Barry ran hot. His body stayed at a relatively high temperature as a result of his powers. That being said, being in cold weather was not the optimal choice for Barry, especially when he walked into the meeting room and instantly felt the temperature cock down about thirty degrees—and the air conditioning wasn’t even on.
Warily and as calmly as he could, he crossed the floor to his seat and sat down, placing his hands in his lap as he glanced around, trying to find the source of the sudden chill.
Diana was busy filling out some paperwork for the museum she worked at.
Oliver was scrolling through his phone with his ankles resting on the table.
Bruce was scrolling through his tablet with his usual void expression, though for some odd reason, he seemed to be in a much fouler mood than usual.
And Hal, surprisingly, was bent over the table, his elbow curled on the table as he laid his chin atop them, an impressive puppy-dog pout on his lips.
Barry looked between his best friend and the Dark Knight, lips forming a small ‘oh’ as he realized the source of the chilliness. He leaned over and whispered, though he had no doubts that Bruce could hear him, “You okay, good buddy?”
Hal didn’t look at him as he muttered, “Spooky won’t gimme a kiss.”
“You know he’s not into PDA, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s me.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t cancel the two out,” Barry logicalized. “Are you really upset that he won’t give you a kiss?”
“He’s upset because I won’t let him have my side of the bed at the manor,” Bruce interrupted, not even bothering to look at them. “I sleep on the left side and I’m not moving and now he’s butt-hurt.”
“I’m not butt-hurt,” Hal griped. “I’m butt-squeezed.”
Bruce inhaled through his nose and glared at Hal. “You are not getting the left side of the bed, you uncomplacent child.”
“Well, you don’t have to be rude about it,” he retorted, pulling himself up to cross his arms over his chest, still pouting like a toddler. “And here I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you,” Bruce corrected, matter-of-factly. “But just because I love you doesn’t mean I’m going to give up my side of the bed for you. It’s my side. You can take the right side.”
“But I don’t like the right side of the bed!” he whined. “I sleep on the left side!”
“I can have Alfred blow up an inflatable bed for you if it bothers you that much,” he offered, and Hal glared at him.
“You’re a jerk.”
Bruce shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.”
Hal cocked a brow. “Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Your boyfriend,” he retorted smugly, and Hal’s face pinched.
“You’re such an ass.”
“I never said I wasn’t. But that still doesn’t mean you’re getting the left—”
“OH MY GOD!” Hal growled. “YOU’RE GONNA GIVE ME THE LEFT SIDE OF THE BED OR SO HELP ME GOD!”
Bruce merely blinked at him and turned back to his tablet. “Oh no, I’m trembling in my Kevlar suit.”
Hal’s face streaked crimson and he whipped his head at Barry. “I’m gonna kill him. I love him but I’m gonna strangle him with his own cape.”
Barry snorted, catching the smirk on Bruce’s face. “I’m sure you will, Hal.”
“ARE YOU DOUBTING THAT I CAN?”
“No, no, I never said that,” he said, managing not to laugh but he was slowly losing the fight.
“YOU KNOW WHAT?! LEMME TELL YOU SOMETHING, BARTHOLOMEW! I AM HAL JORDAN…”
Hal had grown up in California. Snow was a rarity in Coast City that occurred maybe four or five times in his entire life. He enjoyed the California warmth, enjoyed feeling the sun on his skin. He did not, however, enjoy the ass-deep snow that blanketed Gotham six months out of the year.
He trudged through the backyard, heading towards the set of glass double doors that were at least twenty yards away from where he was. The rest of the family was having an all-out snowball war while Bruce simply watched from the insulated gazebo Hal was heading for. He’d invited Hal over to have lunch with the family. It was weird being with Bruce, even the Bat’s family was still getting used to their dad dating his most annoying coworker. Who would’ve thought that the two most stubborn people in the entire universe were simply waiting on the other to say something?
Hal grunted as he picked his foot up and took another step, only to lose his balance and face-plant into the deep snow. He groaned and heard the door to the gazebo open then a moment later, someone was picking him up like he weighed nothing. He came face to face with an amused Bruce and he scowled, “Quit laughing at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you,” Bruce said matter-of-factly. “In fact, I’m not even laughing. I didn’t even say anything.”
“I know you,” Hal retorted, swiping snow off his face with a less-than-pleased expression. “That grin means you’re laughing on the inside.” He propped his hands on his hips and glared at Bruce. “This weather isn’t my forte. I’m from the desert, baby.”
Bruce simply smiled and reached up, warm fingertips brushing stray snowflakes from Hal’s face, and the pilot was blown away for what seemed like the millionth time at the man’s gentleness. “You have snowflakes in your lashes,” he murmured, tracing lightly under Hal’s golden-brown eyes that looked significantly darker amongst all the white around them. “You’re so…beautiful.”
Hal blinked, unable to help himself, a warm, fuzzy feeling erupted in his chest making his heart flip-flop like a fish out of water. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He reached up himself and touched Bruce’s cheeks. “Your face is already starting to pink from the cold.” He gazed at the differences in their skin tone, Bruce had always been a pale ivory and Hal, spending so much time in the sun on an airfield, had tanned a nice, golden honey. It was always easy to see where Bruce stopped and where Hal started when they were together.
“I think the term is rosy,” Bruce corrected, taking his hand from Hal’s face to hold the one at his own; he wrapped his other hand around Hal’s waist and leaned close, nuzzling their noses together.
“Your nose is cold,” he whined, but made no effort to move until Bruce smirked and buried his face in the pilot’s neck, nosing the jacket away to press his face against warm skin; Hal squealed and tried to shove him away but with Bruce holding tight, he only managed to tip their balance and send them falling into the snow.
Laughter peeled from the two as they sprawled out, gazing at one another with love-filled eyes until someone slung a snowball in their direction, prompting them to rise and join the war currently engaged on the Wayne property.
Author's Note: *Looking at palm* Mom said the best way to make friends was to give them gifts. Give all the gifts! Here's a gift @roshanina! You're my friend now and can't get rid of me! :) -Thorne
He's got about twenty minutes, give or take thirty seconds before the pain meds kick in to the point that he’s going to have to collapse on a flat surface somewhere and sleep off the ache sprawling out from his side. Diana had fussed at Bruce the entire time they were in the med-bay to keep himself out of the way of attacks that normal humans couldn’t survive. Of course, Bruce’s reaction was to ignore the urge to roll his eyes and merely let a sigh out of his nose and keep quiet as they wrapped his ribs and slotted an ice-pack in between two slips of the wrap.
Bruce steps outside the med-bay doors and starts the trek to his room when he catches sight of Hal standing at a parade rest in front of one of the massive foot-thick glass windows, an unreadable look on his face. Quietly, he stands beside him, keeping his hands at his sides. “It makes you feel small when you see it like this, doesn’t it?”
Hal nods, eyes flitting across the blue of the water below beneath the white of his mask. “My dad used to tell me what it was like to be up in the clouds as a kid, but I never imagined I’d see the world like this, let alone the universe.”
“My father got a chance to go on an atmospheric trip a few years before I was born,” Bruce murmurs, wondering himself what his father would say if he were standing beside him at this very moment. Probably a look of amazement, admiration, reverence. “He said it was like nothing he’d ever seen in his entire life. Nothing compared but when he married my mother.”
He feels Hal’s pause, knows the man is pondering the question on the tip of his tongue, rolling the words around his mouth to see if they’ll be accepted by the man beside him; he goes for it in the end. “You said you saw them die in front of you?”
Bruce nods. “Yes. I was eight.” He shifts his gaze over the arc of the globe. “Gunned down in a robbery gone wrong.”
“I didn’t know,” Hal empathizes. “When I was ten, I—”
“You watched your father go down in a plane crash at Ferris Air Field,” Bruce finishes for him.
Hal turns, brow arched in a look that screams suspicion but his voice not so much as it speaks its surprise. “You knew?” he doesn’t let Bruce finish, huffing a laugh that doesn’t seem so bitter as he makes it out to be. “Of course, you do. You’re Batman.”
“The name on your flight suit opened the doors to your history.” He didn’t stray his eyes from the window. “It’s not surprising you followed in Martin’s footsteps and became a pilot yourself.”
The pilot laughs again, this time a bit lighter and jokes rather deprecatingly, “No wonder we’re both screwed up, huh?”
“Speak for yourself,” he replies matter-of-factly, knowing Hal’s eyes are on the side of his face as the words come out of his mouth. “I’m a picture of perfect normality.”
Inside though, he can’t help but know the pilot is right. Both of them are driven by their own grieving losses, both the loss of parents, both people they looked up to, loved more than anything in the world. Hal took that loss and let himself fall into the grace of the light, let himself push past the barriers of fear and never let himself be held back by constraints, lived his life like it was his last because that’s what Martin Jordan did every time he went up in the air, and Harold Jordan was going to be damned if he didn’t live his life the same, trying to be something his father would be proud of if he could see Hal now.
Bruce on the other hand, let himself step into the embrace of the darkness. He let the loss of his parents define the life he was going to live. One where he shunned the light coming to him in favor of shadows and frigidness that kept everything at arm’s length. He let himself be pushed back by the barriers he couldn’t break through and lived his life in a revolving cycle of life, death, suffering, and anguish. Bruce didn’t want to know what his parents would think of him if they stood before him now, but he hoped, deep in the back of his mind and in the depths of his heart that it would be some semblance of pride.
He would never admit it to Hal, but he was jealous of the pilot. Envious that their sufferings were merely two sides of the same scarred coin and yet Hal came out as the one who seemed more wholly put together than Bruce had. Hal could stand open, being himself, even if that self was annoyingly arrogant; Bruce couldn’t.
“Whatever you say, Spooky,” Hal humored, turning his eyes back to the earth. “Whatever you say.”
There seemed to be something else that Hal wanted to say, but he didn’t voice it, and Bruce, knowing that the pain killers were going to be setting in soon, simply turned his head, looked at him, and said, “Have a good night, Hal. I’ll see you sometime soon.”
As he walked off, he heard rather cheekily, “What? Expecting me to creep through your bedroom window for a midnight tryst?”
Bruce didn’t bother to look over his shoulder as he called back, “If you can make it past the defenses around Wayne Manor, you’re welcome to try.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Well, let’s just say if you get caught, I’ll feed you to my family.”
“See! There’s that vampire joke again!”
He paused near the next doorway and shot a smirk over his shoulder, causing Hal to falter.
“Wait, it’s just a joke, right?” Hal chuckled nervously. “Right?”
Bruce merely winked in return and disappeared between the sliding doors, leaving the pilot stunned and vaguely worried that his coworker was a blood-sucking, creature of the night. But that did also open up a whole new avenue of very shameless scenarios that had Hal wondering if sneaking into Wayne Manor was worth the price of finding them out.
