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Bruce's boots were muffled on the thick carpet, his breath steady as he slipped into the shadows of the bedroom. On any other occasion, Alfred might well have scolded him for not removing his footwear, bemoaning that he had raised him better—Bruce was fairly certain he had been tracking dirt, from somewhere between the cave and his direct beeline upstairs. He hadn’t wanted to spend a moment longer away than was strictly necessary, and facing Alfred’s wrath was a small price to pay. But instead, sensing Bruce's urgency as he passed, Alfred had only enquired softly if he had eaten. The answer was no, without a word being spoken. They’d both known it. The butler had disappeared a moment into the kitchen and reemerged with a protein shake, which was pressed sternly into his unresistant hands. It now sat on the bedside table, untouched.
The golden glow of the bedside lamp illuminated the outline of Hal's form beneath the covers, a quiet rise and fall with each shallow breath. They’d moved him here not too long ago, when it seemed he was out of the woods. Better under the watchful eye of about half the Batclan than a noisy hospital with an uncomfortable mattress. That being said, of course, there had been little change. Hal’s chest was still bandaged, wrapped tight and held together by a legion of stitches. A faint, unconscious shift, caught the edge of a nasal cannula in the faint light. Even from this distance, Bruce could see the kaleidoscope of bruising on his face, the dots of blood that had soaked through the bandages. Hal, like everything else in his life, had not done things by fucking halves.
The Green Lantern had gone down hard. A mission gone sideways—an alien invasion force swarming, fire slicing through the sky, the kind of battle that left even the League staggering by the end of it. Their intel had not been as ironclad as they’d hoped, and what had promised to be a simple ambush had quickly devolved into an all-out brawl. Hal had been in the thick of it, of course, flying headlong into the chaos with all of his grim smiles and reckless abandon. The blast that caught him mid-air had been sudden and well-timed and bright as the sun. A lucky shot in the worst way, sending him plummeting before he could fully reinforce against the impact. By the time Batman had reached him, the crater he had created was already puddled with red.
It had taken Leslie Thompkins three hours before she'd emerged from the operating room, mouth set in a tight line, to inform them that the worst had passed. It felt almost unfair, to have held Hal in his arms, felt the blood sticky and drying against his skin, only to have his life sustained now by a plastic bag and a drip. As if the fight had been taken from Bruce’s hands, as if this sterile solution could undo the hours of desperation. He let himself have that moment of resentment, recognising it for what it was. A raw edge, a frayed nerve, a helplessness he had never learned to stomach.
But it wasn’t the blood that haunted Bruce, not anymore. It was the vulnerability of it all—the sharp contrast between a man who has faced down gods without flinching and the one now lying so still, fragile in the dim light. Bruce leaned against the bedframe for a moment, watching Hal’s face. A lock of hair had fallen across his brow, stuck by a faint sheen of sweat, and Bruce couldn’t help but reach out, brushing it back gently. Hal’s face softened at the touch, his lips parting slightly in a quiet, involuntary sigh. The soft click of a door somewhere else in the manor pulled him back into the moment. Bruce approached in silence, careful not to disturb Hal as he knelt beside the bed, the sheets a tangled mess around Hal’s legs. Even in sleep, the man is restless, and it was comforting to see him in that constant state of motion after so much uncertainty.
The Lantern ring, cold and inactivate, rested heavy upon the bedside table, next to the long-forgotten protein shake. Bruce inspected it a moment, his fingers grazing the cool, alien surface, before turning his gaze back to Hal’s bruised face.
"Hal," Bruce murmured, his voice barely more than a whisper, "You’re an idiot."
But there’s no heat in the words. Not anymore. Not after the years of saving each other, piece by piece, until neither of them knew where one began and the other ended. Hal’s injuries, his reckless disregard for his own safety, had always been something Bruce had tried to wean him off of.
“You do realise how much of a massive hypocrite you are, right?” Hal had said, the last time he’d brought it up. They’d been on the Watchtower, after a particularly heated mission briefing. The Green Lantern had quite a few choice opinions on Batman’s leadership style. Riled, Batman had perhaps been a little less than professional himself.
“I’m well aware,” Bruce had admitted, his frustration already ebbing, siphoned off in the space between Hal’s mouth on his and the way Hal’s fingers traced slow circles against his hip. “Though I’d like to think my risks are, at least, calculated.”
Hal had only given him that knowing look, sharp and canny despite the lazy grin, the kind that always caught Bruce off-guard more than he’d ever let on. “I know you think that, Spooky.”
But in truth it was Hal’s chaotic, unrelenting will, that raw pilot’s instinct, that had kept him alive, kept all of them alive, time after time. Tonight, though...Tonight? Yesterday? Bruce scrubbed at his face but was reluctant to peel back the curtains and check, to disturb the soft cocoon of their room. This time, it hadn’t been enough. Bruce pressed his hand to the bed, fingers brushing over the cool fabric, just short of touching Hal’s skin. He wanted to reach out, but the fear of waking him, of seeing that flicker of pain in his eyes, kept him restrained. He needn’t have worried, however. Hal, the stupid, impossible man, stirred anyway.
Bruce tracked him waking in stages. The convulsive swallow as his throat worked, the rolling sweep under his eyelids. He saw Hal’s fingers and toes work and stretch with a groan, the man taking careful stock before finally, blessedly, he cracked his bruised eyes open. Hal’s lips curled into a faint, sleepy smile.
“Bruce,” he says, the word more of a groggy murmur than anything else. Sure enough, those eyes were pinched, tight lines of pain across pallid skin.
Bruce’s heart lurched at the sound of his name on Hal's lips, a soft pang that he had to push down, as if seeing the man so vulnerable were some kind of awful taboo. "Go back to sleep," Bruce replied instead, voice low, softening the command just enough.
Hal, because apparently he could never follow orders, shifted again, his hand reaching for Bruce, the motion languid and weak. Bruce gently took his hand, to disentangle the IV, and Hal seized this opportunity to loosely grip at his wrist.
“Stay,” Hal said with more clarity, a faint glimmer in his eyes despite the exhaustion. "You weren’t...you’re not gonna leave, are you?"
Bruce hesitated. Every instinct screamed at him to keep his distance, to retreat into the shadowed figure Gotham needed. Affection was vulnerability, distraction, a crack in the armour he had spent a lifetime forging. But Hal had always seen past that, through the walls Bruce built so meticulously. And—patiently, stubbornly—he had spent years prying them apart, not to break them down, but to replace them with something softer, something human.
“No,” Bruce answered quietly, his thumb brushing over Hal’s knuckles, offering the only comfort he can. "I'm not going anywhere."
And maybe, for the first time in a long time, it was enough.