Hey! I loved your recent ask/answer-post about Bruce being touch averse, and wondered if you'd want to expand more to it? Would you consider writing something with the Justice League discovering his opposing to it? (Perhaps with Batlantern as a treat)
@borbsbirbs 27!
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"Clark didn't hug Bruce today."
"What?" Oliver looks up, brows raised, while Hal furrows his own, staring out of the bay window. "Hal?"
"Clark. He didn't hug Bruce after the mission."
"And?"
"They're not fighting."
"Maybe Supes was just in a mood."
"Maybe..." Hal steeples his fingers, resting his chin on the peak.
It's a pattern he's noticed. Normally he'd just assume the World's Finest weren't doing so hot, but if anything they seem closer than ever. Something else is going on.
And Hal never said he wasn't nosy.
"Batman!" Superman calls, as the Dark Knight limps into the meeting room. He didn't make the meeting two days ago, which ended with them all quietly watching the vigilante's fight on the monitor. He won, but Bane wasn't holding back. The Kryptonian speeds across the room, but then Bruce's lips part, and whatever whispered word gets breathed into the space between them has Supes stopping before encasing Batman up in a tight hug.
He twitches like it hurts, but offers Bruce a shining smile anyway, accompanied by a firm nod that Batman returns. "It's good to see you. Di's got something for us."
The two of them walk off side by side, and Hal watches.
"Bruce." Clark's whisper rouses Hal, and he cracks an eye open, peering into the darkness of the med wing. "You awake?"
"I am now, Kansas." Hal stifles a laugh at Bruce's dry tone, he can't give himself away. "What do you want?"
"I..."
Hal squints at Clark in the darkness. Is he alright?"
There's a sob to answer his question.
"I really need to know your colour, B."
What?
"C'mere, Kansas."
"N-no, Bruce. What colour? Cause I already hurt you once, and I'm not going to do it again just cause you want to make me feel better."
Metallic blood teases his taste buds as he bites down on his tongue to avoid blurting out a reassurance to the Kryptonian. He's going to be a leech for weeks now, he always is after he hurts one of them under mind control. This time it was Bruce and Hal.
Silence reigns over the med bay, giving Hal time to turn Clark's words over in his mind. Hurt.
"Green," Bruce decides. Hal had figured out what words Bruce was saying to Clark that dictated his behaviour, but he hadn't figured out—
Clark flies across the room, leaning over the bed to hug Bruce, and as Hal rolls over, feigning sleepy noises as he does so, just to enhance the act, the realisation hits him.
He's surprised he hasn't noticed it before now.
It resonates within him, memories of a consuming itch when he gets back from space after months, the way the itch burns when Ollie claps a hand on his shoulder or Bar leaps onto his back.
The way Hal just learned to grin and bear it.
The way Bruce didn't.
Hal watches Dick Grayson cry his little heart out on the floor of the Gotham City museum, and feels his gut twist. The kid scrambles across the floor, picking up a spray of red beads rolling across the linoleum, while Bruce tears after him.
"Dick, come with me, chum. C'mere."
The kids fights against his coaxing, and Hal weaves between gawking guests, ignoring Carol's hiss for him to come back.
"I gotta— I gotta— I'll remake it, B, I promise."
"Dickie—"
Hal 'accidentally' stomps on the foot of the overzealous socialite that tore the elastic, and he gives her an innocent look at her pained squeak.
"You really shouldn't wear open toes at this sort of event," he advises. "It's not classy."
Bruce looks up at him when he kneels next to the boy, wariness flaring in his eyes at their first interaction out of costume, but Hal just offers a gentle smile to the boy gasping out wretched noises.
"I'll get the beads, little man. Go with Bruce."
Grayson looks at him in confusion, and Bruce siezes the opportunity, snatching the kid and marching out of the room as he thrashes in his grip, bawls of "you're red, you're red!" lingering in their wake.
It takes him the rest of the gala to find all if them, if only because he lingered until the last guest was gone and the cleaners were still preparing to come in, so he could use his ring to scan for more beads. (And he found five, so it wasn't a waste of time.)
He presses the little bag into Batman's palm as he brushes by at the next meeting, and they don't mention it.
But Hal doesn't stop thinking about it.
"What's this?"
Hal fidgets on Wayne Manor's doorstep. Bruce stares at the box in his hand, and Hal thrusts it at him, forcing him to take it.
"Xl'atha'in crystal," he offers, straining his capabilities to make the appropriate clicks. "It's indestructible by any material on Earth."
Bruce blinks down at the two bracelets on a bed of tissue paper. Hal wants to fly away.
His mouth opens, closes, then: "why?"
"I'm nosy," he blurts out.
Bruce smirks. "That's not new information."
He feels his cheeks flush, and mutters for him to shut up. "I figured out what S— Clark was doing. And why. And then there was the gala, and your kid. So. I made new ones."
Hal feels his stomach somersault, do the tango, then punch him in the throat at the look in Bruce's eyes. "You didn't have to do that."
"It wasn't a big deal."
It took two months, six favours, and two weeks in an alien smithery.
"It is to me."
Bruce hands him back the box, and Hal thinks he stops breathing. But then he reaches in, picking up the green bracelet and sliding it onto his wrist.
It fits perfectly.
Hal can't contain the grin that makes Bruce laugh softly, but then Bruce is leaning in, and he might be hallucinating, bht he doesn't think his imagination could concoct anything as beautiful as Bruce "Batman" Wayne kissing his cheek, pulling back with pink cheeks as long eyelashes dust over them shyly.
"Thank you, Hal."
Then he's darting back into the house, closing the door in his face, his call of "Dick! Come do—" cut off as it slams home.
Hal stares at the ornate engravings, fingers tingling where their fingers brushed together as Bruce took the box back.
Oh.
Fuck.
