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Kyle gets off monitor duty and immediately speeds off towards the mystery coordinates. He doesn’t even bother to check his recollection for accuracy first; they’ve been burned into his brain the moment he’d told the computer to level whatever is located here, with Connor still inside. Whatever is apparently a little brownstone building on the outskirts of Star City.
It should be enough to know that Connor was alive. The situation with the demons had been handled, and Kyle had managed to abort the bombs in time. It’s not enough.
It’s easy to locate Connor. Kyle finds him sleeping, deeply it appears, on his back. From where he’s hovering outside the window, Kyle can make out the soft rise and fall of his chest.
He should go.
It’s probably been a long day for Connor. For God’s sake he’d had to call in a failsafe. He deserves his rest. Kyle’s not really sure exactly what all had gone down, but he knows enough. Something about demons. Something that would have involved a few casualties: a young girl and boy, an older man, the other Green Arrow, and Connor. But in the end everything had worked out, like it mostly always did, and no one had died.
Yes, Kyle had pressed the button, but everyone is still alive.
It’s just that Kyle can’t stop thinking about what could have been. If the demons had remained threats for just a moment longer, they would all be dead—Connor would be dead—to the strike Kyle executed.
Maybe Green Lantern and Green Arrow duos are cursed. One of them will always be the one to strike the final blow. Hal falling into Kyle’s arms, blood gurgling around the shaft of the arrow protruding from his chest. Kyle hadn’t known how Oliver could do it back then, and he hadn’t even known Hal.
He knows Connor. Knows that a world without Connor would suck far more than it has any right to by his estimation. He’d pressed the button anyway.
Connor shifts in his bed, stirs, and cracks open two green eyes, made greener in the glow Kyle emits to stay floating on the other side of his window. His brow wrinkles just the tiniest bit and his lips move, saying words Kyle can’t hear from this side of the glass. Finally, he sweeps the sheet covering him to the side and approaches the window, sliding it as far up as it goes.
“Kyle,” Connor greets. “What are you doing here?”
Connor manages to make it sound as though they’ve just happened to bump into each other on the street. None of the irritation or tiredness he must feel from being woken up to deal with Kyle’s emotions makes it into his voice.
Still, Kyle fears overstaying his welcome. He had just needed to set eyes on Connor. He hadn’t meant to make this a whole thing.
“You almost died,” he offers, still hovering awkwardly outside the window.
Connor frowns. “We’re heroes. We almost die all the time.”
Connor says it's that simple, and maybe it is, but the lingering bile in the back of Kyle’s throat and acute sense of dread he hasn’t been able to doodle his way out of beg to differ. Connor’s right, though. He doesn’t feel like this after his own close calls.
“I think…” What does he think? “I think that it’s less that you almost died, and more that I almost killed you.”
“Ah,” Connor doesn’t offer any verbal comfort, but a hand reaches through the window and, when Kyle accepts it, helps him inside the house. Connor makes no move to pull his hand away afterwards, and Kyle doesn’t drop it either.
“And that I almost killed you for no reason. You were wrong, Connor, about it being the only choice. We aborted the strike, but I think it’s never occurred to me that someone could be wrong about it before.”
“It wouldn’t have been for no reason,” Connor assures him. “It would have been because you trusted my judgement of the situation and the codes the Justice League has in place.”
“Yeah?” Kyle snorts. “Good luck trying to convince me of that from beyond the grave.”
“If I had died, you would have never known it was the wrong call.”
From anyone else, that line would have been delivered with a healthy heap of sarcasm, but from Connor it’s matter-of-fact, and this makes Kyle want to take him by the shoulders and shake him.
‘Yes, you are objectively correct,’ he wants to say. ‘I wouldn’t know or care, but that’s not the point. The point is that for about a minute I thought you were going to die, and I was terrified. And then you weren’t going to die, and I got to feel relieved for maybe a whole second until I was terrified again by how easy it had been for me to press that button.’
He settles for dropping Connor’s hand instead. It’s late. Besides, Kyle’s already woken Connor up and freaked out enough to merit an invitation into his bedroom. He should stop before Connor runs out of socially acceptable ways to respond to Kyle’s escalating outbursts.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asks.
“My dad’s alive. He was brought back, or at least a fragment of him was—he’s whole now—but he was brought back by Hal Jordan.” Connor pauses at that reveal.
Kyle shrugs. “Yeah, he’s the Spectre now. He came and explained it to me once. I don’t think I really got it. But he made one thing clear: he’s not around to be mentoring me. But enough about Hal, you and Oliver teamed up today?”
“We did,” a grin starts to break across Connor’s face. “It was a good day, actually, after the whole demon thing that is. His sponsor had some shady occult things he was trying to sacrifice Oliver to, but things worked out in the end. Then Oliver spent the rest of the day trying to actually get to know me. I think things are going to go better this time around.”
“I’m glad,” Kyle tells him. Connor deserves all the good things that come his way and more. “But if things get crazy again—or he goes crazy again, and you decide you need a different green partner—don’t forget you’ve got me.”
“I won’t,” Connor promises. His eyes sweep Kyle up and down. “You look like you’re about to fall asleep on your feet. You could stay here tonight.”
“I shouldn’t—”
“Driver fatigue causes one in five car accidents,” Connor cuts him off.
“Why do you have that memorized? You never even took driver's ed? Also, crazy fact about flying—there’s not much to hit in the sky.”
Kyle’s not exactly sure why he’s arguing. Staying with Connor actually sounds quite nice compared to the sleepless night he’s been anticipating since hitting the button.
Connor also seems to realize his arguments aren’t heartfelt, ignoring them entirely. “It wouldn’t be a big deal. That bed’s way bigger than anything I’ve ever slept in before. I won’t even notice you’re here.”
“Yeah, alright.” Kyle decides.
He dismisses his suit with a thought and finds himself in slacks and a button-up shirt. That won’t do. He accepts the pair of sweatpants and black tee Connor hands him, leaving his own clothes in a little pile on the desk chair.
Connor slips back into sleep quickly, and Kyle finds it easy enough to let his own mind drift off soon after, a captive to the tide of the other’s breath.