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Bruce checked the time. Hal should already be there. He tried not to worry too much about it - vigilantes tended to get delayed a lot.
The thought had barely crossed his mind that the Green Lantern appeared in the room. He looked positively exhausted.
"Long day ?" Bruce asked.
"You could say that," Hal admitted, taking a seat next to him.
He yawned and Bruce wondered if he should send him home. Hal would probably protest.
"Any trouble ?"
"I've not been there for long but Ollie and Clark assured me there was nothing to report and I tend to agree," Bruce said, sparing the control screen a glance.
He was finishing a report on his last mission with the League.
He heard Hal's stomach growl and Hal's resigned sigh.
"Since when haven't you eaten anything ?" Bruce asked his teammate, shaking his head in disapproval before standing up.
"I don't know. Yesterday ?" Hal shrugged. "I thought I'd just grab something really quick tonight but then I spotted alien activity and after I've dealt with it, I realized how late it already was, so…"
Bruce sighed internally and rummaged through his utility belt to find a key under Hal's watchful gaze.
"What are you doing ?"
Bruce didn't answer him, opening a drawer Hal had never noticed before with the key. Bruce grabbed a round biscuit tin box inside and handed it to Hal.
The Lantern took it by reflex and looked at the art nouveau box hesitantly. The painting looked like one from Alfons Mucha. Hal's mother had been quite fond of the Czech artist, there had been some replicas of his posters on the kitchen's walls when Hal had been growing up.
Hal had seen similar boxes in the kitchen of the Manor, the few times he had been there.
"You've got a stash of Alfred's cookies in the Watchtower ?" he asked.
Bruce shrugged, looking at the screen in front of him with determination as Hal lifted the lid and then the parchment paper.
He kept his eyes firmly on the screen.
"That's a pterodactyl," Hal observed, holding out a dinosaur-shaped cookie.
Bruce finally looked at him. Hal didn't sound judgemental, mostly perplexed.
"Yes. They've got lemon in them. The parasaurolophuses are the cinnamon ones. There's vanilla in the spinosauruses. T-Rexes have orange blossom water in them."
"Okay," Hal said, still not eating his cookie, watching it in utter fascination instead.
The level of detail was quite amazing to witness.
"Alfred made them for me," Bruce said quietly, as if it explained everything.
He was trying to remember how he had wanted to finish the half-written sentence on his screen. Something about working on better coordination between the teammates flying and the ones on the ground.
"Why are they dinosaur-shaped ?" Hal asked, looking at the rest of the cookies.
He could recognize the T-rexes easily. However, if he had been into space from a young age, the true dinosaurs' aficionado of the family had been Jack, his older brother.
Hal couldn't identify many of the creatures the cookies had taken the shapes of.
Bruce stopped typing altogether and turned toward Hal. He could hear his teammate's stomach growl but Hal had yet to bite in the pteranodon cookie in his hand.
Bruce picked a ginger-flavored elasmosaurus in the tin box and polished it with his fingertips.
"When my parents died," he said, and he paused shortly.
No matter how many years had passed, he still felt the need to pause to recollect himself after saying that.
"I stopped smiling for a long time. Nothing Alfred could say or do to cheer me up worked but Alfred has always been of the stubborn kind and he kept trying to lift my spirits," Bruce explained.
Hal's gaze became softer.
"Some day, he made those T-rex shaped cookies. I was in complete awe. My favorite dinosaurs, in orange blossom water flavored paste. I raved about them for days until Alfred promised to make more," Bruce revealed.
He smiled briefly at the memory.
"He let me pick the new shapes I wanted. I don't think Alfred had ever wanted to know that much about dinosaurs but it was the first time since my parents died that… that I showed interest in anything," Bruce remembered.
He had loved the cookies so much he hadn't even wanted to eat them at first, but his little boy's stomach had only resisted for a few hours.
"Alfred kept making them more or less regularly after that. Alfred shows his love by baking. I caught him making purple colored star-shaped chocolate cakes for Steph the last time she was upset."
"Have you always kept some dinosaur cookies in some drawer in the Watchtower ?"
"More or less. They make great midnight snacks," Bruce said, finally biting in his own cookie.
Hal had yet to eat his own. He did, as if he had been waiting for Bruce to take a bite first. Bruce would have said something about not poisoning his teammates if his mouth hadn't been full. Manners. Alfred would be proud.
"Ummm, it's soooo good," Hal moaned loudly.
Bruce glanced at the door but it was closed. God knew what passersby with super hearing would imagine upon hearing him, even if Bruce doubted shame was a sentiment Hal was capable of.
"I love you," Hal said fervently when Bruce told him he could eat as many cookies as he wanted since Alfred would probably make more soon.
Bruce, who had kept working on his report, stopped typing for a millisecond or two, his hand hanging in the air.
"I'm aware," he eventually said, starting to write again.
He hadn't been certain but he had suspected it.
"That… that was a joke, actually," Hal said, almost choking on a delicious iguanodon.
"Really ?" Bruce said dryly, adding a few commas to his nearly finished report.
"You know what ? Yes, I fucking meant it. What are you going to do about it ?" Hal said, standing up and putting the box of cookies down on the nearest flat surface available - the top of a few reports Bruce needed to read.
Bruce stood too, walking toward Hal until he was in his personal space.
Until then, Bruce had thought Hal resented his feelings for him, and didn't want them to exist.
No one liked to be reluctantly loved, so Bruce hadn't said anything. He had feared the topic would be painful for them both.
And yet, he couldn't resist pointing out Hal's words, to make him acknowledge them.
Bruce had been almost certain Hal would deny being in love with him, but here they were, with Hal standing up for this love.
"This," Bruce said simply, pulling Hal to him swiftly and stroking his cheek as a single warning before kissing him.
It took Hal a whole second to react and kiss him back, just as Bruce was about to pull away from him.
They were breathing hard when they pulled apart.
"Ah, um, okay, just… just let me think for a second," Hal said, his hands on Bruce's chest, just before Batman could pull him into another mind-shattering kiss.
Bruce looked at him as he put some order into his hair. Hal leaned against his chair for a bit, almost completely still.
"Hal ?" Bruce asked nervously after a few seconds.
Bruce usually knew how to appreciate silence. Especially when all the kids were at the Manor and it felt like a giant hive.
His eyes met Hal's. Hal smiled.
"Okay. No more thinking," he said softly, pulling Bruce to him again.
Bruce's last thought before getting fully invested in this kiss was that Hal's lips still tasted like home and dinosaur-shaped cookies.