Despite cooking with a built in buffer for Barry’s perpetual tardiness, Barry was nowhere to be seen when Hal pulled the last dish out of the oven and arranged it with the others on the stove to cool.  He’d sent off a quick text to Barry, figuring it’ll give him time to finish whatever he’s doing before heading home.

Because Hal had time and energy to spare, he’d spruced things up.  He set the table, then found a table cloth and some fancy-ish placemats and napkins in the linen closet and set those out too.  But the plates and silverware didn’t go with the tablecloth, so he pulled out the “so-so china” — Hal didn’t understand what occasions merit the “good china,” and it wasn’t the conversation he had in mind for tonight — and re-set the table with those instead.  While he’d been in the cabinet, he discovered some tall candles in the back, so he’d grabbed the candlesticks and arranged those on the table too.  Then, finally out of obvious stuff to fuss with and with Barry’s texted assurance that he’d be there soon, Hal had settled in his usual spot on Barry’s couch and turned on the TV.

The calm he’s feeling should be unsettling, given the circumstances.  It’s not like anything has materially changed since last week, when he was, to put it in technical terms, freaking the fuck out.  But there’s one main difference between then and now, and it’s that Hal has the one thing he almost never does.

A plan.

He’s bursting to put it into motion.  It’s realistic, doable, and best of all, risk free.  Bats would be proud, after he recovered from his heart attack and finished trying to banish Hal back to whatever twisted alternate dimension Hal had escaped from.

The lock rattles as if on cue and Hal jumps up.  Barry’s in the doorway, tie loosened, looking bright and energetic for just having pulled a ten hour shift.  Hal’s not a total taskmaster; he’d set dinner on the later side to give Barry ample time for unnecessary unpaid overtime before their wild Friday night in.

“Hal, whatever you made smells amazing,” Barry says in greeting.  He raises an eyebrow when Hal moves to help him with his coat, but relinquishes it easily.

Hal grins cheekily as he stashes Barry’s jacket and ushers him farther inside.  “Not even a hello first?  Way to make it clear where your priorities are.”

“I thought that was why you were offering me food?” Barry replies in the same tone as he lets himself be led towards the kitchen.  “You look nice.“

“What?”  Hal glances at himself.  The button up and dress pants are his go-to for work events.  There hadn’t been one recently, so they’d been the only clean clothes in his apartment this morning.  Barry doesn’t need to know that, so Hal grins his most confident grin.  “Just thought I’d throw a little something on to set the mood.”

Barry laughs, then stops abruptly when he sees the table.  He stares at it for a long moment before turning back to Hal with wide eyes.

“The food’s in the kitchen,” Hal explains, showing him the army of dishes taking up every inch of the counter and stove.  He notices what’s off with the table when he turns back around.  “Help yourself!” he calls to Barry, passing him a plate and whipping up a book of matches with his ring to light the candles. 

“Is that… a turkey pan?” Barry asks from the kitchen.  “Filled with lasagna?”

Hal laughs.  “Yeah.  You didn’t have anything big enough for the portions I had in mind, so I borrowed it from Jim.”

Aaaand now he’d brought up Jim, which brings in everything that happened last week.  Hal takes a moment to congratulate himself for lasting all of three minutes before tripping over himself.

“That was nice of him,” Barry says, his eyes flitting between Hal, the table, and the feast on the counter.

Barry’s acting kind of jumpy.  Did something happen at work?  Still, Barry doesn’t skimp on helping himself to a heaping plate of everything, and Hal’s more than capable of running his mouth until Barry feels better or wants to talk about it.

He rattles on about food as they fill their plates, easily talking through what might have otherwise been awkward pauses when Barry doesn’t pick up the thread of the conversation.  Besides Hal’s impromptu decorations, it could be one of any of the countless nights they’d eaten together in Barry’s apartment.

Barry rallies enough to be amazed that Hal put all this together with $20 and Barry’s spice cabinet, then impressed when Hal admits to the ring-enabled globe trotting he’d pulled to further stretch his budget.

Not that Hal minds cooking.  Attempting anything off-world is a masterclass in substitution that quickly overwhelms Hal’s self taught skills, but when it’s on Earth, with Earth ingredients, it can be okay.  The heat of the stove, the smell of the garlic, even the sting at his eyes from cutting the onions are all familiar and peaceful, reminiscent of quiet afternoons after he’d gotten back from school but before his mom and Jack ended their shifts.  And cooking implements fit his hands now, though he’s not above cheating with his ring to speed-boil some water or dice vegetables with no cleanup required.

He tells Barry most of this, only pausing a moment before divulging the bit about his mom and Jack.  Barry nods along, asking questions and eventually sharing some stories about his and Daryl’s adventures in frozen food and takeout.  Even though his mother had cooked when he was a kid, Barry hadn’t considered picking it up himself until his powers made feeding himself exorbitantly expensive.

“I can’t make anything as good as this, though,” Barry says as he gets up to help himself to thirds, and Hal’s ridiculously pleased for such a tiny complement.

The conversation slows to a natural pause as Barry retakes his seat.  Hal swallows.

Now’s as good a time as any.

“So I know this whole setup’s a little unconventional,” Hal says. “For me, anyway.”

Barry grins.  “I know.  This is super tame by your standards.  Shouldn’t you be out starting a bar fight in Alpha Centauri?”

Hal scoffs.  “Yeah, whatever, smartass.”  He can feel his face heating up, but this is important, and he’s going to say it, damn it.  He fiddles with his napkin, taking a deep breath and staring between the candles at Barry’s expectant face.  “I… I wanted to do something for you.  I’ve been thinking about the two of us a lot lately, especially this last week.”

Barry straightens at his words.  He’d spent most of the meal splitting his attention between the conversation and inhaling the mountains of food on his plate, but now it’s all focused on Hal.  Hal straightens under the weight of that gaze.

“There’s so much, it was hard to tell where to start,” he continues.  “How much I appreciate your point of view.  How much fun we have laughing over stupid, mundane shit.  And how we can talk about anything, even if it’s weird, or unflattering, or hard.”

He locks eyes with Barry.  The flickering candlelight reflects back at him from the blue of Barry’s eyes.  His mouth hangs open slightly with just a hint of a smile, the light shimmering off his bottom lip.

“And I… I like who I am better when I’m with you.”  He punctuates it with a laugh.  “Even when I’m being a melodramatic mess.  I’m well aware that I’m not the best at this kind of thing, but you… You make me want to try.”

His eyes fall on Barry’s outstretched hand near the center of the table.  He reaches out and puts his own over it.  Barry immediately flips his hand over to grasp Hal’s right back, and it’s easy to draw the strength for his next words from that steady, warm pressure.

“And that’s why…  Thank you.  For being such a good friend.”

Hal lets out a breath, a wave of relief releasing the tension wound tight in his muscles.  That went well!  He hadn’t stumbled or rambled off topic once!  He’d pat himself on the back if his hand weren’t otherwise occupied.

Speaking of, there’s a strange tingling sensation running up his arm.  It takes Hal a moment to realize what it is.  The hand in his is buzzing.

He looks up to see Barry sitting across from him, except blurry around the edges, like he couldn’t sit still for a photo.  “Bar?”

Barry pops into focus and goes really still, still and quiet.  It’s eerie; Hal would find it far less unsettling if Barry were storming off, or yelling, or even throwing his drink in Hal’s face, something, anything , to give him some idea of what had just happened.

“Bar, you with me?”

“Oh.”   The pause after that single syllable is becoming unbearable real fast.  Barry blinks, the action taking an eternity, and Hal wonders, briefly, if they’ve somehow switched powers.  “I… I’m glad you’re in my life too.  So…you’re welcome?”  It’s definitely said as a question, and now Hal’s really confused.  After another yawning pause, Barry finally says, “You set all this up to say that?”

“Yes?”

“Oh.  Uh, that was really nice of you.”  His smile is as shaky as his hand was a moment earlier.  “Thanks.”

Barry carefully extracts his hand to pick at his food and Hal’s left staring at him with the distinct feeling that he’s messed up big time.  Nothing’s coming to mind, though.  Did he say something else in his excessive word vomit last week that he forgot to address?  He thought he’d covered everything, if a little vaguely, but—

“Do you–” Barry clears his throat as he pushes a noodle around his plate.  “Would you like to get dinner sometime?”

“What?”  Okay, apparently the temporary insanity has hit both of them, because he has no idea what to make of that non sequitur.  He looks down at his plate, then over to the half a feast still out on the counter.  “We’re literally eating right now.”  When Barry doesn’t say anything he tries again. “Are you still hungry?  Did I not make enough?”

“No!  No.”  Barry coughs.  Even in the candlelight, the red of his ears is downright luminous.   “And I meant some other time.”

Hal frowns.  “Yeah, sure.”

They sit in silence for another long moment.

“Why are you asking?  We eat out all the time.”

The reason suddenly dawns on him.  He stares at Barry’s half-turned face, the furious red — no, blush — on his ears and creeping onto his cheeks.

He’s trying to keep his anticipation in check, but his heart’s already midair, charging head first towards all sorts of conclusions.  He swallows around his too-dry tongue, and manages to say, “Did you mean… like a date?”

“It doesn’t have to be if that’s not what you want,” Barry says in a rush.

Hal shoots up, because he can’t not, banging his knee against the table in his haste to get upright.  “Yes, you dork!  Holy hell, I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to ask you out since we got back to Earth!”

The candles flicker and tilt wildly. Suddenly they’re both dark — Hal assumes Barry put them out; he didn’t see a thing — and Barry’s staring at him between the candlesticks.  “Wait, what?”  It’s Barry’s turn to look confused.  “Then why didn’t you?  And what was all this?”

Hal blinks.  “All what?”

Barry gestures at the table as if that explained things.  When Hal shrugs, Barry grabs the butter dish and waves it in Hal’s face.  “You used the so-so china!  The only other time you ever touched it was to make fun of the idea of having plates for multiple occasions — which, by the way, I maintain is far more normal than eating off paper towels.  Then there’s the tablecloth, I didn’t even know I had those candlesticks, you’re wearing something other than jeans and a t-shirt—”

Oooh.  Hal looks at the tablecloth, the place settings, the mood lighting … The only way he could have been more over the top is if he’d strewn flower petals over the whole thing.  “Would you believe that none of that was part of the plan, and that I went overboard distracting myself waiting for you to get home?”  He glances at himself.  “Also, I haven’t done laundry in like two weeks.”

“Oh, absolutely.”  Ten years ago he might have been insulted by how easily everyone around him accepts that he has no idea what he’s doing, but now he just takes it as a sign that they get him.  “I’m kind of glad you did though.  I almost didn’t say anything; after that big speech about how good a friend I was, I wasn’t sure it’d be welcome.  I thought I’d picked up enough hints, but—.”

“I’m an idiot.  The gratitude thing was Dinah’s plan”  Okay, it’s not fair to throw her under the bus like that when she objectively helped him out.  “My plan was to grovel a bit and hope we could get back to the status quo.  And, barring that, maybe pick that fight in Alpha Centauri.”  The cat’s already out of the bag, so fuck it; he’s going to be completely honest about all this.  “I probably shouldn’t tell you about yesterday morning and how tempted I was to pull a, well, me, and fuck off somewhere.  I’d been planning to finally say something, but after last week, and everything at the cookout with Jack...“

Barry runs a hand through his hair, then gets up and moves around the table.  He stops in front of Hal, frowning.  “That’s not how I saw last week at all.  I’m sorry you had to go through that, but as far as the two of us... I mostly felt privileged you were willing to talk to me about something that personal.  I didn’t mean to pressure—”

Luckily, Hal’s week, or, more specifically, chucking beer cans at Ollie, has prepared him for this conversation.  “You didn’t.  At all.  It helped, actually talking to someone about that.  It just took me a little while to realize.”  Looking back, while his reaction had been a genuine one, the amount he’d extrapolated was way excessive for the cookout going exactly as he’d expected.  “What I said earlier about being a melodramatic mess still stands, you know.”

“I think we’re all allowed a little melodrama.  Our lives do seem to attract it, professionally and personally.”  Barry sobers quickly, though his face is still so much warmer and more hopeful than it was after Hal’s misguided monologue that Hal can barely believe that was only a couple minutes ago.  “That’s why I didn’t say anything sooner.  I know how to heart you take your personal relationships, and didn’t want to push.  I wanted us to be in a place where I wouldn’t shut you out, and you wouldn’t feel the need to run away.  Because I think this could really be something, and I want us to have every advantage.”

“Yeah, that sounds like us.   And something I actually did.”  He laughs, and delights in how easy it feels.  “This has kind of been going on for a while from my end.”

“From mine too.  And because of that, I like to think I know you well enough to not be scared off by any especially ‘Hal Jordan’ thing you do.  So while I appreciate your effort trying to avoid your previous relationships’ pitfalls, you don’t need to try that hard.”

“What, are you saying you don’t want to hear all the chemistry pickup lines I learned?”

“Oh, no, we’re definitely making use of those.”  There’s a husky note in Barry’s voice Hal’s very interested in learning more about, but that will have to wait.  He’s got plenty of incentive to be patient.  “But I mean censoring yourself.  I think we’ve already seen what happens when we don’t communicate.”  Barry runs a hand through his hair and grins sheepishly.  “I was trying to hint that I’d be open to something.  Obviously I didn’t do a very good job.”

“Wait, what did you do?”  Hal stops, wracking his brain.  “So you did dress up for the team building retreat flight!”

“It’s not the 70s, Hal.  People don’t dress up for flights anymore.  Though I’ll concede that my execution wasn’t great on that one.”  He huffs a laugh, and maybe he sounds a little frustrated, but he’s happy too, and that’s what’s shining through the brightest.  “Also, why do you think I was on the same plane as you and Dinah?  You know it would take me way less time to fly to Illinois from Central, right?”

“I...”   Yeah, he should have noticed that.  Not his finest moment, but so what?  They’re here now.  “I was just happy it meant I got to spend time with you.  I wasn’t going to question a good thing.”

Apparently he’s recovered some of his game, because Barry beams and sidles a little closer.  “Flatterer.  But yes, that’s why I was around so much; I know one of my issues is not prioritizing my relationships, and I didn’t want to be left wondering ‘what if’ this time around.  So I volunteered for the interview, and for the stakeout.  And I don’t make a habit of cuddling up with injured Leaguers in the medbay, though I was trying to keep you from killing yourself too.”

Hal snickers.  “You didn’t talk to anyone about your plan either, did you?”

Barry looks as abashed as Hal should probably be feeling after missing all this.  “I talked to Iris.  Eventually.  She thought I was being ridiculous waiting this long.”

He’s paying attention now, and hasn’t missed how intently Barry’s watching him back.  Hal has no problem matching that heat.  There’s a glaring omission in Barry’s big detective reveal, one Hal hasn’t been able to get off his mind.  Neither of them has brought up the almost maybe sort-of kiss from a couple weeks ago — one that he’s now perfectly okay acknowledging for what it is — and Hal would absolutely not be against another, uninterrupted attempt.

Though, now that he’s thinking back on that conversation… “You never answered.”  Barry blinks at him.  “During the stakeout, right before Amazo-lite stuck his shiny head into our business.  You said you knew what you wanted, but didn’t say what it was.”

“This.  What we have.  Except with an acknowledgement of what it is.”  Barry’s eyes flick between Hal’s eyes and his lips in a delicious movement.   “And maybe a couple extra things on top.”

“Extra things?”  Hal takes another step closer.  “Like what?”

Barry leans against him.  They’re chest to chest, and Hal can feel the hummingbird thrum of Barry’s heartbeat and the warm puff of his breath as he speaks.  

“Can I… Would you mind, if I kissed you?”

Hal’s been thinking of little else for the last couple of minutes, but there’s no way he can let that go without comment.  “Barry.  Bar, your pickup game needs work.”

“I didn’t want to assume!  Just because— that didn’t necessarily mean—!”

“Seriously.  I’m not a subtle guy.”  He inches closer, his nose brushing Barry’s.  He’s grinning like an idiot, and acting a bit like one too, but he’s too drunk on the moment to care.  “And what would you have done if I’d said ‘Yes?’  Ask if I meant like ‘yes you can kiss me,’ or ‘yes, I mind,’ or–”

His lips keep moving for a few extra seconds before his brain catches up to the fact that Barry is kissing him.  Once he does, though, he throws himself into it.  His entire body tightens, his arms around Barry pulling him closer as he leans into the kiss.  Hal parts his lips and Barry follows his example immediately, his tongue sliding out tentatively at first, then more confidently when Hal’s meets and caresses it.  Barry’s hands come up to wrap around Hal’s neck, cradling the back of his head and stroking gently even as they devour each others’ mouths.

They part after too short a moment, pulling back just far enough to catch their breath.  Barry’s chest heaves against Hal’s like he just ran laps around the world, and Hal’s sure he’s no better.  But as delicious as every breath is, he’s barely resisting the magnetic draw towards Barry’s lips for another taste.

“We…”  Barry meets Hal’s eyes.  He looks a little dazed, like he can’t quite believe the last couple minutes.  Hal can definitely relate.  “We’re really bad at this.”

Hal blinks.  “I didn’t think the kiss was that bad.”

“No, I mean getting here.  We’re a total mess.”

“Yeah.” There’s really no point in arguing; the months and years of evidence are perfectly clear.  Hal catches Barry’s eye, warmed by the unbridled light he sees there.  But he can’t help himself, so he leans in and presses his lips against the flushed shell of Barry’s ear.  “But I can think of some things we’d be fantastic at.”

Barry dissolves into laughter that’s bordering on hysterical, and Hal can’t help noticing how much better this is with Barry pressing the sound right into his neck.  He leans his head against Barry’s, enjoying each staccato puff of breath against his skin.

“Too much?  Tell me if it’s too much.”

“It’s fine,” Barry says, and his expression is just so fond that Hal can only believe him. Barry pats his cheek.  “I like you and your mouth.”

“Oh, do you now?” Hal says as lasciviously as possible.  He waggles his eyebrows.  “Not as much as you’re going to.”

Hal sees the exact moment Barry realizes his unforced error because his ears go two shades redder.  He groans.  “You really have no intention of shutting up, do you?”

“Nope, it’s not that easy.”  There’s no room left in him; he’s full of happiness and the words have nowhere else to go.  “If you want to shut me up, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

Barry hums, smiling that smile Hal didn’t think he could love any more and closes the distance to do just that.

Chapter Text

Epilogue:

“Every time I think you can’t sink to a new relationship low,” Dinah says, head in her hands.  Hal would be more affected by her secondhand embarrassment, except, one, embarrassment had never been one of his strong suits, and two, he’s still got another week and a half at least before anything negative registers with him at all.  “It’s Carol and the car loan all over again!”

The League meeting’s already gone in one ear and out the other.  A handful of Leaguers are still loitering around the Watchtower.

In the past week, Hal and Barry hadn’t decided what and when they wanted to tell people.  With today’s League meeting, they’d settled on acting as if nothing had changed.  Apparently they hadn’t managed, though, because Dinah had made a beeline for Hal the moment Bats finally shut up and everyone stood up to escape.  

So much for feeling proud of himself for not playing footsie with Barry under the table.  He’d been really tempted when Bats had opened up that second slideshow.

It had taken all of ten seconds before she’d gotten him to spill everything.  Unsurprisingly, Dinah hadn’t been impressed with his performance. 

“First,” Hal says, “it was a lease .  Clearly you don’t know anything about my credit score if you think I could get a loan .”  He thinks back on the night of his big non-proposal.  He’d be thinking about it constantly, but he’s been otherwise occupied.  “But yeah, that’s exactly what it was.  Besides the ending, which went significantly better.”

Dinah’s eye roll is epic in scale and flawless in execution.  “I know you plenty.  Better than the rest of the League, anyway.  For example, I know you well enough to win the League’s three hundred dollar pot.”

“Three hundred bucks?  I had no idea everyone’s lives were so boring.”

“What can I say; monitor duty gave me plenty of time to talk people into placing their bets.  The only person who I couldn’t convince was Victor, because, and I quote, “The less of Hal’s search history I have in my head, the better.”

“Smart kid.”  A week ago he might not have asked out of self preservation.  Now, he wants to know how wrong Bats was to hold it over his head.  “So what were the odds?  Were the two of us getting together in the lead, or were people leaning towards Patty?  Or me and Carol?”

“No, it was strictly a ‘‘when,” as in “when will Hal and Barry get their heads out of their asses and get together.’ “

That… It warms him more than it has any right to.  He himself hadn’t been nearly that confident.

“So what’s my cut?”

Dinah raises a perfect eyebrow.  “Your cut?  I’d say you made out pretty well already.”

She turns pointedly to Barry, who’s walking their way.  Hal, who totally hadn’t been glancing over at him through his whole conversation, tries not to perk up too visibly as Barry turns his attention to him.

Barry doesn’t do PDA, which is a damn shame, but Hal feels a warm spot on his cheek he recognizes as a telltale sign of a super speed peck.  It’s a little unfair that Barry can cheat his own rules that way, but Hal’s more than happy to reap the benefits while they figure this out.  

He grins down at Barry and slings an arm around his waist.  They did that before, so it doesn’t count.

“Sorry, I got caught up.”  Barry says after greeting Dinah.  He leans against Hal’s side ever so slightly.  “Have a good nap during the meeting?”

Dinah can keep her comments about Hal’s enamored face to herself, thanks.  She’s clearly barely restraining herself looking at the two of them.

“Yeah,” Hal says.  Staring into Barry’s eyes and seeing his own happiness reflected back at him, he can’t think of anything better.  “Yeah, I did.”