Archive of Our Own

Standing beside the Trinity sure did make a man aware of his own superfluous nature. Not in a bad way, weirdly enough. More in the way that a potted plant was present in the room, largely ignored and providing a vague sense of ambience.

That was Hal right now. A potted plant.

He had nothing against the Big Three individually. Clark was one of the more likeable people Hal had the fortune to meet, Diana was Diana and therefore perfect, and he even liked Bruce when the situation called for it. In the same way that a person liked something that occasionally made him want to fly himself directly into the nearest sun just to feel something other than horny and annoyed.

It was just that when the three were together, they were a closed ecosystem. Whatever mysterious shared history had forged their little triumvirate in the first place made them almost unapproachable whenever teaming up was required – though that could just be Bruce’s general leave-me-alone aura overwhelming the friendly faces of Clark and Diana. Regardless, Hal found himself orbiting that. Useful, perhaps. Essentially, occasionally. But nobody ever wrote epic poetry about the fourth wheel.

He was taking point on this mission. He’d picked up a thread on a routine sweep in deep space – a rumour, then a signal, then three weeks of getting stonewalled by increasingly polite bureaucrats until the picture became clear. Turned out that politicians were the same wherever you went: all of them were assholes.

Eventually, Hal figured out that some maniac on the distant planet of Pletheka (way beyond the Milky Way, skirting the edges of Sector 2814) had decided to lose his mind and play with planetary devices. The bad explodey kind, with a yield that made the word bomb feel inadequate. It was buried somewhere inside a government party-building in a district that hadn’t responded well to his authority.

Not a metaphor, by the way. There was actually a designated, government-sanctioned party-building. Real official shit. This was the kinda planet that liked to go balls-to-the-wall and had organised its civic infrastructure around the philosophical conviction that leisure was sacred. Hal could hang with that, usually. Every alien street had a party hall, every party hall had a theme, every theme had a guest list.

The guest list was the problem here.

“Mate-bonds only,” he’d been told by a purple-skinned humanoid.

Naturally, Hal immediately tried to swing his dick about. Green Lantern, Sector 2814 blah blah blah, this is literally my jurisdiction, and the guy just blinked at him with all three of his eyes. He might’ve been high off his ass on the planet’s very legal and very recreational drugs, now that Hal thought about it. Party-planet, party-drugs, party world-ending ordnance. Fun times in space.

Sometimes even Green Lanterns had to respect planetary law. Which sucked all the time.

He figured out the customs and parameters for ‘mate-bonds’ and started putting out feelers for a fake date.

His first call had been to John, who was backing up another Lantern three sectors over and couldn’t be pulled from duty. The second call had been to Kyle, who was doing something diplomatic and heroic somewhere near Oa. The third call had lasted four seconds, because Hal had hung up on instinct before Guy could even finish saying yeah?

Simon was unavailable. Jessica was too short and unavailable. Kilowog was too tall, and he’d laughed at him for long enough that Hal ended the call out of self-respect. And he would sooner eat his own ring in front of the full Corps than spend a formal undercover operation pretending he and Guy were touching dicks on the regular .

So, that left him with the Justice League, and it just so happened that the Trinity themselves were all ready to lend a hand.

Hal still wasn’t clear on why all three of them showed up. He’d reached out to Diana first, since she was the most diplomatic, but somehow wound up with the full set. Could’ve been a co-dependency thing, or some kind of psychic consensus between the three, or maybe just the power of friendship had drawn them all together to hold hands and skip into the moonlight while Hal investigated the bomb. Whatever the reason, Clark had cleared his schedule, Diana had cleared hers, and Bruce had turned up in the hangar without being specifically invited.

Not the worst way to spend a mission, Hal decided. Three of the most stupidly attractive people on or off Earth, in formal wear, making intense eye contact with each other over tactical schematics in the Javelin. Lowkey, it was kind of a fantasy of his. Hal was a little bit slutty as a baseline condition of his personality, and he'd always had a specific weakness for blue-eyed beauties with dark hair and biceps.

Like, damn. Clark looked incredible, which wasn't really news because it was hard to go wrong with muscles like his. But the suit was actually fitted for once, properly at the shoulders, through the chest, cinched at the waist, which Hal was sure meant Bruce had intervened at some point. Clark's relationship with correctly-sized clothing had historically been troubled, and it had always bothered Bruce.

Diana looked perfect, because Diana (as mentioned) was always perfect, and had apparently decided to lean into it tonight. The gown was deep blue, high-necked, and had made her carved shoulders pop in all the right ways.

And Bruce… Well, Hal didn’t need to waste time waxing poetic about Bruce. He always looked fuckable. That was just his thing and Hal had made no secret about appreciating it.

Hal himself didn't look bad, which was expected, though the road to this particular suit had been a little undignified. The original plan had been to raid Ollie’s closet to borrow one of his suits. He even knew which one he wanted: The deep green one that fit perfectly at the waist and made Ollie’s chest look incredible. Though Ollie, short king that he was, stood a few inches shorter than Hal, and the suit made him look like a male cabaret singer on a cruise ship.

He ended up borrowing something from Barry instead. Specifically one of the navy pieces Iris had picked out, because Iris had an unerring eye for a suit that did right by Barry's ass – and what worked for Barry's excellent ass, by some grace of shared glutes, worked for Hal's too.

“Alright,” he said, drawing the Trinity out of their little bubble. “The detector reads biometric pairs, synchronised pheromone recognition. You have to go in as a matched set. It’s a whole thing. We've spent enough collective hours in the Javelinthat I'm pretty sure our biological stanks have fully mingled at this point. Any gaps in the reading, we play the off-world card. Different baseline chemistry, different planet, they won't have a calibrated reference to flag it against.”

“Are we expecting one explosive, or multiple?” Diana asked, eyeing the schematics.

“One real big one,” Hal said. He traced the lower floor plan with a finger. “As far as I can tell, it’s integrated into the structural underwire of the building itself. Which sucks, because it’s gonna need some real firepower to extract it. Well, not firepower, but you get what I mean.”

“I can probably get it out of the building safely when we find it,” Clark said. “Though it’d be better if we evacuate the hall first.”

Hal shook his head. “Tried that angle already. These people are wild, man. Fully committed to having a good time. I floated the concept of an orderly exit and got looked at like I’d just dribbled on my shirt. They’d rather go out with a literal bang than leave the party .”

“Different cultures require a steady hand, I suppose,” Diana mused. “If it’s large, would it be a matter of strength to remove it?”

“As far as the ring’s telling me, we gotta hit it with precision first, then strength in that order. We’ll be splitting up into pairs, so as long as both teams can handle that, then we’re golden.”

Diana nodded. “Then, it would make the most sense for Bruce and Kal to pair up. I will go with you, Hal.”

Oh yeah, sure, it made sense. It was in fact the ideal setting. Hal’s ring and Bruce’s equipment gave them the best shot at a clean dismantle, while Clark and Diana were the obvious muscle for containment and evacuation if it came to it. Or rather Diana could just kick the asses of any potential guards and look beautiful doing it, because Hal didn’t actually require backup outside of needing a date. Full package, was the Green Lantern – he could do it all.

The only issue was the local customs.

“No can do, Princess,” Hal sighed. “Trust me, you were my first choice too, but…well, it’s stupid. But I gotta go with Spooky, you gotta go with Kal.”

“I’ve no problem going with Kal, but wouldn’t it make more sense for each of us to have a partner who can cleanly extract the explosive?”

Hal sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, but there's a secondary marker on the biometric read. Some kind of aesthetic pairing. The more similar you are, the more believable the couple. I think it’s the closest thing they've got to a compatibility indicator. It's stupid, but it is what it is.”

Bruce finally piped up to raise an eyebrow at him. “And you don’t think Clark and I look similar?”

“Well, no, I actually think you two look weirdly similar. Like, when I saw you unmask for the first time, I was convinced you two were related. Then I thought you were banging. Now I don’t know what I think but I know that friendship is magic, whatever.” He made a rolling gesture towards the three of them standing beside one another. “It’s not a face thing, it’s a stature thing. We don’t hit all the right biological markers since we’re not local, but the closest thing they’ll be looking for is height. That’s something we have to take into account.”

“That seems like a very arbitrary way to find love,” Diana said with a frown.

“It’s how they do it on this planet. Can’t say I understand it, but I’d rather not give them another reason to notice us. We’re already gonna stand out because we’re not, y’know. Purple. Point is, I can always use the ring to make me taller to match you, Princess, but unless you want to stick Spooky in a pair of kitten heels, we can’t put him with Kal.”

“Do you want to wear heels?” Clark asked Bruce with complete sincerity.

Equally seriously, Bruce shook his head. “I’d rather not,” he said. “I doubt Diana and I share a shoe-size.”

“I didn’t bring any,” Diana said apologetically. She shifted her leg through the slit of her gown to display the golden sandals currently laced up her calf. “We could keep some in the Javelin for future operations.”

“I was kidding,” Hal said, “but I’d pay real money to see Batman kick butt in heels.”

“I’d pay more not to,” Bruce said mildly.

“See, but that's the thing, you'd be incredible at it. That's what makes it funny.”

“Can we move on?”

“Lame. You’re lame. Anyway.” Hal turned back to Diana. “You and Kal are similar enough in height that you clear the threshold, and Spooky and I—” Back to Bruce, struck again by the same mild cognitive dissonance that ambushed him every single time. “...You know, it gets me every time. How tall you are.”

“We’ve known each other for a decade.”

“Yeah, I know that. It's more of a—” Hal nodded between Clark and Diana, both of whom had the unfair advantage of being built like monuments. “You're always standing between those two. It kinda does something to the reference points. Puts your whole scale off. I’m saying you look short.”

“I’m not short.”

“Logically, I know you’re not short. I'm just in the habit of glancing down when I'm looking for you and then you're just there at eye level instead. It’s weird that we’re actually the same height,” he continued. He squinted at the top of Bruce’s head. “You might have the edge, actually. Do you wear lifts?”

“No.”

“Damn. Good for you, Batman, beating the average metric for height.” He stuck up his thumb, just because little segues like that always made the corner of Bruce’s mouth twitch like he was restraining a sign. “Now. Me and Bruce, Diana and Kal. The bomb is lead-lined, Supes, so you’re gonna have to search the old fashioned way like us mere mortals. Even the ring is struggling to pick apart its exact location. We go in, we mingle, we find the device, we don't blow up the planet. Any questions?”

Clark politely raised his hand. “What if Diana and I find it first?” he asked. “I’ve dealt with explosives before, but tech isn’t my speciality. The comms might not be enough to guide us through it if it needs delicate precision work.”

“I think we can do it,” Diana, who could be incredibly ham-fisted, said.

“If it comes down to it, Spooks and I will find a way to excuse ourselves from the party to find you. I’m sure we can come up with something.”

“Sounds good,” Clark said with a nod. “Let’s go mingle.”

The party hall was exactly what Hal expected from a civilisation that institutionalised the right to a good time. Well, mostly. The Bubblegum Pop colour scheme had been something of a surprise, and now he and the Trinity stood out in their dark formal wear.

The room was cavernous and lit in float colours Hal figured were supposed to make the place ‘magical’ – soft yellows, pastel pinks and cloudy blues. Same-height-couples were scattered throughout, laughing and dancing together in that weird little way that aliens did when the music was something that happened to them rather than something they were performing to. Full-on arms in the air, gentle swaying, like wacky waving inflatable tube men performing a courting ritual.

Clark and Diana went in first, and Diana looked positively delighted to be there. That was either evidence of her enormous capacity for joy, or a tactical cover so seamless that it was designed deliberately to put people at ease. She had a gift, Hal had realised over the years, for fully inhabiting a moment without losing any of herself in it. Diana would do well on party planet.

Meanwhile Clark was smiling in the way Clark smiled whenever he was working. It was wide and warm and opaque and Hal could see why people bragged about being saved by him. Chest out, chin up, hair curl immaculate. Hal wished he was the type to be into stable people, because having a thing for the wonderful Superman would be a lot easier to deal with than his current thing. (Which, for posterity, was for Bruce.)

Arm in arm, they stood a full head taller than most people in this room. Like two beautiful giants who could uppercut a head directly off your body, but were both too polite to do so unless you really pissed them off – particularly Diana. She looked like she’d be more than happy to do a bit of head-punching if someone gave her sufficient cause.

God, Hal loved his friends.

They cleared the entrance sensor without incident, which Hal expected. Though theirs was a love that was platonic down to its boots, they'd been mistaken for a couple often enough that it barely registered anymore. Same with Batman, as it happened. Hal had found out about the r/JLPolycule subreddit the same way Ollie had: by accident, at two in the morning, in an insomniac doom-scrolling session he wouldn’t admit to in public.

It was dedicated almost entirely to candid shots of the Trinity doing things that apparently read as very domestic to some specific part of the internet. The top post this month had been Wonder Woman (looking glorious with all that curly hair blowing in the wind) carrying an unconscious Batman over one shoulder and a kryptonite-compromised Superman in her arms.

Our caring queen, the comments labelled her, right before making very funny implications about pegging. Hal had left that part out of the team meeting that he and Ollie presented the subreddit (in a full slideshow, out of love). As hot as it sounded, the whole thing would totally constitute a HR incident.

Hal was more surprised that he and Bruce cleared the sensors. The biological entanglement required time, and even though they’d known each other for over ten years, they weren’t exactly as close as the Trinity were. Though, they’d spent enough consecutive hours in the Javelin together that Hal had thought it was probably fine, but probably wasn't the same as definitely, and there had been a window of about four seconds after stepping through the sensor where Hal's entire cardiovascular system straight up stopped.

“What, you’re not gonna hold my hand?” he teased as Bruce walked on ahead. “We’re supposed to be a thing, y’know.”

“I can hold your hand if you need the extra emotional support.”

“I might.” Hal fell into step beside him, scanning the room at the same time. Three doors along the far wall. One had restricted access, judging by the sensor panel. Basement access, maybe. “Fake dating you is bad for my self-esteem. Diana would’ve held my hand.”

“And Clark wouldn’t be begging for a little skin-to-skin right now.”

“You say that holding Clark’s hand is a bad thing. Look at him. I’d hold both his hands and skip my way backwards into traffic if he asked me to.” There was one attendee without a nearby partner, body language angled slightly wrong for someone just enjoying a party. Hal tracked him peripherally and caught Diana doing the same, already steering Clark in that direction with a light touch at his elbow. “I'm not feeling the love, Batman. I came into this committed to making our fake relationship work and I'm suffering right now. You look great, by the way.”

“Thank you. I’ll have Alfred send flowers to ease the suffering a little.”

“Ollie told me that some Chinese influencers send a thousand roses to their partners. A thousand, Spooky. Where are mine?”

“I’ll have them dumped in your apartment by next Wednesday.”

“Feel like I should mention that I don’t actually want flowers,” Hal said, throwing Bruce a sideways look. “Bruce, promise me you won’t actually send a thousand roses to my building.”

Spooky said nothing. His eyes cut briefly towards Hal and then away again, and that was all the answer Hal needed.

God, he was totally going to get a thousand roses delivered to his building at the worst possible moment. A Tuesday morning. 6:00am. While he was still in his boxers and definitely not presentable for the delivery guy. He'd have to figure out what to do with them because he couldn't just let them die, that just felt gratuitously bleak.

Maybe he'd dry them. He could press them into pot-pourri and redistribute them around Bruce's quarters on the Watchtower piece by piece, so gradually that it took him three weeks to notice.

They headed deeper into the hall, strategically navigating around swaying couples so they could check out the skirting of the room. The ring wasn’t helping much with bomb-location. Hal had it set to pulse if the energy signals changed at all.

“Look at them,” he said, nodding across the room to where Clark had his head bent toward Diana, both of them laughing alongside their current number one suspect. They looked like an advertisement for something aspirational. A mortgage, maybe. “They look like they send couples’ Christmas cards.”

“They do,” Bruce said.

Hal looked at him. “What? As friends?”

“‘Happy Holidays, love Wonder Woman and Superman.’”

“Doesn’t Kal have a wife?”

“Yes. Clark and Lois send me a Christmas card too. With love from the family.”

“Superman sends you two Christmas cards every year?”

Bruce nodded. “You get used to it.”

“I don't send you Christmas cards,” Hal mused. “Actually, that's on me. I mean, I feel like you don't take our fake relationship seriously, but if I'm being honest with myself, I'm also not pulling my weight. This doesn't bode well for our future.”

“If it would help,” Spooky said, “I’ll hold your hand.”

“No, I don’t want your hand now. You made it weird.”

“I literally did nothing.”

“Exactly. And now you’re offering it like you’re doing me a favour. My heart can’t take this, Batman. I want a divorce.”

That got a smirk out of Bruce. “Since when were we married?”

“Since now. I tried to propose with sky-writing. It was real romantic, but you couldn't read dick with all the smog over Gotham. You were very moved when I described it to you afterwards, though. Really seduced.”

“Hm, I don’t recall being seduced by you.”

“You were, don’t lie. You just don’t show it because you’re you.” Across the room, the guy Clark and Diana had been talking to seemed to check out. He drifted back to his partner, who'd materialised from the direction of what Hal was fairly sure were the restrooms, and the two of them resumed swaying like nothing had ever been wrong with the world “I saw it in your eyes, Bruce. The tenderness was there. Briefly, but it was there.”

“I’m sure it was very tender.”

“Oh yeah. You’re a man of great hidden depths and one of those depths is how romantic you found my sky-writing proposal.” He angled them slightly left, skirting around a couple who were doing that full-body-sway thing a little too vigorously. Hal almost caught a flailing fist to the neck. “After the divorce, I'm thinking we renew our vows. Something intimate. Just us and the smog.”

Bruce’s eyes flickered down to his hand. “The ring, Hal.”

For a second, Hal thought Bruce was asking about their non-existent wedding rings, but he quickly reminded himself that he was, in fact, on a mission. The Lantern ring was warm on his finger, and it was pulsing low and directional. He tilted his hand incrementally until he had a rough bearing – somewhere beneath them, off to the right, behind whatever was sitting behind the door with the sensor panel.

“Oh, hello,” he hummed. He tapped into his comm. “Big Blue, there’s a door at your three o’clock. You two good to check it out?”

He watched both Clark and Diana surreptitiously check behind them. “I can break the door open,” Diana said airily.

“Keep us updated,” Bruce said. “Hal. On your six.”

Hal instinctively turned around to see a couple making their way towards him.

He was always a little struck out here in the vast stupid cosmos by how many species landed on basically human as their final form. These two were purple, and each had a third eye set slap-bang in the centre of their foreheads. Otherwise they looked like two women who'd wandered in from a pastel-themed sorority function and were having the time of their lives doing it. One had freckles scattered across her nose.

“Green Lantern.” The one with freckles smiled at him. “I am Vela Vee. This is my mate-bond Vema Vee. You are welcome here.”

Hal smiled back and immediately accepted that he was never going to keep those names straight. Vela, Vema. Vema, Vela. He'd be running fifty-fifty odds the entire night and hoping for the best.

Vela Vee was clinging to Vema Vee like any time not touching each other was time not worth living, and Hal wondered if he should actually consider holding Bruce’s hand for realsies. Maybe not doing any kind of casual contact was the local equivalent of announcing you couldn't stand each other. He should’ve checked with the ring.

“Good to meet you, Vela Vee. You can call me Hal.”

He reached back and flapped in Bruce's general direction, which was maybe not the most romantic gesture he'd ever made, but it got the message across. Bruce's hand found him without hesitation (warm, calloused, big) and Hal's fingers closed around it before his brain had finished issuing the instruction.

“And this is my full-time lover, Captain Spook-a-Lot. We met in a sewer.”

They actually met on a building in Gotham when Hal was checking out rumours of sentient shadow running down gangs on the streets. Turned out the sentient shadow was a sentient asshole instead. It had taken two years before Hal had the thought to actually scan him and confirm that he was human, and another three for the cowl to come off and reveal that the asshole was actually a hot piece of ass that thereupon began to feature in some of Hal’s more pantless dreams.

“Oh, a sewer,” Vema Vee said, like Hal had just described a moonlit beach. She draped herself further into Vela Vee’s space somehow, and sighed pleasantly. “I would love to hear the story of your meeting.”

“Well.” Hal leaned into Bruce by way of punctuation, which was either a convincing bit of couples theatre or something he'd examine more closely when he was alone and there was no mission to focus on. The hand disengaged from his and reappeared around his waist instead. That was almost distracting but not enough to stop him from continuing. “He likes to creep around underground, and I was getting complaints of some weirdo haunting the storm drains. Very Stephen King, the whole thing. So I headed down to investigate because that’s the kind of selfless, civic-minded individual I am, and there he was. Waist-deep in it.”

“Knee-deep,” Bruce said pleasantly.

“‘Knee-deep,’ he says.”

“It was knee-deep.”

“Baby, it was up to your waist.”

“It was knee-deep,” Bruce said again, and smiled the Brucie Wayne smile at Vela Vee and Vema Vee. “It's lovely to meet you both.”

“There were,” Hal said, “so many rats.”

“There were some rats.”

“So many rats, and he’s standing there in the middle of them – ‘knee-deep’, sure, fine, we’ll say knee-deep even though it was up to his nipples. He was holding a sewer pipe he’d clearly just ripped out of the wall and looking at me like I was the one who’s out of place.” Hal took the moment to look at Bruce fondly. “I knew right then that this is the guy I’m gonna waste my life on.”

“We’re in,” Clark said over the comm. “There were a few guards, but we’ve dealt with them. Searching for the bomb now.”

Glad to see one team was making progress. Meanwhile, Vela Vee made a sound that translated pretty cleanly across species lines as aww.

“That is very beautiful,” Vema Vee said sincerely. She had pressed one hand to her partner’s chest, presumably somewhere in the region of the heart and not the tit. “A mate-bond is often found in unexpected places.”

“You never know when you’re gonna drop into a storm drain and find your person.”

Bruce's hand settled at his hip and his thumb began to move in a slow arc, which was either performative affection or a threat. With Bruce, the Venn diagram was a circle. Hal wished he would stop. Not because it was unwelcome or because it didn’t feel good, but because goddamn, it was taking up about sixty percent of his available processing power and he was technically on a mission.

“And how long have you been mate-bonded?” Vela Vee asked. Or Vema Vee. Oh god. Bruce's thumb had made him lose the thread entirely. Whichever one had the freckles.

“Three years,” Bruce said.

“Four years,” Hal said at the same time.

Bruce glanced at him, then back at the Vees. “We count differently,”

“He counts from when he got on his knees and begged me to make it official.” Hal nodded. “I count from the sewer.”

“The sewer was not—” Bruce sent Hal a strange look. “He counts from the sewer.”

“Seemed right. That was the moment. You can;t just ignore the moment because it happened in a drainage system.”

Vela-Vema Vee reached out and put her hand briefly on Hal’s forearm, three fingers and a thumb. “You are a very romantic person,” she told him earnestly.

“I am romantic, aren’t I?” Hal grinned and shot a look at Bruce. “I proposed with sky-writing, you know.”

Diana’s voice crackled over the comm. “I think we’ve found the bomb.”

Hal’s grin was positively dazzling, if he did say so himself. “Now ladies, it was great to meet you, but my pookie gets all hangry when he’s not eaten for a while. You should see him at breakfast. He’s a real bear.” Bruce's hand flexed at his hip and drew him back a half-step. “We're gonna find the buffet. He's never tried the local cheese and I gotta treat him right.”

“I think we’ll be able to take the panel off without triggering the device,” Clark said. “It’s a little finicky though. I still think we should evacuate, just in case.”

“Enjoy the rest of your evening,” Hal said with a smile.

Vema-Vela Vee clasped both her hands to her chest, while Vela-Vema Vee smiled in a way that bunched her freckles up by her nose. “May your mate-bond continue to flourish.”

“From your mouth to the universe’s ears,” he replied. The formal response, per the ring's cultural briefing.

Bruce steered them away with a hand at his hip, and Hal let himself be steered, and that was all completely normal and mission-appropriate. The hand stayed there. Past the point where it needed to, probably, but Hal wasn't running a stopwatch and it wasn't like the crowd wasn't watching. That was a reason. That counted. Don’t examine it too much.

Maybe they should start the dorky swaying on the dance floor, just to remind himself that this was a fake situation. Seeing Batman flap his arms the way the aliens do on this planet might be enough of a hilarious sight for Hal not to lose sight on why they were here.

Instead, he nudged Bruce. “Hey, you bring your keys? Just in case we need to stick ‘em in a bowl, y'know. I think Vema was open to a trade.”

“Please don’t invent swinging on an alien planet, Hal.”

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s not swinging if it’s cultural. And it might be cultural, you don't know that.”

He navigated them towards the buffet, because he was only half-kidding about the cheese situation. The spread was pretty substantial. Long tables dressed in something that shimmered, loaded with food in colours that didn’t occur naturally. They liked to dress up their dishes on this planet, artificially matching all food to the aesthetic of whatever the ongoing party theme was. It meant that right now he was looking at a lot of vegetarian pastels.

The cheese was puce, dense-looking, and arranged in neat little wedges.”

“Here, pookie,” Hal drawled, picking up a piece and holding it out to Bruce. “Try the cheese.”

“I’m not eating cheese out of your hand while there’s a bomb in the building.”

“Oh, so if the bomb wasn’t an issue you’d be down for it?”

“I’d consider it.” Bruce glanced back towards the door Clark and Diana had disappeared down to.

“Good to know,” Hal said, popping the cheese in his own mouth instead. It tasted weirdly nutty. He was into it. “The bomb's being handled. Clark’s on it, Diana's on it. We’re not on it. Do we blame the Vees for distracting us? Maybe. But right now we’re at a buffet so I need you to work with me here, Batman.” He grabbed another wedge of cheese. “God, these are good. You’re missing out. Move your shoulders.”

“What?”

“Your shoulders. They’re enormous, it’s hot, use them. Get your ass over here and block some sight lines. I’m gonna Facetime Kal and I don’t want anyone peeping.”

Bruce glanced around and seemed to understand that blocking a visual friends’ illegal trespass of the basement was probably for the best. He shifted to the left and Hal angled himself behind the convenient wall of muscle.

The ring flickered to life and pulled up a channel directly to Clark’s commline. One of the techheads in the League – maybe Victor, or maybe even Bruce himself – had installed little projectors into the casing, and so far Hal was one of the few people who could actually tap into it for use. He’d used it a lot so far, mostly to troll his friends, occasionally to do something useful.

Clark's face resolved in the projection, small and green-tinted, with Diana visible at his shoulder. The room beyond looked to be maintenance-grey and low-lit, the kind of space designed to be forgotten about, and sitting in the middle of it—

“Huh,” he said.

“You recognise it?” Bruce asked.

“Yeah.”

He sure did recognise the bomb type. Maybe not this exact model – this one was newer, uglier, the casing pocked with what looked like field modifications – but the architecture was familiar at least. An Ogrian dispersal core, or something built on the same principles. He'd helped dismantle one on the outer rim of Sector 1415 about six years back, and the memory wasn't a pleasant one. He’d almost gotten his ass blown to hell, and not in the fun way.

It was smaller than the ring’s energy reading had first suggested, probably because it was unstable as hell. That sucked. It was the kind of unstable that meant the core was already in a low-level state of excitation. He could blame the ring for the misinformation, but when the yield kept shifting, he was just grateful he got any readings at all.

“Change of plans,” he said. “It’s not what I expected it to be, but that means I can push the dismantling schematics to your end remotely. You don’t need me there to get the ring in its guts after all.”

“This sounds like a good-news-bad-news situation,” Clark said.

“Thought you were supposed to be all optimistic, Superman? I mean, you’re right, but still.” Hal offered the room a shrug before locking in. “The bad news is that it’s unstable, so it’s going to be real sensitive. You can’t just grab it and run, Kal. Even at your speed, the displacement force would be enough to set it off.”

Diana leaned fully into the frame. “We’ll need to move it regardless. I don’t want to initiate a forced evacuation. If whoever planted this is still in the building, a panic would give them too much cover.” She glanced behind her to check the bomb out. “Clark and I can contain a detonation if it comes down to it.”

“With your bodies?”

“If it comes down to it,” she repeated.

“Sounds fun. My ring’s on standby if you two get splattered. Probably won’t happen, but it’s on the table. In the meantime, what you need is a distraction, right?”

“The only way out is upstairs,” Clark confirmed. “Unless you’re okay with me making my own exit…”

“Better not. They’re real precious about their party buildings. Give me two minutes and bring the bomb up.” He closed the channel and grinned up at Bruce. “How do you feel about causing a scene?”

Bruce’s expression didn’t outwardly change, but something behind it did. A subtle gear-shift, like a piece of machinery disengaging one mode and engaging. Hal had seen him do this many times before, but it still did something funny to his chest every damn time. For everything that Batman was, it was Brucie Wayne, social catastrophe specialist, who was built for making a scene.

Hal grinned, pocketed some more cheese, and followed him toward the centre of the room. They got in among the swaying couples, nice and central, good sight lines all around. Hal waited until they had enough of an audience. Then he shoved Bruce hard in the chest.
“Are you serious right now?” he exclaimed. Not deliberately loud, just projected. One might even say wounded. A few heads turned. "We talked about this. We talked about it!”

“I know we talked about it, sweetheart,” Bruce bit back. “I’m asking you to lower your voice.”

A few more heads turned. Vema-Vela were clutching each other, aghast. “Oh, that’s—” Hal laughed, short and airless. “That’s very you, isn’t it?” Lower your voice. How dare you? God forbid anyone knows we’re having a problem.”

“We’re not having a problem.”

“We’re clearly having a problem, Bruce.”

“Hal.”

“Don’t Hal me, that’s Harold to you, asshole.” He turned away, woe is me, and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. As he did, he used the motion to scan the room. Good. The nearest cluster of couples had stopped their wacky swaying. The Vees were somewhere to the left and definitely watching. In his peripheral vision, he caught the distant movement of Diana and Clark slipping through the door with the bomb.

“You hate being called Harold.”

“”It's what my mother calls me when I've disappointed her, and right now you are my mother, Bruce, that's what you've become to me—” He spread his arms, a man laying himself open to the universe. “You do this every time. I try to make an effort and you just stand there!”

“I’m trying,” Bruce snapped, “not to make a scene, darling.”

“And here I am making one,” Hal said, turning to gesture broadly at the gathered audience, “so that ship has sailed, baby. It has sailed. You can either get on it or stand on the dock and watch it go.”

“Harold, you’re being unreasonable.”

“Eat the cheese, Bruce.”

The non-sequitur landed exactly the way Hal intended it to. It rippled outward, a few audible reactions from the audience that had now fully committed to watching this. Bruce closed his eyes for one second, the way he did when he was buying himself time he didn't have, and when he opened them again they were caught somewhere between composure and something that was unmistakably amusement.

“I won’t eat the cheese.”

“Eat. The cheese.”

“Hal—”

“It's Harold and you will eat the goddamn cheese or so help me—” He snapped a cheese wedge out of pocket and thrust it into Bruce’s space. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. I extend an olive branch and you won’t even—”

“It's not an olive branch, it's cheese—”

“It's a gesture, Bruce! It's a gesture!”

Clark and Diana were halfway across the room. Good. Slow by necessity and inching forward with the kind of careful that looked casual to anyone not watching for it. Clark was hugging the device to his chest while Diana had positioned herself a little too obviously in front of him to shield it from view. Another minute, maybe. Maybe less if the crowd stayed occupied.

The crowd, unfortunately, was starting to lose interest. Polite species, these party people. A few couples at the edges had begun to rotate themselves in that dumb way people tended to do when they were desperately trying to avoid intruding on a private moment. One weird pair had resumed their swaying, like the argument was just a backing track.

That wouldn’t do. He needed their attention.

Hal dropped into a squat.

It was a real specific squat, and anyone who’d spent significant time around him would have recognised it immediately as the physical precursor to a decision that usually preceded a Don’t be fucking reckless, Hal lecture. Bruce, having known Hal for over a decade now, had absolutely seen it before, and his fists came up on pure reflex.

“Hal.”

“You're gonna eat this cheese, Bruce.” Hal pointed the wedge at him. “If it is the absolute last thing I do.”

“Don't you dare.”

Hal tackled him.

If asked later, by Clark or by Diana or by anyone with a clipboard and a concerned expression, Hal would say that he wasn’t proud of how he handled the whole thing. He would say this in the tone of man who was definitely proud of what he’d done, and would absolutely do it again.

Bruce went down with considerably more grace than anyone being surprise-tackled at a couples' party on an alien planet had any right to, He got a hand to the floor before the rest of him followed, distributed the impact through his forearm like he'd done load calculations in advance, and managed to land looking like this had been his idea from the start. It was annoying. It was so completely, insufferably typical of him that Hal would have said something about it if he weren't currently straddling him in front of a room that had gone absolutely, perfectly still.

Every eye in the place was on them.

He had Bruce pinned – or at least he had the impression of having him pinned – and held the cheese two inches from his mouth. His other hand was braced flat against his chest. Underneath his palm, he could feel Bruce's heart going wild.

“Hold still—”

“Absolutely not.”

“It's good cheese, Bruce, it's good cheese, it won a regional award probably, just—”

“Hal—”

“Open your mouth—”

“I will not—”

“For me, baby, just this once!”

Bruce flipped them.

It was way too fast, the over-trained bastard. One second Hal was on top, and the next he’d been roughly thrown onto his back on the floor of a pastel party planet with both wrists pinned above his head and Bruce's weight settled over him.

And oh no, Hal’s head was suddenly entirely empty, because hello? White noise, white noise, Bruce was big and broad and, yup. There were the inappropriate thoughts.

He looked up, a little dazed, and Bruce looked back down at him. His eyes were dark in the way they got when he was doing something he'd decided to commit to, which was the same way they looked about everything. That had always been a lot to deal with. Hal had clocked earlier that those eyes were expressive as hell, and right now they were running their mouths.

“I will not,” Bruce hissed, very quietly, “eat your goddamn cheese.”

Okay. Here was the thing.

They were supposed to be making a scene. That was their current mission objective, and Hal Jordan was nothing if not mission-focussed. And Bruce was right there, close enough that Hal could feel the warmth coming off him, with his stupid intense eyes and his stupid big hands, and his stupid heart. Hal had felt his heart going absolutely haywire under his palm thirty seconds ago, and somehow that was the thing that did it.

So maybe Hal surged up and kissed him a little.

Maybe he surged up and kissed him a lot.

In an effort to maintain plausible deniability, Hal would like to state for the record that it started out as a tactical kiss. Only, Bruce made a surprised little noise against his mouth that wasn’t exactly unwillingly, and then immediately kissed him back, which scrambled things somewhat. One of his hands released Hal's wrist and went to his jaw instead, and Hal's now-free hand went directly into Bruce's hair, which was where it was always going to end up

And yeah, so he forgot about the cheese in his hand and ended up smearing it in Bruce’s stupid perfect hair. Whoops, his bad, who even cared? Not Hal, not when Bruce was licking into his mouth so deeply that it was like he was trying to taste his molars.

“...We’re, uh… We’re clear, guys,” Clark said somewhere in the distance.

What followed was the stupidest make out of Hal’s adult life, which was a competitive field. He had more cheese in his jacket pocket, and he had just enough wherewithal to make a mental apology to Barry, because that shit was getting smeared everywhere. Then he stopped thinking about Barry entirely because Bruce had a hand in his hair now too and the situation had evolved.

Apparently this was some good television for couples on party planet, because the room around them had collectively lost its mind. Beyond the soft feeling of Bruce's tongue sliding against his own, he could hear the ambient sounds of an audience that had been through the full emotional journey. The soft patter of hands coming together in a gentle clap, the coos and the breathy sounds of aw, isn’t that nice for them, the hitch in breath because kissing wasn’t something that existed on this planet, but it seemed to be going over extremely well as a concept.

With a final, lingering bite against Bruce’s lower lip, Hal pulled back half an inch.

“Scene’s made,” he muttered, breathless.

“Mhm,” Bruce replied, and kissed him again, which wasn't strictly necessary for the mission.

Hal let it happen. For the mission.

“I’m glad the mission was a success,” Clark said, furrowing his brow in confusion. “But was all the kissing really necessary?”

“Oh yeah,” Hal said. Beside him, Bruce nodded.

In true Justice League tradition, the assignment was complete and the day was saved. Per the debrief: Clark and Diana had walked the device out at a measured pace, clear of the hall and clear of any potential panic, at which point Big Blue had floated it gently upwards and let it detonate somewhere over orbit. No debris, no casualties. Clean hands all around.

From there it became a Green Lantern matter, which meant it became Hal's paperwork. He'd sent the initial report somewhere between peeling himself off the floor and reconvening with the rest of the team, and in the coming weeks a proper sweep team from his sector would come through and do it right. Now they had hard proof of terrorist behaviour, their jurisdiction officially overruled the law. They’d find the bad guys and uncover any other potential plans.

That was for later, though. Right now, they were back on the Javelin and heading on back to earth, with Pletheka shrinking in the rear display to a soft smear against the dark. Hal was thinking about the fact that he could still taste Bruce on his lips.

“It was a tactical manoeuvre," Bruce said.

“Super tactical,” Hal agreed. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip. It felt a little swollen.

“The room was losing interest and we needed to re-escalate.” Bruce sure was good at staying straight-face when he was speaking pure bullshit. “The alternative was you carrying a live explosive device past a fully attentive crowd.”

“And the floor?” Clark asked. “The rolling around. Also tactical?”

Hal nodded. “It was a natural progression. Completely necessary.” He was very grateful Clark was too polite to call it dry-humping, because even though there hadn’t actually been any public grinding, it had been a near thing.

Diana had said very little throughout this debrief. She was watching the two of them with a slight smile held behind her hand, taking in the rumpled clothes and the disordered hair and the puce-coloured cheese smeared extensively across Bruce's person.

“And why was it necessary, boys?”

“Distraction,” Bruce said.

“Yeah, for the distraction.”

“Oh my,” Diana said, amused. “That distraction went on for a while.”

“The Plethekans have short attention-spans,” Bruce said, lying through his veneers. “It needed to be sustained.”

Hal nodded seriously. “You can't half-commit to a distraction. That's how distractions fail.”

To his credit, Clark had infinite patience and was a great sport about most things. It was one of his better qualities. He looked between Hal and Bruce one last time, if only to take in the full picture of his closest friend covered in fancy alien cheese after a weird make out, and smiled at them both.

“Well,” he said. “It worked.”

“It worked.”

“The bomb is gone.”

“The bomb sure is gone.”

“And nobody panicked.”

“Nobody panicked.”

Clark nodded. “Then I think we can call that a successful mission."

“I think we can,” Diana said, still smiling. She unfolded herself from her seat and touched Hal’s shoulder briefly as she passed. Hal wasn’t sure what that was supposed to represent, but he suddenly felt like a dog who’d just been petted for being such a good boy.

After Clark moved out to follow her, probably sensing the vibe starting to settle between two of them, Hal leaned back in his seat and looked at the ceiling. Pletheka was gone from the display entirely now. Just dark, and stars, and the low hum of the ship finding its speed.

Beside him, Bruce hadn't moved.

“So…” Hal said to the ceiling. In his periphery, he could see Bruce glance at him. “You know, if you ever want to run that distraction again, I’m available. Y’know, professionally. In the event that we need to cause a scene somewhere. I'm just saying I'm a willing asset.”

And it was a good thing Hal turned his head to catch Bruce’s reaction, because the man offered a small smile that didn’t seem like the usual type of back-and-forth Hal was accustomed to with him.

“I’ll keep you in mind,” Bruce said.

Not a yes, but it also definitely wasn’t a no, and Hal had spent enough years learning the difference to know that with Bruce. The distance between those two things was a lot shorter than it looked from the outside.

He smiled at the ceiling and didn't say anything else.