Distance Learning
Roy , over on Starfish, kicks the portable router, shouting at it, unintelligibly.
Mari looks over at her comm as it does a half-beep, but after it fails to continue the sound, returns to her book.
Roy shouts at the box again, but when Mia shouts back at him to be quiet (the irony escapes it at the moment, but he'll grin about it later) he hisses: "Wayne Tech piece of shhyeah--Mar'i?" He speaks into the comm.
Mari nearly jumps when Roy's voice comes through, crackling softly with static, and throws herself across the hospital bed--stitches be damned--to grab her comm before the signal cuts off again. "--OY?" she calls back into it, settling back onto her pillow. "Are you there?"
Mari mirrors his leaning, although neither of them can realize it. She nearly sinks in the bedframe with the way his voice unravels the stiffness in her shoulders, the crook of her spine. "Well, you weren't expecting one at all, were you? So it's better than nothing." She closes her eyes for a moment, smiling softly. "Gotta give me better notice ahead of time when you're gonna leave me alone, nutkin. Give me time to make a body pillow with your face on it or a custom dildo or something..." She snickers a little, covering her mouth to mute the sound.
Roy feels the flush rise up in his cheeks and he grins, knowing she'll hear it, and explains. "I'm using one of Ollie's company routers and some weird set up he's got going on to get through to you, so if anyone's listening, and I really hope it's just like.. Vic, or something," Roy scowled, knowing how easily their conversation could be captured for the other man, "I gotta preface that we're always this nasty, aren't we, baby girl?" He laughs, and then leans back, adjusting his bedroll. "Hey, I wanna see your face. Do you wanna try and connect?"
Mari snorts. "Whatever, Vic's half-cyborg and does all the routing for the Titans Tower AND the Watchtower. I think he's dealt with his fair share of phone--err, comm sex." She laughs again, resting her hand over her chest as she does so, but leans up again when he speaks. "X'Hal, yes, please. I didn't know it was possible to miss someone's face as much as I miss yours right now."
Roy grunts, and pulls the comm away to get it set up. "Okay, hold on, lemme-- er.." He presses a few buttons, and after a moment, the image connects, and Roy grins broadly, waiting for her to show up. Of course, the moment he sees the bluebell sheets, the wires and cables behind her, the grin disappears and he sits up. "What happened??"
Mari immediately throws up her hands. "I'm fine!" she insists at the same time as he asks what's happened, and shakes her head. "Just a little scuffle getting Dick back." She smiles, tilting her head to the side. "But we got him back safe and sound. Got the son of a bitch who took him, too."
Roy doesn't seem relieved at this and shakes his head, his hand behind him pushing him upright. "Tell me." There is an edge in his voice, but it isn't demanding or authoritative: he is asking her to trust him with this, that he won't go overboard with the information. That he can handle it. He inhales, holds it, and exhales. "Tell me, baby."
Mari grimaces a little and takes a deep breath. "The guy had this pheromone that made people all..." Mar'i shakes her head. "I don't honestly think it worked on me, or maybe I was just too pissed to tell. But it got Bai bad. And she..." she's staring into his eyes now, as if they are only inches apart, not oceans. "...she attacked me. Tried to get us into the Speed Force and ended up taking chunks out of both our stomachs."
Roy exhales, roughly, and lifts a hand to scrub at his face. "But you're fine?" He looks at her too, the granulated picture doing nothing to trick him out of thinking that she's right there, sitting in front of him, the way they sat some nights on the bed while he was studying: cross legged, with snacks within arm's reach. He arched his eyebrows. "Your.. your stomachs, nothing wrong, right? Everything back?"
Mari nods her head. "Everything's back," she repeats, tone warm and calm. "Everything's fine."
Roy exhales, and nods. "Okay. And all the.. girl parts are there." He grins a bit, knowing full well every part of the anatomy involved in being a girl, but preferring to lighten the mood with his ridiculousness.
Mari rolls her eyes playfully. "Real cute, buttface," she snorts, crossing her arms and sticking out her tongue at the screen.
Roy grins. "Adebayo treatin' you?" He reaches over for one of the collapsible waterboxes they'd been collecting rain water in, and took a long drink, before he grabbed a piece of fruit from his pouch.
Mari "Yeah," Mar'i confirms, shifting when Roy does, searching for her own bag of Lian-provided candy and retrieving her book from the crook of the bed frame. "I mean, I'm under a sun lamp thing, but it's no island vacation that someone--I won't say who--that someone gets to take." She dog-ears a page in the book, then leans a little closer to the camera, as if examining Roy's background. "So what's it like? You sunburnt yet?" She squints, already able to tell the answer to that question.
Roy grins. "Nah! But I am getting a bunch more freckles." He scowls. "Losing water weight. Fuckin' hotter than Satan's nutsack over here." He takes another swig of water. "How's Lian doin'? And, babe, I wish this was a vacation." He frowns. "I'm not even entirely sure why we're doin' this 'cept for the fact that it's a family thing."
Mari breaks out into a grin that is sheer happy to the point of goofy. "I love your freckles, so bring 'em on," she giggles. "She's perfect, as usual. Brought me a basket of candy, ate most of the candy, and then went back to stay with Rose. I thought about asking her if she wanted to have a sleepover in this room, but I think hospitals make her nervous? At least, seeing her in a hospital makes me nervous, I guess." She leans in again, a few long strands of hair blocking off the side of the camera. "Family things are important enough," she confirms, then watches him quietly for a moment. "Everything gonna be okay? You think you'll run into any trouble?" she asks softly.
Roy shrugs, though the motion is lost on the small screen, and moves to recline back on the bedroll. Mia, to the side of him, is also messaging, while Ollie, above in a tree.. Well. Who knows what Ollie is doing. Mia was already in her hammock, but Roy found that sleeping in it made him anxious, so he opted for the floor. He would, by Mia's--and, if he admitted it, his own-- estimation, end up in the hammock before midnight but for now, he laid back and held the screen above, framing his love's face in the starry sky. "Nothin' we can't handle," he grins. "And if nothing else, our ragamuffin bunch isn't above runnin' away in noble retreat." He lifts his chin in a pantomime of knighthood, and then, interrupts himself. "Did you DVR Game of Thrones??"
Mari "Oh, my sweet, sweet man, of course I DVR'd it." The corners of her smile go wicked, a hint of what the episode will hold for him, but she changes the subject quickly. "HEY, wanna see what I found at the library?"
Roy laughs. "Is it a dictionary with the 'penis' entry circled?"
Mari throws back her head and laughs. "You do realize you just made it seem like I would need a dictionary to know what a penis is, right? Not exactly flattering for yourself, cowboy."
Roy arches his eyebrows. "Hey, I check EVERY dictionary to make sure that and vagina are circled, okay."
Roy makes a face where he puffs his lower lip out, and lowers his eyelids, a sage expression. "The youth need to know." He might as well be stroking an imaginary beard.
Mari is laughing so hard she's snorting, head rolled back onto her pillow.
Mari finally subsides in her laughter after several minutes, wiping tears out of the corners of her eyes. It's a task that proves difficult with how tightly her cheeks are pinched up in smiling. "I love you, Roy Harper," she murmurs.
Roy kisses the screen, smacking loudly, and then laughs, himself, his voice pitching low. "I love you, Mar'i Harper," he returns, his voice joking but fond, because he likes how much it sounds. He rolls over, propping the comm up besides himself. "Tell me what you found at the library."
Mari flushes when he says her name like that and doesn't seem to hear what he says afterward for a moment, before she shakes her head. "Don't make fun of me," she warns, then holds it up. The book is old, published no later than the 70s or 80s, when a yellowing cover that reads Diné Bahaneʼ. Mar'i looks up at him, checking his expression before she cracks it open on her lap. "I found one...it was right around..." She chews her lip as she searches, then makes a noise of excitement when she finds it. "Here! Náhookǫs Bakąʼí and Náhookǫs Baʼáádí!" She turns the book back towards Roy, the constellations visible, if fuzzy.
Roy squints at the pictures, even though he understands the words, and grins at her. His voice is soft when it comes out next, and it isn't because he can hear Mia's soft-rabbit sounds while she sleeps, or even Ollie's own laughter, up in his tree--was he talking to someone back home, too? Kate, and then Bruce crosses his mind, as possibilities, and cradled in the womb of the forest, the warmth strangely comforting now with the jewels of the night sky bright.. somehow.. the latter thought doesn't seem to bother him--but the way that his heart swells to cracking his chest, splintering his sternum. "Been readin' up, huh?"
Mari smiles softly. "Of course I have. We gotta be sideways, backwards, and forwards on each other's stuff, you know," she teases, gently.
Roy rubs at the side of his face, chuckling. "Yeah." Sleep was headed his way, he could feel it, and the softness of her voice and her expression was making it harder to ignore. "What did you think of it?"
Mari "An archer and his fire-basket chick up in the night sky? What's not to love?" She sinks lower onto her bed, resting her cheek on her pillow. "I wanna hear all the stuff you know and remember. Every bit of you."
Roy would almost laugh at the two of them talking like this, like teenagers, but instead just smiles. "It's not a lot of stuff, you know?"
Mari shrugs. "Maybe not to you. But it's a lot to me."
Roy 's smile fades the tiniest bit. "I mean, I've done my own bit of readin', it's not like I can claim this stuff being told to me by firelight.." He arches his eyebrows, something in his expression laid bare at the admission: it isn't one he makes to anyone. Ever.
Mari shakes her head gently. "I don't mean just that normal kind of memory. I mean like...like, blood memory. The stuff that doesn't have to be told to you when you're a kid to be part of you. The stuff that made the people that made your parents that made you."
Roy blinks, and falls silent, listening to her and swallowing, and remembering to breathe. He nods, and readjusts his bedroll, the edges of the waterproof bedroll he was laying across--the one under his head was his own, the one he was wrapped in, Ollie's--giving himself a moment, before he settles in and begins, quietly: just for Mar'i's ears. "Mom didn't start with the big ones, the big stories." He pauses. "Or she did and I didn't really care about the First Man.." He grins and snorts. "Kinda like Lian, I was interested in the stories about Coyote." Roy clears his throat. "I don't remember if my dad's schedule was set, but I know that we went out to the rez pretty often, but always early in the mornin'.." He licks his lips, eyelids drooping, as he continued. "..he always had those big orange Rubbermaid coolers in the back of the car, with water in case he saw hikers or whatever who were runnin' out.. And he'd pack sandwiches and stuff for us before he loaded me in the car.." Roy shuts his eyes, grinning to himself. "In the winter, I slept most of the way because he'd run the car before taking me downstairs from the apartment and stowing me in the backseat, so it was warm.." He licks his lips again, voice getting softer. "And everytime I woke up, 'cause of a pothole or whatever, the sky would be a different color than the last time.."
Mari nods her head as she talks, her own eyelids hanging low over her peridot-eyes. "It was a Jeep, right?" she asks quietly, when he reaches a pause, letting him know she remembers what he's told her. "A Jeep in the desert..." Her head rolls, eyes flickering shut.