Work Text:
“GUY!”
—
Guy wakes gently; there is sand beneath him and a briny taste to the air. The lull of waves laps at his feet. The cold water jolts him upright as it clings to the cuffs of his jeans.
He whips his head around, looking for the voice that called out to him; he sees nobody.
The tall grass behind him sways inland, and he follows their movements. There is no path, so he is slow to trample and slide through sandy loam.
It is both quiet and loud in the same way a ragged breath may be in a library.
His mouth opens to call out to whoever may be around, but it is impossible to speak.
The grass becomes a hillside, great pines towering overhead. There is a fog that settles low around him.
He becomes distantly aware of a pain radiating from his stomach, but it is mild. Almost feels like it had when he confessed to Mike so many years ago, a nervous bile waiting for a blow that never came.
Mike.
Where was Mike?
His hand flies back as it touches something wet, attempting to leap over a fallen tree. A yellow and brown spotted slug retracts as he had. Curious eyes reemerge and continue forward as if realizing he was not a threat.
Mike would know what kind it was.
In the distance, he thinks he can see a cabin. Realistically, he should go toward it. However, he doesn’t want to. His feet stop their movement, and he tries to take an honest breath for the first time since awakening.
It hurts.
No. He shouldn’t be here.
Where was Mike?
He begins to panic, running away from the cabin, away from the slug, away from the pine. He falls, tumbling down into the tall grass, which slices his exposed flesh. He runs, following his path forged before. He sees the indent in the sand where he had been lying, though the legs are all but gone with the rising tide.
Before he can think through the consequences, he plunges into the deep blue water.
It is freezing, and the movement of swimming begins to aggravate the pain in his stomach. As his head turns to the surface between strokes, he takes deep, intentional breaths that burn more and more as he carries himself forward.
He has no idea how far he made it out to sea before suddenly feeling someone yank him by the collar, up and onto solid ground.
—
“Guy, please!”
Guy's eyes fly open again, this time it is much more overwhelming.
There is an annoying ringing in his ears. It is muffling the sounds of gunfire and explosives that surround him. His whole body feels as if it is on fire. A wet sensation around his abdomen makes him uncomfortable; in its center, there is a deep ache that exceeds his comprehension of pain.
It is so bright that his eyes fail him for those first few moments. Finally, they come to his aid, allowing him to blink back moisture into them. He sees someone above him, their silhouette slowly coming into focus as he blindly reaches for them.
He wants to comfort them, but why?
Oh, they are crying, that’s why. He sees a deep frown, furrowed brows, and the streaks of tears and snot.
Gross.
The wings that unfold to create a protective shield around them would have anyone else convinced they were being met with an angel. He tries to smirk at the thought, knowing she was never much of an angel, but it looks more like an attempt to clear the blood clotting in the back of his throat than anything else.
Suddenly, he is pushed to his side.
It makes breathing easier; he coughs up blood and phlegm.
Kendra. Hawkgirl. She is talking to him, but the words are barely registering in his mind.
“Guy… I-... out… soon…” He has no idea what it means.
Instead, he focuses on the hand she has firm on his hip, holding him in the sideways position, and the other on his upper arm, which is attempting to rub soothingly but is too firm and too sharp to be conventionally comforting.
It is her comforting, and Guy feels honored by it.
His head had begun to pound in time with his erratic heartbeat. The movement to his side exposed that there was one hell of a wound stretching across his abdomen, which was bleeding rather profusely. The shoulder, smooshed between him and the concrete below, is dislocated.
He is crying. The grime on his face feels like sandpaper as tears cut through it, dripping from the bridge of his nose and pooling in his ear.
Kendra is talking again, and this time, he tries to concentrate on what she is saying.
“...almost here, Guy. They are almost here.” She is whispering to him, when had she pulled him closer? The hand on his hip now pressed wretchedly against the wound on his stomach. He tries to move, wiggle away from her painful grip. It only encourages her to pull him closer, hold onto him more firmly.
He was tired, so very tired.
He closed his eyes.
—
When he opens his eyes for the third time, he is relieved to find himself in a dim room. It is also rather quiet; the soft whir of machines and occasional beeps make the space feel less suffocating.
He is a bit cold, but the mattress and soft blanket wrapped around him make it easy to ignore.
He is in one of the Hall's medical suites, which they rarely have to use, so its appearance is only recognizable from the countless tours he has had to give as part of the team's commitment to public transparency.
He always used the space as a reminder for guests that heroes are able to die just the same as anyone else.
God, that didn’t age well, huh?
He turns his head slightly to the right, peering down as best he could without additional movement. Beside him, curled up in a circular, cushioned chair, was Michael Holt, fast asleep.
Though if the bags under his eyes and the state of his usually meticulous hair are any indication, he had fought greatly against it.
Guy smiled warmly at the sight of his husband.
A sniffle to his left caught his attention.
He slowly turned to see Kendra, hands against the mattress, leaning close to him. Her big brown eyes were glossy, and her bottom lip wobbled as their eyes met. She bit back a sob as they crashed into each other.
Her head pushed against his chest, memorizing the thwump of his heart, as he raised his good arm to wrap around her back. He didn't have the energy to do much else as she began to sob.
All he could do was grip her ever so slightly tighter.
A startled movement goes unseen by Guy, who tilts his cheek to rest atop the messy curls below. He hears a gasp, wet and wobbly, then he feels it. An anchoring hand against the back of his neck. A searing kiss lingering on his scalp.
“I love you,” Guy speaks in a hushed, worn-out voice. It resonates as if it were spoken in a cave, bouncing off rockfaces and crystalline structures.
Guy is told that he had been dead for nearly three minutes.
The mission had gone sour quickly. Guy had too many constructs active at once, some holding crumbling buildings up, others shielding civilians from the reckless assault of the villain of the day, whose name Guy had already forgotten. When a blade was thrown at Shay, who was actively mid-mace throw, Guy could not summon a construct to save her, power ring on fumes, so he threw himself in front of the blade.
The ring was very good at keeping its wearer alive, but without power, it was useless. Even when Guy had been hit, he forced the ring to keep the constructs stable over his vitals. It was a selfless act that the ring obeyed. Even when Guy died for those excruciatingly long three minutes, the ring remained stuck fast, settled in its legacy until its wearer returned to the land of the living.
Hal was flabbergasted when he read the incident report the following week. He had never heard of a ring acting beyond the life of a lantern. It waited for Guy, instead of finding another.
Love him or hate him, Guy was rather one of a kind.
Mike loved him. No, Mike loves him because Guy is alive to continue loving. Even if just for now. Mike savors that fact. He savors every moment they have together.
Once the ring was fully charged, Guy was up and at it in no time. He still took the next week or two off patrol rotation and left the off-site missions for the others. Mike took advantage of the free time and promoted his husband to a glorified lab assistant.
Not that Guy was complaining.
He loved watching Mike work; his info dumping was half lost in translation, but Guy caught the bigger fish.
At one point, early in the morning, as Mike typed away at his digital desktop, Guy suddenly remembered the beach and cabin he had visited while dead. The cabin had no lights on, no smoke from the chimney. It had been waiting for him to breathe the last bit of life he had into it.
The thought made him shiver.
Mike stopped typing, just for a moment, to quirk a brow at Guy.
“Cold?” Mike asked, turning back to the screen.
“Nah…” Guy said, taking a long sip of his hot cocoa.
“Have… Do you know anything about slugs?” Guy asked sheepishly.
Mike gave him an amused huff in response before turning to face his husband squarely. “I know something about everything, Guy. It is kind of my thing after all.”
Guy scoffs.
“Maybe when it comes to tech and science, yeah.”
“Slugs are part of science. Malacology, slugs are mollusks.” Mike responds, unimpressed.
“Like a clam?” Guy asks rather dumbly, and Mike smiles fondly.
“Yes. Like a clam.”
“I… saw a big one. Yellow with brown, almost black spots. It was on a tree.” Guy rattles off as if entranced by his sight on the floor. A dissociative action that contrasts with the innocence of his statement.
Mike frowns.
“Around here? I don’t think I have-” Guy cuts him off.
“No. When… When I was dead. I think?” Guy absently rubs his hand over the nearly healed wound on his stomach.
“You died and saw a slug?” Mike tries for humor, but the mention of Guy's close call makes a knot form in the back of his throat.
“Yeah. I woke up on a beach. Went looking for someone. Think I was hearing Shay call out to me. I walked inland and saw a cabin. It kinda scared me, so I ran back to the beach. I jumped into the water and was swimming hard until I guess I woke up.” Guy nods as he recalls the experience.
“And the slug was important?” Mike asks.
“Not really.” Guy shrugged. “I guess it reminded me of you; maybe that made it important. Maybe I would have gone to the cabin if I hadn’t seen it.”
“Do you think if you had gone to the cabin, you would have stayed…” Mike can’t say it.
“I- Yeah, I think so. I wasn’t ready for it.” Guy finally looked up to meet Mike's scalding gaze. His stiff posture and firm grip on his desk edge gave away his discomfort.
“Good. Glad to hear it.” Mike coughs, turning back to his screen to avoid the prolonged eye contact. “If you ever want to go to a coastal cabin, maybe go through AirBnB or something instead, okay?”
Guy laughs despite the weight of the moment lingering like static on his mind.
“A banana slug?” Mike asks, Guy turns to see the same slug he saw pulled up on the screen.
“Iconic name, and yes, it was a banana slug.” Guy smirks.
“The Pacific Northwest, I guess if heaven does exist, that’s the place for it.”
“We should visit,” Guy says, getting up and standing beside Mike in his chair.
“Tt- not for a while, buddy.” Mike all but scoffs, Guy smiles before leaning in and kissing Mike's cheek with a disgustingly sloppy sound.
“Too soon?” Guy jokes.
“Too soon,” Mike states.