Work Text:
The best bromances are the ones that borderline romances.
The speedster from another time, Impulse (or Bart Allen), had been transported into the past, our present, in order to save the future. This was to be done by preventing a villainous transformation from the Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes. What was expected was Bart trying to observe Jaime at any given moment. What wasn’t expected was their titanium bond. The two were an inseparable pair, and they’d throw themselves in front of a train for each other. Their chemistry got the job done and more. Who would’ve thought?
Speaking of, it was time for a dual mission. It had to be stealth and subtle, so the two were chosen. Not because either are anything even remotely resembling quiet, but rather it was amusing to the crew to watch them together, and this mission didn’t have a huge rush assuming that they’d behave. The idea was to sneak into a laboratory owned by a new crime syndicate that was budding in the area and find out what their new gadget had done to make their targets seemingly disappear into bubbles. Seemingly, because they eased to the ground to grab something from the ground right after and slink away.
With a mystery to solve and banter to have, the two boys were off to discover the truth behind the syndicate’s wizardry. They were flown in close to the lab, with Jaime wearing a lab coat and Bart his suit in a lab coat illusion mode (goggles left intact). Jaime’s scarab was hidden via a backpack, of course, since alien technology fused to the spine typically isn’t hidden by a labcoat. The “non-decorative” (or at least that’s what Bart jested that they were) components were fake keycards that would spoof readers and allow access to whatever it is that they shouldn’t. The goal was simply to blend in and report intel they could gain about this strange occurrence. Another squad would be sent in to assist if there was threat of violence or tracking was required. (Yep, two heroes that flew and ran really fast couldn’t follow anyone if they needed to be followed). Under no circumstance were they to actually interfere with anything going on here. Let’s see how that goes.
Upon their entrance through the front door like normal people, they were met with a lobby. The only other people in here were two genuine scientists trying to get in, a secretary who wore too much makeup, and a janitor whose work made it so he couldn’t be bothered with the presence of people. Our heroes got into line and waited patiently. Now, when I say patiently…
“Bart, stop tapping your foot. It’s… giving.” Reyes asked in a tone reminiscent of his father.
Indeed, Bart’s foot had been tapping at cheetah speed and had all but shaken the entire building. Thankfully, the scientists ahead of them hadn’t paid any attention to that, since they were busy ogling the secretary like the sexist pigs they aspired to be. That’s why it took an extended period of time that the boys measured differently to get their turn at entrance. Bart believed it to be at least “fifteen years”, while Jaime accurately measured it to be two minutes based on the fact that he was wearing a watch.
“Hello, welcome to Drazah Corporation Headquarters, how can I help you?” The secretary inquired in the best fake sweet tone she had left. Bart replied nearly instantly, which Jaime didn’t quite appreciate.
“Hiya! Me and my her-Mano (her is said her, Mano is pronounced correctly; he’s still learning) are interns here and we’d like two tickets to admission please.” He answered, his little theatre joke indicating that he wasn’t quite warmed up. Either that, or he wasn’t the humor king that Beast Boy tended to be. That’s important because it explains why she sighed before she asked to see their IDs. The spoof IDs checked out, and they got in.
“Alrighty, lab breached. Now all we have to do is find out what these losers are up to” Impulse whispered, not terribly quiet but not in earshot of anyone else but Jaime.
“Bart, what am I gonna do with you?” Jaime smiled and whispered back, “try not to spill beans, mi amigo”. The other members of their team overhearing this little conversation smiled giddily as kinetic energy was detected around them. The actual duo, however, were not so giddy. The laboratory was a mess of hallways, and Bart couldn’t speed through every single one to check for signs. Nope, they had to walk through these hallways, peeking in room windows, until they found whatever they were after.
Tedious, but whatever. The two strolled side by side, rather close, peering into every room. Someone HAD to do something, but until they did so, the only silence breaker apart from the buzzing of CFL lights and the faint noises of gizmos that hadn’t quite become proper inventions was conversation.
“So, uh, Jaime, what are your plans one we’re done here?” Bart inquired with the existence of a follow-up question indicated via tone.
“Just headed back to my house and watching something on TV, not much. Why?” Jaime replied honestly.
Fantastic: Jaime had just opened up room for that follow-up question. Bart took a deep breath to ease his nerves, since a hot bath was quite a distant dream at the moment.
“Could I chill out at your place tonight?”
Jaime was taken aback. He expected Bart to ask to hang out at HQ or somewhere else. He wasn’t expecting Bart to want to hang at HIS house. Was he making a move towards him?
“Sure” Jaime replied. He was open to hanging with Bart.
“Crash!”
Jaime barely got that time to answer that since they found an uninhabited room with a ray gun device inside. Upon the window was a laminated piece of paper stuck with tape, with the text: “Shrinking Device. No Unsupervised Entry.” Such a device and its appearance lined up with the incident mentioned at the beginning. They had a responsibility to locate the source of such wizardry, and I mean, they were supervising each other, right? So they used their cracked keycard and eased the door open slowly to avoid squeaking.
As if anybody would notice two unknown interns suspiciously slithering like snakes into a room normally off-limits.
The shine of the chromed plastic immediately caught Bart’s eye, and he HAD to wonder at its marvelous detail. The way its handle twisted into a comfortable fashion and sprouted upward and outward into the “barrel”. Wires loosely snaked around said barrel and were clipped to a small battery held on with the bonding miracle known as duct tape. There wasn’t quite a trigger so much as a red button ripped straight out of an arcade control panel wired to some circuit board on top of the gun. Also on the circuit board was a “grow” switch labeled as such with masking tape. Like everything else, this was a working prototype that had been barely amalgamated, a prototype that might actually function as intended.
Welp, they were about to find out, since an actual employee with merit had been in the corner the whole time. To the shock of our heroes, they’d been observing their behavior and had recognized them as fake interns. They dashed to press the silent alarm button, and confronted Bart and Jaime.
“Don’t touch that! I know what you’re doing here. You’re trying to steal our tech! Well, I won’t let you. I’ve got too much banking on this” the unnamed scientist triumphantly barked, thinking he was the hero of this story. He didn’t recognize them as superheroes at least, just thieves. The two obviously weren’t about to spill any beans; the situation had already been jeopardized enough, and the team was already on the verge of losing their minds.
A mild retrieval had become an extraction. Backup in the form of Nightwing and Beast Boy was already on their was, as was the lab’s security. The only hope was that The Team arrived before The Security Detail.
And as if the situation weren’t already escalating, Bart attempted to run and grab the device before the unnamed scientist could, but they dropped it, sending a blue wave of light directly into Jaime. Within seconds, he was at the minimum of 2 inches tall. Bart scooped his friend up in his hands and uncurled one hand once positioned to reveal that Blue Beetle was now beetle-sized.
And with that, the situation’s reaching the right level of tension for split-second decisions to become our norm. Or at least for those in control. Jaime started taking deep breaths as his vertigo subsided and he realized his scale. He was now minuscule and right on the palm of his close friend, completely within his grasp. Terrifying.
The scientist took a moment to wheeze-laugh nearly unconscious, which gave our heroes time to figure out what the hell Bart had just done.
“Dude, you shrunk me!” Jaime shouted. His adrenaline was rushing and all patience or reason had fled the nest ages ago.
“Sorry, Blue. I’ll grow you back to normal as soon as we dine and dash. I guess you really ARE a beetle now, huh?” Bart joked.
Jaime, at this second, replied with nothing. He had nothing kind to say and didn’t want to hurt Bart’s feelings, even if Bart was being a bit of an imbecile in his opinion. After a second, he took a breath and muttered,
“It’s alright, Bart. Just get us out of this mess alive and with the stupid ray gun.”
But the ray gun was already in the scientist’s possession, since it had taken Bart a second to secure his friend. Now, they had nothing. Folding his one hand back up to protect Jaime, Bart dashed right towards the scientist and gripped the gun with his other hand, wrestling his one hand versus two. Tug after tug proved worthless as this scientist had a good grip on it. It would take his other hand to obtain that gun back, but he didn’t have pockets to hold Jaime (which he imagined his tiny friend was somewhat thankful for).
What he wouldn’t be thankful for, though, was for what would happen if, theoretically, a security detail more armored than expected and all over 6 foot tall burst through the door right then with laser blasters drawn. A hypothetical as specific as that would have to come to fruition.
Well it didn’t.
Because the security detail that burst through the door didn’t have laser blasters. They had assault rifles, pointed right at the boy and his beetle.
Absolutely no word came from the team on their backup status, and so for the first time since the time travel, Bart Allen panicked. He wasn’t worried about himself nearly as much as he was his little beetle friend, who wouldn’t be protected from the oncoming fire. That, and the previously-mentioned lack of pockets made it difficult to figure out a way to protect him. He needed a sign to spontaneously appear in his head. Otherwise, bullets would spontaneously appear there instead.
As if cued, his stomach whined, desperate for nutrients. The sign whined, rather. His natural pouch. If Jaime didn’t like the idea of a hypothetical clothing pocket, this’d be incapable of making him happy. But survival, though, would make Jaime happy at the end of the day.
For the next half a second, we had to slow down time to get an accurate description of the details. Bart quickly clicked down his jaw, revealing his dark mouth. Saliva streamed down like honey from a honey dipper. A smell of fruit punch started emitting from Jaime, justifying the creation of more saliva, turning Bart’s mouth into a slimy mess of flesh and teeth. The dying lights in the room revealed the existence of a smooth tongue and faint throat outline far in back, the entrance to the next stop on our little Universal tour. His tongue dipped down for max landing surface. If there had been time, Jaime would’ve smelled breath mints Bart had sucked on before this mission.
The hand beneath Jaime bounced him up into the sky, where he spun in the air. The target of his skydiving expedition was the maw, where he swiftly kersplatted right onto his face. For Jaime, though, the actions written before were a split second, so quick that he couldn’t quite process exactly where he was and what was about to happen to his miniature but muscular form. The jaw that had previously provided a door snapped shut, enshrouding its new inhabitant in darkness. The scientist’s little smear had been wiped clean, and sloppily drawn onto it was the face of pure shock. The security made no face, as their training left them facially inept.
Jaime enjoyed food and eating, as most of society does. Becoming said food, though, seemed to also invert the emotions involved with it. He was terrified. There had been no planning, no safety checks, no failsafes. Bart had just instinctively chosen to do the insane and swallow him whole. And swallow him, Bart was about to do.
Bart used his tongue to soak his friend in the saliva excessive but necessary. It provided the proper lubrication for Jaime to slide down his throat smoothly and slickly, and made this whole operation safer. He sure hoped Jaime was ready for the next step, because he was running out of time and decided to go ahead. He swung his head back and swallowed hard, sending Jaime yelping into the squishy abyss below.
While Jaime was currently being squished through the body equivalent of customs, Bart took the opportunity he had just created to snatch away the shrink ray, press the button that shuffled his lab coat back into his super suit, and skitter away before the security had a chance to fire at him. Down the halls he dashed and dashed, until through the exit doors he dashed. A guard present in the lobby sprayed some bullets in the lobby, one managing to graze the speedster’s skin. He ran into a nearby alley and sat down for a moment to evaluate the damage. The bullet wasn’t impacted, but it had still been a painful shot. Besides that, he’d mostly completed the mission successfully. The only issue was that the time it’d take to discover the device was gone was time that would be used by the team to plan. That time had been eradicated. Now, he reconnected his intercom and prepared to meet up with the backup reinforcements.
Jaime plopped down into the folds of the stomach and sat there. He had taken the moments in the throat for the scarab to regrant his exoskeleton armor to him. Perhaps Bart knew what he was doing after all, as Blue Beetle’s armor kept the acid from penetrating the alien nanotechnology. As long as he didn’t drink it (no, we’re not going to let him do that), he was perfectly safe within the belly of the speedster. Perfectly safe. Within the belly of HIS speedster. Honestly, this could be a hell of a lot worse, he thought.
Indeed it could. Unbeknownst to Jaime, though, that thought, the one that had signaled borderline relaxation, had jinxed him and the living blanket around him, because the security detail had stopped Bart and had him surrounded via a circle of men. Nothing reinforcements (Nightwing and Beast Boy) couldn’t help tackle. The four, three participating, lept into battle. Every man got two security guards to pummel. Sadly, the number of guards was nine strong. When Bart was cornered by two of the fools, Jaime shot up a laser blast, which soared up Bart’s throat and out into the face of the eighth security guard, who had to be at least more shocked than not. There, eight. Batta bing, batta boom, the detail was knocked out, and Bart now had to explain where Jaime was. This was a task most delicate, as there was no way that ANYONE would react well to this.
“Where’s Jaime? Did he make it out?” Beast Boy (AKA Garfield Logan, as he’ll be referred to) asked. Nightwing (Dick Grayson) allowed him to ask that question for the both of them, since it was a necessary inquiry. He figured that Bart hadn’t actually abandoned Jaime. Half the reason the two were put on this mission was that if anything went astray, the strength of their bond would keep them both above the surface of capture and defeat, even if Bart had to dive for Jaime. The missing detail was HOW.
Bart had his reply ready so he didn’t stutter. “Well, I tripped when grabbing the shrink ray and it fired at him. When I grabbed him, the fuzz arrived, so I had… I had to swallow him to get us both out of there.”
“Checks out” Grayson commented.
“You WHAT?! Is he okay in there?” Logan asked. If it isn’t obvious that he wasn’t plotting out their actions, it should be now.
…
Bart was sitting in the med bay of base, awaiting further instructions on Jaime. He decided to take this time to converse with his prisoner.
“Hey Jaime, you doin alright in there?” He asked.
“Yeah, I’m doing alright. Quick thinking, Bart!” Jaime hollered back, hoping the sound waves would breach the thick layers of skin that separated them. They did, swimmingly.
“Thanks! I’m guessing tonight’s chill session at your place will have to wait, since I think we’re gonna be in here a minute.”
“I mean, this is BASICALLY a hang out session. We’re chilling together, just closer than we thought.” Jaime surmised.
“Crash, dude.”
It wasn’t crash, though, because Bart had been injured during the kerfuffle, so he needed to be evaluated. For the sake of privacy, they were going to eject Jaime from Bart’s innards, expand him to normal stature, and have him clean up in the showers. This was discovered when Miss Maritan showed up with a mysterious plastic bottle, the lid in a separate hand. The elixir in question was a simple compound of ipecac syrup.
…
(Normally, I’d have no problem with writing a vomit scene. However, I’m not in the mood today, so I’m granting you a time skip instead. Sorry, chief)
…
Jaime, now returned to his former glory, decided to practically shrink again by slumping against the cold, beige wall that created the barrier between him and his speedster. He’d been evicted from those warm walls that had separated them mere minutes ago, and they’d been replaced with cold barriers, cold like how he sometimes felt. Bart was a bit of a doofus, but with him, those chilly rings around his heart melted.
Aproximately too long later, Bart reemerged from the medical bay with a spin, as if he’d never been harmed. The bandage on his arm would convey a different story, but bandages aren’t permitted speech, only deserving a metaphor. Turns out, television night might still be on if they can make it home in a timely manner. Bart definitely could, but Jaime? Might not. Ultimately, it’d be a fun night, and as Bart would fall asleep and accidentally allow his head to rest on Jaime’s shoulder, they’d be closer than ever.
Not literally. Because at least to their knowledge, neither they nor anyone else they’ve acquainted with wanted the two be THAT close ever again.