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The bar was one only a few sectors out from Oa, a popular spot for convening Lanterns but the beer here had no right being this bad considering how Guy’s headache was steadily getting worse under the gaudy lights Hal had decided to park his ass under. He’d insisted on being able to see, clearly because his senses were failing him in his old age, and now Kyle was withering away under the attention he was sure they were attracting under the spotlights, while Guy was considering a few sneaky ring blasts to fry those circuits so he could exist in peace.
Hal, of course, was smug as a motherfucker, one hand gripped around the cheap whiskey he took periodic sips from while the other rested against the table, encroaching into Guy’s space dangerously. “He would totally pay bail for me,” he was saying, loud enough to be heard well over the other patrons and the shitty pop on the speakers nearby. “I’ve known him forever. We’re basically best friends.”
Kyle snorted, head dipping low enough for his hair to cover his laughter. “Salaak would sell you to Satan for a single corn chip. He wouldn’t even think about it, man.”
“I resent that,” Hal declared. “Salaak would come running if I asked nicely.”
“Yeah, to your funeral. He’d bring party poppers.”
A finger shoved itself into Kyle’s chest, pushing him back against the worn cushions of the booth, though Kyle was laughing too hard to fight him off. “You underestimate our bond. Y’know who Salaak really doesn’t like?”
There, Guy caught a slap on the shoulder which he shrugged off with a grunt, staring at his bottle like it held the answers to anything at all. “Salaak would hand Guy over to Satan for nothing. Just peace and quiet, I guess. Any thoughts on that, Gardner?”
“Huh?” The haze that had settled over him enough to mute the headache just so was beginning to dissipate. Guy seriously contemplated going home when he took in the flush on Hal’s neck, the stupid grin on Kyle’s face. He’d barely touched his own drink and now these two were being annoying. “Don’ care.”
“Yes you do,” Hal said immediately. “What’s up with you today? You haven’t talked to us at all. Usually, you would’ve called us morons by now or something.”
“Fine,” he said coolly. “You’re morons. Happy?”
“No.” Kyle leaned forward, dangerously sappy. “What’s on your mind right now? C’mon, this is a no judgement zone.”
Guy couldn’t help snorting at that. It was a bald-faced lie, and a bad one at that considering how Hal was grinning like the Devil himself. “Jus’ thinkin’.”
“Don’t hurt yourself.”
“About what?” Kyle pressed.
“Don’ worry about it. It’s nothin…” He was about to say important but no, this was very important in Guy’s books. “It’s nothin’ you hafta stress over.”
“You shit is our shit,” Hal said, eloquent as ever. “C’mon, indulge us. We probably won’t laugh.”
“Real comforting,” he said, rolling his eyes. Guy leaned back as far as he could go in the booth, far enough so that his head knocked against the wood panelling and he could see those godawful lights. “I’m thinkin’ about proposing.”
When they didn’t laugh or heckle him or say anything at all, Guy sat up straight to look at them. Where he was expecting mirth, there was only bafflement. “Like…a business proposal?” Kyle asked slowly. “Do you wanna start Warriors up again?”
“Huh?”
“No, he means a-a—” Hal searched for words he clearly did not have in that empty skull of his. “God, what do you mean?”
“I—” Guy could feel blood rushing to his face, his thready grip on his composure betraying him entirely. “I mean I wanna get married you fucking idiot!”
They exchanged a glance. “You’re fucking with us,” Hal informed him, so matter-of-fact that Guy nearly punched him on principle.
“The fuck—”
“Guy,” Kyle piped up, “you need a significant other to propose to.”
“You—son of a—I have one!” he spluttered.
“Since when?” Hal cried and oh shit, Guy was starting to see the problem here.
“Shit,” he muttered and pressed his fingertips to his temples, “did I fuckin’ forget to tell you?”
Their gazes turned from bewildered to downright horrified. “Guy,” Hal said, calmly and measuredly with a distinct crack in his voice that betrayed everything he didn’t want to say, “who are you planning to propose to?”
Absolutely sure his entire face was some wretched shade of crimson, Guy clenched his jaw and said, “I never…I never mentioned I was seein’ Johnny?”
Kyle reared back like Guy had just gotten up and slapped him clean across the face. “You wanna marry my best friend?” he demanded.
Slamming both hands into the table, Hal turned and hissed, “Your best friend?”
“Kyle, you’re my best friend,” Guy protested. “The fuck?”
“Not anymore you aren’t!”
“Since when?” Hal ground out, surprisingly civil despite the dangerous glow to his eyes. Jesus Christ, he really hoped this wouldn’t trigger another incident.
“Yeah.” Kyle seemed to grasp at this with such drunken desperation that Guy felt a little bad. “You’re not rushing into things, are you?”
“I ain’t rushing into shit!” Guy snapped. “Since…” He licked his lips, figuring out how best to word this. “I really didn’t tell you?”
“No Guy. Since when.”
“It’ll—” He coughed self-consciously, very aware of the fact that Hal and Kyle were currently trying to stare a hole through his brain. “It’s been, uh, eight years since April.”
“Eight—” Hal shouted before Guy launched himself forward and slapped a hand over his mouth so that they didn’t get kicked out. Hal twisted his head free, eyes blazing with indignation. “Eight fucking years? You’re joking. You’re joking.”
“Well fuck you,” he snarled, drawing back before Hal could grab him and shake him. “I wouldn’t fucking joke about Johnny.”
“Eight goddamn years and you didn’t bother breathing a word to either of us you ginger jackass, I swear to God—”
“Oh bite me, Jordan, you don’t got the right to know everything—”
“We are friends, fucking brothers in arms and you keep this a secret from me for how long? Do you think this is funny?”
“Who in the goddamn hell and fuck do you think you are? Fucking Bats? Lay the hell off!”
“Do not compare me to—”
“Stop fucking acting like him! You ain’t entitled to shit! So what if I fucking forget—”
“Eight years, Guy!”
He must’ve been coloured puce by now, breathing so heavily he could’ve come back from running a marathon. Hal didn’t look much better off with a dishevelled air to him after having run his hands through his hair so much and often that he’d displaced most of it. “You need to calm the fuck down.”
“Oh, look who’s talking.”
“Hal Jordan, if you don’t—” The ring of a phone caught him off guard. Kyle had been miserably silent for this whole affair, staring at screen now lain flat against the table as it called someone on speaker. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Before Guy could grab the phone, the receiver picked up with a tired, “Do you know what time it is, Kyle?”
“We’ve been duped, Jessie,” he said mournfully in response. “We’ve been bamboozled and lied to by our own people. We can’t trust anyone anymore. Even the strongest among us—”
“Are you drunk?” Jess asked with a distinctly unimpressed air. “Kyle, I’m not in the mood for one of your romantic hangups. I’m begging you to shut up and get some sleep.”
“It’s not my romantic hangup!” he wailed, loud enough to make Guy flinch. “Our—our closest friends, Jessie. They’ve been lying to us.”
“Kyle,” Guy groaned. “Hang up, for the love of God.”
“Seconded,” Jess said. “What is going on over there? Are you two—”
“Three,” Hal cut in.
“…three in the middle of a fight or?”
“Bar. Jessie you’re not taking this seriously.”
“Kyle, you are drunk. You already make bad decisions sober.”
To that, Kyle made a wounded noise. “No, no, listen. Guy wants to propose. To John.”
And to that, Jess sighed very loudly, enough to make the speaker crackle, and said, “Okay?”
Kyle blinked. “You didn’t hear me properly. I said, Guy is going to propose to John. Like, Guy Gardner is gonna propose to John Stewa—”
“Yes, Kyle, I get it!” Exasperation crept into her tone now, far from fond. “Congrats? Call me when he finally does it so we can celebrate properly. Oh, should I get ordained for the ceremony?”
Guy felt his own mouth fall open of its own accord with Jess’s apparent nonchalance. He was absolutely certain he didn’t give her any details either, which was also an accident, nor had she given any indication that she’d known about their relationship at any point. Was Guy going nuts?
Thankfully, Kyle was loud and drunk and very, very indignant. “You knew?”
“Yeah, Kyle, I knew.” She sounded like she was trying not to laugh at them which was probably fair but Guy couldn’t help but be insulted by it. “I’m a person who has eyes.”
“I have eyes!” Hal said loudly, prompting a server to give their booth a very dirty look. “I have great eyes!”
“And you’re also so oblivious it kinda hurts to witness. Both of you. I figured it out because Guy and John weren’t hiding anything. They just didn’t explicitly tell us.”
Kyle’s voice cracked when he asked, “What?”
“Kyle,” Jess said gently, like she was coddling a child through a boo-boo, “they share living quarters.”
Hal lit up with a fiery wrath, just barely tempered enough to not let his ring flare. “We bunk together all the time!”
“Uh huh, we do,” she continued cheerfully, “but we don’t usually share a bed while we bunk, do we?”
Wanting nothing more than to end the call and let the ground swallow him whole, Guy buried his face in his hands so no one could see the way he was steadily growing pink. “They…they share a bed?”
“Yup. On the Watchtower too, which is hilarious ‘cos I’m pretty sure no one there’s figured anything out.” At the despairing silence Jess was met with, she laughed a little, sounding like she was just barely restraining herself from howling over it all. “You guys never noticed Guy calling John ‘babe’? Never thought it was weird when they’d kiss each other on the forehead? John’s the only person who remembers every single medication Guy’s on, y’know?”
“That…” Hal gestured weakly. “That’s just Guy and John.”
“Yeah, buddy.” Her tone had a twist of condescension in it and Hal wasn’t even rising to the bait. “That’s Guy and John being in a romantic partnership.”
Guy swallowed thickly. “I can’t believe you didn’t know. You call Johnny ‘n’ me an old married couple all the damn time.”
“As a joke, Gardner. If I’d known you two were—” He made a vague gesture at him, face twisted in despair, “fornicating—”
“Jordan!”
“—I wouldn’t have joked about it that much!”
“So, what?” A hollowness had crept into Kyle’s voice. “All those arguments you two had were just foreplay?”
Jess cackled over the speaker while Guy scrambled to shut Kyle up, leaning over the table to grab both forearms in a grip that was close to desperate. “Kyle. Shut the fuck up, Kyle.”
“You didn’t answer my que—”
“Enough.”
Jess broke that conversation trail before it could lead anywhere worse with, “Anyway, Simon owes Jo and I a lot of money now that I’ve confirmed. He thought you two were already married and just didn’t bother inviting any of us to the ceremony. We will be there, by the way,” she said quickly, sharply. “And I’d love to officiate.”
“Lemme propose first,” Guy begged. “Jesus Christ.”
“You made bets on this?” Kyle whispered. “And you didn’t invite me?”
“We make bets on you four all the time. And I’m sorry Kyle but we were shielding you from going bankrupt because of this exact reason. You just don’t notice things.”
“What bets have you made on me, then?” Hal demanded. “Nothing stupid, right?”
“I think,” Jess said through her giggling, “ignorance is bliss.”
Kyle bowed his head in a show of defeat so pathetic that Guy nearly felt sorry for him. Nearly. “I can’t believe you three all know.”
“Keli too.”
“Keli?” Hal repeated, wounded.
“She’s also a person who has eyes.” Jess yawned then, jaw cracking and so loud that Guy yawned with her. “Anyway, I gotta go back to bed before Si wakes up. See you all soon.”
Kyle’s head snapped up then, a glint in his eyes. “Why’re you with Simon so late at night?”
Blinking, Guy said, “Hey, yeah. What’s goin’ on over there?”
Jess, just to be a dick, laughed at them one last time and hung up then and there.
For a bit, it was finally quiet enough for Guy to hear himself think. He could feel dread creep up his spine when Hal opened his mouth to speak. “So. John, huh?”
“What about John?”
“How’d you pull him? He’s John.”
“Eh.” A shrug. “I asked. He said yes.” Then, thoughtfully, “Durlans might’ve been involved? Dunno, it’s fuzzy.”
“Damn.” Hal leaned back some, scrubbing his sleeve over his eyes. “Eight years? And you’re not sick of each other?”
“We’re not you, Jordan,” Guy snorted. “Some of us like stability.”
“True,” he conceded with a lazy grin. “How’re you gonna do it, then? Propose?”
He sighed to himself, leaning forward to balance his jaw in his palm. “Dunno. Still tryna figure that one out. You got any pointers?”
“Don’t fuck up.”
Guy couldn’t help but roll his eyes and mutter, “Asshole.”
“You keep askin’ how did you pull John,” Kyle piped up clumsily, practically sprawled out over the table, half asleep to boot, “but you’re not askin’ why is John.”
“Shut up, Kyle.”
“You wouldn’t believe the shit I put up with today, Johnny,” Guy announced the moment he walked into his quarters. His shoulders were still sore from having to drag Kyle onto his bed, though Guy considered it infinitely lucky he didn’t just leave the little shit on the floor for all of his troubles.
John was still awake, not prone to sleeping until Guy feigned drowsiness himself. He sat with a book cross legged on the futuristic, hard as nails couch at the wall opposite the bed. He hardly looked up but grinned, reaching for his bookmark which lay discarded on a side table. “Tell me.”
“Didja know we didn’t actually announce that we’re together?” Guy asked. “Cos I didn’t. An’ now Hal ‘n’ Kyle are losin’ their damn minds.”
“Whoops,” John said airily in the tone of a man that wasn’t apologetic at all. “They’ll live.”
“They better. Else they’re not invited to the wedding,” Guy said darkly. He was already kicking off his shoes to faceplant into bed, stopped only by the pills and glass of water John had left out by the bedside table. Guy knew better than to fight back and downed them all in one mouthful without complaint, draining the glass and sighing as he settled. Then, he snorted. “Hal kept sayin’ we were fornicating.”
“That’s a big word for him.”
“Uh huh. Remind me to kill him later.”
“Hm.” John joined him a second later. “Any ideas yet?”
“Nope. You wanna help me out yet?”
“Nope.” A grin as he flicked off the lamp. “Is it just Hal and Kyle being weird about it?”
“Yeah.” Guy huffed. “Pparently everyone else figured it out real easy.”
“Not like we were hiding it.”
Guy thought that even if his mind was hardly a reliable source of anything, whether it was memory or information or even strength some days, his body would pick up the slack. Muscle memory was better than nothing, he supposed. They slotted together just fine, two people more like puzzle pieces. Relationships didn’t complete you, sure, but this made it easier to breathe, the arm over his waist, fingers spread at his back, being able to lean his head down low enough to listen to John’s heart pump.
Here, in the dark and quiet and surrounded by nothing but gentle breath and a buh-boom buh-boom too steadfast to ignore, Guy felt like a person.
“It never occurred to those morons,” Guy said drowsily, “that us sharin’ a bed all these years might’ve been weird.”
He could hear John’s tired smile in his answer. “What’d they say? ‘Oh, that’s just Guy and John’?”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “Best Lanterns in the Corps huh? Can’t see what’s five feet in front’a them.”
“They’re going to be even more annoying now,” John agreed.
Guy closed his eyes, sinking deep against his will. “Can’t avoid ‘em forever.”
“Who said anything about avoiding them?” came the quiet answer. Guy pressed a grin into John’s neck and finally felt himself settle.
Guy felt rather than saw the pair of eyes watching his back. She could be an unsettling little thing, all rough edges and knobbly bones, but Guy had worked around kids enough to know when he was about to be hit with a bug-eyed question.
“Can I come to your wedding?”
He didn’t even look behind to answer Keli, even when John startled a little beside him. “Ehh, I dunno, kid. I was thinkin’ about makin’ it child free.”
“What?”
“Jokin’!” he stressed quickly when the tail end of her outrage was punctuated with a sharp hand to his back in a shove he barely felt. “I’m jokin’. We’ll make an exception for you.” Then, Guy swung around to look her in the eye. She was mighty, arms crossed over her chest, eyes set in a glower that could make a jellyfish dry up, had it the brains to be scared. “Lemme pop the question first, kay?”
Perplexed, the kid looked between the two. She was amused and baffled equally, probably wondering how dumb the two of them could possibly be. “Kyle said you already asked.”
“Kyle was drunk and ain’t a good source. When you’re lookin’ for a good source, you want somethin’ sober and peer reviewed. Keep that in mind.”
Keli didn’t voice her confusion there, nodding along like she wasn’t listening at all. Instead, she was trying to peer around Guy to the notebook he had open on the cafeteria bench. “What’re you writing?”
“Ideas. Wanna see?”
She clambered to the top of the bench, sitting on the table itself rather than the seat to peer down at Guy’s scrawl. John leaned in too, hand on his cheek and absently skimming its contents like Guy hadn’t been narrating them for the past twenty minutes. “Beach,” she read aloud, “park—does that say fight? Why’s it scratched out?”
“Because if Guy proposes mid-battle, I’m divorcing him,” John explained airily.
That got a dumbfounded look. “Oh. That’s what these are? Ideas to propose?”
“Uh huh.” He frowned at the paper. “Comin’ up short, lately. You got any fresh ideas?”
Keli pointed at the man beside Guy, now taking long, obnoxious sips of his shitty Oan coffee and trying not to smile. “You could ask him. He’s the one marrying you.”
Guy groaned and shoved his face into his hands which elicited a giggle from Keli, apparently delighted at his distress. “I’ve been tryin’! Don’ let anyone tell you John Stewart’s a reasonable person, kid. That ain’t the damn case.”
“He’s embellishing, Keli,” John said quickly like his eyes weren’t dancing with mirth. “But do you have any ideas?”
“Uh. You could do fireworks?”
“Nah,” Guy said immediately, “he’d hate anythin’ flashy. Thanks for tryin’ though. You’re a better help than some people.”
Infuriatingly, John only laughed. Before Guy could dig at him more, he heard a, “There you are.” Simon jogged over, only mildly dishevelled when he sat heavily next to Keli with a huff. “I’m starting to think you don’t wanna hang out with me, Keli.”
Keli, to her credit, didn’t confirm or deny. She said, “Guy’s trying to plan how he’s gonna ask John to marry him.”
Simon, in his infinite wisdom, hissed, “Keli! You can’t just say that while John’s around!”
“Wh—why not?”
“It’s—” Oh, there was panic on Baz’s face and Guy was perfectly content to let it play out but John felt the need to chip in before he could explode. “It’s not—"
“It’s fine, Simon. I’ve known for a while.”
“Doesn’t that—” He stopped, recalibrated, started again. “Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of a proposal? You’re not supposed to know traditionally, right?”
“First off,” Guy said, raising a finger incredulously, “that ain’t even true. There are a lotta marriages, both past and present, where the proposal was more a formality than an actual surprise. Secondly, you’re gonna look at us and tell us we’re traditional? Finally, how much damn faith do you got in me to not lose the ring without John knowing where it is?”
Simon’s jaw worked for a few seconds more but he regurgitated nothing of note, instead conceding with, “Yeah, fair. So what, it’s just a formality?”
“Uh huh. And it’s gotta be done right.”
Keli raised a hand and Guy nodded to her to speak as if on instinct. “Can’t John propose to get it all over with?”
John shrugged. “He won’t let me.”
Now, they were both bewildered. “He won’t…let you,” Simon murmured like he was struggling to compute the sum of those words. “Okay. Run that by me real quick?”
Figuring he wasn’t gonna get much further into his brainstorming, Guy snapped his notebook shut with a sharp sound and turned his full attention to Simon and Keli. “Listen, I wanna propose to him so he’s not allowed to move a muscle. But I gotta make it perfect and ‘cos Johnny can be a pain in the ass, he’s not goddamn givin’ me any hints for what he’d want.”
John took another, very obnoxious sip. “It’s fair, I think.”
“I guess?”
“Okay.” Keli nodded like she just solved the problem. “But John knows what he’ll say anyway so why do you need to propose?”
“I—I gotta. You might get it when you’re older but it’s one’a those dumb adult things. Won’t feel right ‘til I pop the question.”
“Okay.” Simon rubbed at his temples. “So have you been trying to pop the question for the last eight years?”
“No.”
“It’s been a month,” John said, chipper.
“And you’re fine with waiting?”
He grinned, all teeth and warmth and Guy felt the last vestiges of annoyance melt away. “What’s another month or six?”
“If this is a lover’s spat, please don’t involve me. Or maybe do, but I’m siding with John,” Jo said without even twitching an eyebrow in his direction.
They walked at a brisk pace through the Watchtower halls, there to pick up an engine log from an unauthorised ship Clark had found way too close to Sol and while the idiots trying to blow up their sun were now in custody and awaiting trial, they still needed the evidence on Oa.
“Firstly,” Guy said, holding up a finger, “we don’t do spats. Secondly, we ain’t fighting, we’re disagreeing. Thirdly, how goddamn dare you. Does loyalty mean nothin’ to you new recruits?”
She shrugged with a laugh. “I have plenty of loyalty to people who have some semblance of sanity and you’re all out, Gardner.”
“Loyalty ain’t meant to come with caveats, Mullein.”
“Uh, yes the hell it does.” Jo turned to face him finally. She was a foot shorter than him but her demeanour took up the empty space anyway, and she might as well have been taller for all Guy could notice. “He’s right, by the way. You’re wasting time.”
“Well with that logic, I’ve been wasting time for eight years.”
“Also correct,” she said dryly.
He had a response to that which dissipated the moment he opened his mouth. Instead, he grunted in frustration. “I’m gonna stop asking you assholes for proposal advice. It’s my goddamn relationship and you’re all bein’ a buncha judgy fucks.”
“Oh no,” she muttered, “I can’t give you anymore advice you won’t take. Whatever will I do?”
“Hal cares,” Guy shot back, just to be shitty.
Jo met him with a glare that was only half real. Her eyes twinkled with laughter and her mouth trembled around it. “Hal’s whole perception of you two got rewritten recently so of course he cares. He’s been watching you two like a hawk wondering how he missed it all.”
“You’re actin’ like he caught us in the closet or somethin’.”
“I don’t think you get how monumental this is for him. He’s, like, devastated Jess and I got it before he did.”
Guy groaned light-heartedly. “What tipped you off then, detective?”
She half shrugged with one shoulder, gaze forward and smiling towards the other end of the hallway, though her eyes kept flicking towards him as if to glimpse his reaction. “I can’t explain it. Next time I catch you looking at John, I’ll take a photo. That’ll help you understand.”
“You saw me starin’ at him,” Guy said slowly, “and you got it immediately?”
“You’re saying that like you two weren’t obvious from the get-go. Anyway, enough relationship drama. I need to get back and sleep.”
“Kids these days,” Guy managed to mutter under his breath before freezing in place.
The presence at his back stirred an ugly cocktail of emotion, a landmine he risked detonating every time he stepped foot onto the Watchtower. In truth, he had no clue how to handle things, how to think, how to act. Guy stumbled through most things in life and the same remained true, even when he felt Jo bristle just the slightest bit.
He turned around, cocked his head and stared. “There a reason you’re sneakin’ up on us?”
“Gardner,” said Bruce, the most amicable greeting he was capable of around him. “How are things on Oa?”
“No one dead, no one mutilated, no structures blown up, no planets blown up—yeah, pretty good.” He spread his hands slightly. “I see the Tower’s still in one piece.”
“Hm.” Bruce remained rooted to that one spot which meant there was more. However, Guy called bullshit on whatever criticism he had considering that Guy had only been on the Tower for a grand total of ten minutes so far. He’d been too busy complaining to do anything catastrophic.
So he raised an impatient eyebrow and tapped his foot for emphasis. “Well? We ain’t here to gawk, Batsy, we got shit to do.”
A muscle in Bruce’s jaw clenched. He looked more constipated than usual when he said, “I’ve been made aware of recent developments involving your…personal life.”
Oh for the love of—
“Seriously?” he said lowly. “You got involved in gossip? I get you’re a socialite but goddamn it Batsy! This ain’t even anywhere near your business.”
“Where’d you even hear that?” Jo asked, both arms crossed over her chest. “I thought it hadn’t left Oa—” She cut herself off and closed her eyes, drooping all of a sudden with a resignation so stark that Guy recoiled at the face of it. “Kyle,” she sighed.
Guy groaned loudly. “Kid can’t keep his damn mouth shut to save his life.” He turned back to Bruce who still hadn’t left. “What the hell d’you wanna know about it anyway? Can’t a man love in peace?”
The way Bruce was adamantly not talking and stood perfectly still in the face of Guy’s growing impatience spoke volumes. Not even he was exempt from embarrassment, it seemed, but of what? “Bruce,” Jo said sharply, “we’re expected on Oa by tonight.”
He did a very thick swallow, like he was physically struggling to come to terms with whatever he was thinking, and then gave a very quiet, “I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Okay?” Guy got out without thinking. “Neither was Hal.”
Bruce flinched.
Oh, that’s why. Guy couldn’t help his grin now. It was a sort of electricity that popped up and down his spine and it had him standing up straighter for it. “Oh, buddy,” he drawled, mock sympathetic, “you’re all down in the dumps ‘cos you didn’t sleuth out my personal life good enough, huh? Oh honey, kiddo, baby b—”
“Gardner!” Bruce reprimanded.
To that, Jo snorted. It was loud and ugly enough to draw Bruce’s incredulous glare at her which made her laugh louder, hiding half her face with a hand. “World’s greatest detective,” she hissed out, with an elbow to Guy’s side.
He cackled too, spurred on by her reaction. “C’mon, buddy. Least you and Jordan got somethin’ in common, right?”
“Gardner—” Bruce said, a little more desperately.
“It’s not that serious,” Jo interrupted, her shoulders still shaking in mirth. “Come on. Don’t be weird.”
“Bruce, I’d wipe that look off your face before it gets stuck like that,” Guy chirped. Bruce’s expression, joint consternation, despair and something like fury, did not change. “Wouldn’t wanna look like that in the wedding photos, would’ya?”
That was the breaking point, which Guy thought was ridiculous because that was far from his best, but it got Bruce to huff, turn on his heel and stalk away. Guy was still grinning watching him go and brought out of the moment only by Jo’s tug on his arm. “We still have a job to do,” she called, walking the opposite way, towards the evidence room. “Keep up, Gardner.”
He jogged to match her stride once more and pretended not to notice her little glances towards him. “World’s greatest detective,” he mumbled instead, which caused Jo to snicker again. John was gonna love hearing about this, which was just as well because Guy wasn’t gonna shut up about it for the next decade at least.
“What about a beach?”
“Hmph.”
“Lake? Lake house?” John laughed at that one without even looking up from the tablet he was studying, which goaded Guy into pressing on further. “We could rent a lake house!”
“I already told you Guy, I’m not helping.”
“Well I need it!”
“Hm.” Turning and leaning in enough to push against Guy’s personal space, John pressed their lips together. It was instinct, almost, that had Guy’s shoulders loosen from their previous strain, had his mind stutter in its ongoing struggle to stay mad at John. Then, “No. You said you’d figure it out.”
Guy rubbed at the worsening twitch in his eye with great indignation. “Oh come on!”
“Jesus Christ,” said Jordan, rearing his ugly head like an arachnid about to pounce on some poor, unsuspecting ant. Guy bristled, so sure that they wouldn’t be bothered in this common room, tucked deep into one of the old observatories and yet there the fucker was, arms crossed like he knew all. Behind him was Kyle, more sheepish than usual which was good considering how Kyle had been apparently having a goddamn field day giving everyone a taste of the gossip. Guy’s headache grew a size like it was feeding off the sheer vibes coming off Jordan. “Get a room.”
“Hal, I could ask Salaak to instate you in the far sectors for a couple years,” John said lightly.
Hal pursed his lips at that before grabbing a chair and sitting down so heavily that the legs scraped against the tiled floors. “You two are first on my shitlist.”
“I’ll survive, I think.”
Kyle sat too, hands twisted into tight little knobs on his lap. “So. Any closer to…uh…”
“Asking me to marry him?” John leaned back with an arm looped around Guy’s shoulders all of a sudden, his fingers pressing into the back of his neck like an anchor. Part of him relaxed. Part of him stayed tensed up, his jaw wanting to work without any reason to. “No progress yet but he’s working on it.”
“Little birdie told me Guy’s not letting you divorce.” Hal paused for a second and lowered his voice, the asshole. “Blink twice if you need help, John.”
“Blink once if you wanna be Hal soup by the end’a the day,” Guy growled. “I’ll grind your bones or whatever that giant said.”
“If it’s any consolation, I think between all of us, we’ve planned most of the wedding,” Kyle piped up, like it was meant to make Guy feel better.
Guy glared which wasn’t nearly enough to get Kyle to pipe down. “Who’s officiating?” John asked like a traitor.
“We’re bouncing between a couple of options. Bruce reached out to Hal for it but we left him on read.” Kyle tilted his head thoughtfully. “I actually had some questions to ask you about the save the dates.”
“Kyle, we haven’t even—”
“I’m designing them, John.” Not a question or a request. Guy sighed through his nose and the pressure built up behind it. “Listen, we all wanna pitch in as much as we can. The longer Guy takes, the better honestly, because we kinda need the time to plan.” Then, like an afterthought, “Don’t take too long, Guy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” He grumbled.
Guy found John’s hand and held it tight, because if the Lord wouldn’t give him strength, at least John would stop him from suplexing Kyle’s smug ass, just as Hal asked, “How’d you two get past the ban?”
“Th’ what?”
John huffed “The ban on fornicating?” Ignoring Hal’s near-wounded sound, he went on with, “The same way Kyle did. We kept things quiet.”
“You can get away with anything if you don’t tell the Guardians,” Kyle said, nodding sagely. “Just look at Sinestro.” His eyebrows furrowed for a second as he silently jumped to a conclusion and narrowed his eyes. “How’d you know about Sora and me before I ever knew about you two?”
“Common sense,” John said at the same time as Guy responded with, “Thin walls.”
He blanched, eyes wide and heat rising quick up his neck. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
“As much as I’d love to learn more about Kyle’s sex life—” Kyle let out a mortified little squeak here, “—I’m more interested in this proposal business.” Hal leaned forward, arms braced against his knees with his hands dangling between them. There was a wicked glint to his eye, a downright evil look on him. “Can’t Guy theoretically get down on one knee right now?”
“Fuck off, Jordan,” he snapped instead of saying something intelligent. “Like you’re gonna be there when I ask.”
“Who said I can’t?”
“I’m not havin’ an audience!” Guy barked.
Kyle’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” he said, and while the words were teasing the tone was not. “What’re the ideas you’ve got so far? I’ve never been married but I figure I can help.”
“Artist,” Hal agreed dryly. “He’ll make the whole thing look really pretty. Jury’s out on whether or not you’ll get a choice though.”
“Better than you, Hal,” Kyle shot back. “Mr I’m Not Scared Of Anything Except Commitment. At least I believe in marriage.”
“Kyle,” John said gently, “Guy and I have been married for years now basically. Tying the knot is more of a formal declaration. And we’re old enough for it to mean something in our line of work.”
“Yeah, alright peepaw,” Kyle teased with nothing but fondness. “At least we’ve got the ceremony to look forward to. I bet five bucks Hal cries like a baby the whole time.”
“I bet ten bucks Kyle blubbers through his speech so bad that we don’t understand a word,” Hal shot back with a well-aimed cuff to the back of Kyle’s head. It didn’t hurt, only sending him forward with a laugh.
Raising a hand with a dazzling sort of grin, John said, “Speeches? Ceremony? Let’s get through the first hurdle, right Guy?”
Guy opened his mouth to answer and nothing much creaked out. Only a sound like dust that was more air than words. His hand, the free one resting on his knee, trembled errantly and he blinked hard at it, eyebrows furrowed, trying to get it to stop. “Guy?” said someone, soft with worry.
“Gimme a sec.” He almost didn’t recognise his own voice, slurred as it was all of a sudden. There was a pitch in his ears so high and shrill that it muffled all other coherent thought. He felt bad. He’d felt bad all day. Somehow, he could turn this around and blame Hal if he could just get his mouth open and find the words to.
Guy blinked. One eye was dark and useless and that was the point he realised that something was seriously not right. Licking his lips like his teeth weren’t trying to gnash a hole into his lips, he struggled his sight to John, his mouth forming words that weren’t words or sounds or anything coherent.
“Aw hell,” Guy might’ve said before he pitched forward and his second eye crumbled into dust.
Really, he should’ve been more accustomed to the sensation of waking up in the Oan infirmary. Guy Gardner of all people had no right to say he wasn’t used to it. They’d a bed specifically for him, a bed he assumed they’d keep for him until he eventually kicked the bucket when his luck ran out.
But this time, he was alive. He blinked at the ceiling through the molasses of coming back from the dead, even if the death wasn’t real, and tried working his jaw. There was an ache to him, the general ache of the things wrong with him combined with the ache of a fall or bump. His arm, his shoulder, his cheek but no further up which should’ve been a relief. All Guy could feel was a dull numbness though. This was a script played in full already, the ending of a story he knew by heart.
Guy rolled his head to the side, his left, and set his eyes upon the protagonist in all of his tragedy. Through heavy lips, he slurred, “Wha’s cookin’ good lookin’? You-you jus’ sittin’ ‘round waitin’ for someone t’ take you out?”
John blinked at him like he was stupid before his expression melted into something softer. That wasn’t what Guy was aiming for but he’d take it. “Guy,” he breathed, already having prepared the post-episode spiel but Guy couldn’t be bothered to listen to it. More of the same, unfortunately.
“Feelin’ faint. You’re not doin’ anythin’ with that mouth right now so why not gimme CPR?” he said with a wink that was probably a blink. He even leaned forward, nearly overbalancing and crashing to the floor before John caught both forearms and pushed him back.
“Guy,” he said again, more serious, more desperate and Guy didn’t want to listen, he didn’t.
Fighting to keep his tone level and his words coherent, Guy coughed out, “How ‘bout you join me on-on this here bed?”
To his surprise, John acquiesced after a short pause.
It wasn’t too bad a fit. Guy’s bed was wider than most for some reason and he only had to shift a little for John to take one side, sitting up rather than lying down with Guy’s head now resting against his side, close enough to feel a beat through John’s ribcage. “Not what I meant, for the record,” Guy announced. “Acceptable though.”
John didn’t speak immediately. For a while, they were content to listen to each other breathe while Guy pondered over the little things: how many hours had he lost, how bad was it this time, what would happen now?
“It was two and a half minutes this time,” John said softly. “You’ve been down for about eighteen hours.” Guy felt his heart sink at the tone alone, lit with the barest thrums of composure, like he was fighting to stay stone-faced. “They said you’ll be okay with some monitoring.”
But that was never the end, was it?
“Okay,” he breathed out. There wasn’t much to say after that, which sucked because Guy wasn’t drowsy enough to sleep so he had to lay there and suffer through it and curse the universe for putting him there with every breath he took. “You okay?” Guy asked stupidly instead of staying quiet.
John, ever the martyr, said, “I’ll be fine,” which was an answer in and of itself but Guy hated it. Hated it. Every time he wound up back here whether it was the pre-existing damage or, God forbid, something new, it was that same expression he found on Johnny, that resignation, the fear he could barely muffle.
Guy sought the warm hand, dragging his own fingers out from where they were partly trapped against his side and the mattress. It wasn’t hard; John had been waiting for him to reach out. He gripped that hand like a vice, like it was fit to disappear. Still, John couldn’t look at him.
“Johnny.” Guy squeezed with his eyes drifting to the sleek white and green walls, inlaid with lights that must’ve been turned down by a hell of a lot because they practically blinded Guy every time he had to walk in. “Johnny.” John hummed in response. “It’ll be okay.”
The words rang hollow but John wouldn’t call him out on it for at least another day, at which point Guy could deny the inevitable a little better. No, they weren’t arguments. It was a mutual disagreement. The cycle went on and Guy was exhausted.
“John?”
“Hm?”
He swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry.”
There was a pronounced wobble in John’s jaw and Guy’s hand was crushed for all of five seconds under an iron grip. Deep, dark eyes flickered down to him, heavy with water and everything unsaid. “Don’t say that.” He was so quiet like this even with his words ringing a million times in Guy’s skull. “How could you think it’s your fault?”
“Don’ like seein’ you like this,” Guy said. “You always looked better with a smile.”
“Guy,” John whispered like his name was the only thing he could come up with anymore. “You don’t have to—”
“Seriously.” He smiled and was pretty sure it looked lopsided as hell. “Suits ya better than any suit or-or uniform you try.”
Finally, the corners of John’s mouth twitched upwards. “You’re not getting me to walk around naked no matter what you say.”
“Aw, c’mon! In my dreams, I walk down the aisle ‘n see you at the alter in-in—”
“In just my smile?” John said through a huff.
Guy’s grin grew wider. “Hell goddamn yeah.” He was craning his neck to look up at John, not that he really minded, but John leaned down anyway, close enough to brush his lips over Guy’s temple. “Not gonna lie, I’m lookin’ forward to th’ wedding night more than the ceremony.”
“Oh yeah?” John breathed, half laughter. “Well we’ve got a couple things to do first so you’ll need to wait a little longer,” he finished at the same time Guy thought fuck it.
“Marry me.”
“Well, that’s the pl—”
“No.” He struggled to sit up, failed, and tried again but only barely got himself a few inches of leverage that was hanging on by a thread. John had moved away in surprise, eyes full of caution, lips parted with nothing to say. “No. John—John Stewart. Will you marry me?”
It was bewilderment he was met with. And then— “Here? I thought…I thought you wanted to go all out for this part.”
Guy shook his head as vehemently as he could without giving himself a headache. “I’m askin’ now. Will you—will you make me the happiest, luckiest moron in the universe and marry my ass?”
“What—what changed?” John asked, which still wasn’t an answer but Guy was weirdly fine with it. “Guy? Are you feeling okay?”
He batted away the worried hand that suddenly pressed up against his forehead with a creaky laugh. “I’m good. I’m good. As good as I could be. I’m serious, Stewart. It’s a shitty deal but you gotta take it or leave it at this point.” When John still wouldn’t respond, Guy sighed and leaned in to look at him better. “I can’t keep doin’ this,” he said before either of them could flinch. “I ain’t scared for me but maybe I should be. And—shit, Johnny, I’ve been wastin’ time I might not even have. Whatever I got left, I know how I wanna spend it.”
His own eyes were dry so he used his sleeve to wipe John’s cheeks before he could pull away. John let him, mouth wobbling dangerously. “You idiot,” he muttered, teeth gritted against his tears, “what took you so long?”
Guy’s eyes prickled and he grinned so suddenly, so fiercely that it made John laugh too. “That a yes, then?”
“In what universe would I say no?”
It wasn’t perfect. Their universe was anything but. Especially when Guy felt his face fall a second later and groaned out, “The ring. It’s back in our goddamn room, fuck.”
John pulled open Guy’s hand and placed a little construct ring, a perfect replica of the one he had in one of the drawers in emerald green, into his palm. Guy stared at it for a long moment. With fumbling, twitching fingers, he plucked it up, grabbed John’s extended hand to steady it, and slipped it onto his finger.
“Mister and Mister Stewart, huh?” John teased, earning a grunt and a light swat to the shoulder from Guy.
“We’re hyphenating, you goddamn prick.” Guy might’ve said more, might’ve said something stupid and snarky and braindead, but John’s mouth chased those words far, far away.