Chapter Text
It was quiet in the vast vacuum of space, perfectly still and steady. The Watchtower was a hob of activity usually, with heroes new and old, coming and going whenever they see fit. Only during Holidays does the bustle of the halls lessen to two or three people mulling around their quarters before they leave for their plans. Bruce was well aware of this migration, he was just surprised that the time of empty halls and quiet rooms came so quickly.
His little thought experiment had snowballed into a full-blown obsession. Bruce has spent several weeks tormenting himself over a large hunk of machinery that he’s prodded with live wires and bolts, this junk of metal taking up a substantial amount of room in his workshop. Connecting blue wires to black ones, cross-checking the equations twice and triple, just in case he doesn’t accidentally dig into the Watchtowers secondary power reserves.
There is a hazard of stacked coffee cups on the precipice of falling over. Coffee, which was a passing gift from the one or two mulling heroes that had no plans for the holiday. His fingers trilled a nonsensical little tune on the sleek metal, testing currents that should otherwise jumpstart the engine but, still, something wasn’t quite connected in the mess of circuits he was fiddling with, he slams his coffee down in frustration. Lukewarm-cooled coffee spills down his shirt, pooling deep in his gut, embarrassment.
“What that coffee ever do to you?” A voice, dry and curled with wry humour, comes up from behind him. The embarrassment has grown tenfold.
Answering the question with a halfhearted shrug, he balls up his cup and absently tosses it into the bin on the side of the desk. It misses.
“Embarrassing babe, truly.” Hal Jordan struts through the main entry, the door opening and locking with a quiet steady hum. He takes in the room with an unreadable gaze, mouth reared down when he meets the mess of blueprints sprawled on every available surface possible.
Bruce coughs a little awkwardly, realising in a third-party perspective, just how frazzled he must look. “Did you just get back? Why didn’t you say anything, I would have made dinner plans.”
Hal blinks with sudden clarity, letting out a huff of laughter before advancing. “Who says I don’t already have dinner plans, hm? I might even invite you for some arm candy, make all the girls jealous.”
“Really?” The quality of Bruce’s voice deepens in his interest, something light and playful dancing in his eyes. “You’re not going to go looking for other arm candy if I’m otherwise indisposed, are you?”
“We both know I have my prospects, many in fact, thousands,” Hal grazes the side of his cheek with his thumb taking with it a spot of grease Bruce hadn’t realised was on him. “So unless you're willing to get benched you’d better put on something form-fitting and get your ass on my arm.”
Bruce sighs stretching his muscles out (and to his endless embarrassment) quiet pops and cracks now accent the scene. “Not discrediting your physique but I sincerely doubt your arm could handle my as-"
“Keep up the sass and I'll call up Clark Kent and see if he'd wanna split a fire-roasted Baja salmon.”
Bruce hums absentmindedly circling and cross-examining several hundred things at once when the wording finally hits him.
Hal’s wearing a suit. His special suit that was reserved for weddings or baby showers or-
“Oh.”
“You're an idiot.”
Bruce closes his eyes.“I’m an idiot.”
“An idiot that was able to land this?” Hal gestures down to his immaculately fitted three-piece suit, a gorgeous navy shade with hints of purple accents on the lapel, and splashes down the side. “My standards must be dropping; I could snag a prince in this hot little number.”
Bruce eases himself between soft material and warm arms, the creak in his neck melting with it. “I once dated a prince.”
He feels a particularly hard push on his shoulder. “I’ve dated an alien princess from a planet whose primary literature was not all that uncommon from the kama sutra. Don't play that game 'cause you’ll lose and I’ll have to spend my anniversary comforting your competitive ass.”
He hums. “Our anniversary, isn’t it?”
“Well I’m not sure, it was our anniversary when I sat down in the Plaza Latour wearing a grossly expensive suit looking for a husband that wasn’t coming but right now? Little less sure.”
Bruce winces, stepping out of his partner's chest and turning genuinely apologetic eyes up to him.
“Time escaped me. I didn’t mean for any of this-” He gestures emphatically at the workbench and the large sparking metal contraption. “to get as far as it did, I’m truly sorry.”
Hal can't stay angry long after being subjected to one of the rarest Bruce Wayne behaviours ever recorded: acknowledging a mistake and owning up to it.
“Well…I’m sure you’ll think up some way to make it up to me.”
Bruce smiles softly, placing a kiss on the side of his mouth. “I might…”
“Skydiving.”
“No.”
“Damn!” Hal clicks his fingers, peppering kisses down the base of the other's neck. “Worth a shot.”
For the next thirty minutes or so they take their time exploring each other's bodies and basking in each other's undivided attention. Soft lingering kisses, long tension-filled gazes cutting through the other's bullshit with an efficiency sharpened with time. Bruce murmurs with lips on Hal's skin sweet nothings in every language he knows which; one, wow that's a lot of languages and, two, did he learn all of these languages just to hook up with people? Because the things he can say...
“Good God Spooky, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Hal says breathlessly.
Bruce blinks up at him. “You can understand me?”
“I know enough by myself ass, but the ring does turn out to be a great ‘study’ guide.”
“Interesting.”
Hal hums bringing him up again for another burning kiss. “You know I know over a hundred alien languages-“
“-Must everything be a competition with you?"
Hal smiles cheekily. "Only the ones I can win."
Bruce closes that mouth the only way he knows how and the sounds the other lets out almost make it worth it. They try not to go too far south in hopes of catching that reservation so for the first bout of their second anniversary they spent it making out and dry humping like teenagers hiding in the locker rooms. It was ridiculously juvenile but Bruce found himself swept up under the stupid sincerity of it all because, in all honesty, that’s what it was like with Hal. Juvenile, reliable and so unashamedly sincere that it hurt sometimes to be close to him.
Bruce wished he could be that for Hal, a reminder of all the normal things they were, all the normal things they could feel for one another by simply existing in the same space but, that wasn't him. Bruce could never be normal.
As if sensing the coming storm, Hals's hands climb up Bruce's body landing on his chest where he began trailing circles into kevlar.
"You think too loud..." Hal murmurs, concentrated gaze unflinching at the turbulent storm Bruce’s eyes had darkened into.
Bruce frowns, prickly and raw from his mind poisoning his thoughts and letting loose all his insecurities at once. "You think too little."
Hal quirks a smile, some relief from the response relaxing him again. "Real mature."
"Maturity?" Bruce's brow draws higher, his heart evening out against his will. "You are chastising me on maturity Mr. 'I can bench you even with broken ribs?"
"Could and did, next argument."
"Just so we're clear, we're arguing about your maturity, right?"
"Can't think of anything?"
"-Should we focus on things done in the cape or out because I happen to have a spreadsheet for every immature childish thing you've ever done as the Green Lantern." He says so matter of factly that Hal knew Bruce saw no fault in that little tidbit.
"What the fuck." Hal's eyes narrow, back tensing and muscles coiled at the admittance. "When'd that start."
"The day I met you." Only when he met Bruce’s gaze and saw the playful tease in his eyes did he finally relax. Of course, only Bruce Wayne could jokingly admit to keeping a logbook of every wrongdoing his partner ever made and for said partner to be only kind of sure he didn’t actually.
He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, shaking his head good-natured. "Yeah go fuck yourself."
"Why?" Bruce says, once again, very matter of factly. "then would be the point of you?"
Two could play this game, Hal thinks to himself. "I'm getting Damien a pig."
As their little back and forth is interrupted, Bruce pauses briefly trying to understand the direction of this new line of thought.
"What?" Summarises his thoughts rather nicely, and then as an afterthought. "He has too many animals."
"Nah," Hal waves his hand. "Not enough I say."
Bruce scowls rubbing a hand over his face, genuinely weighing out the pros and cons of even more pets for his insatiable son. "He doesn't need another barn animal."
"We'll name him Bruce." Hal continues as if didn’t hear him at all.
"That would be confusing." Annoying, he means. That would be annoying, and a day would not go past when he wouldn’t be ridiculed by his family for it.
"Bruce. Fitting name, as the pig of a man you are, don’t you think?" And Hal was laughing, not outwardly but with his eyes, his teasing, seducing, gorgeous eyes.
Bruce grumbles nothing coherent (Hal swears he heard something very similar to ‘needing to update the maturity spreadsheet’ somewhere in there) and cradles the back of Hal's neck, a flush dipping down his own back working its way up.
“So, I’ve waited enough time to ask this without getting my head chomped off but,” Hal stretches the ‘but’ curiously looking over Bruce’s shoulder.“What project have you latched onto now?”
Bruce pulls away a little too quickly to appear normal, unwilling to look him in the eye.
“Bruce?” Hal catches the fade of a flush on the tip of his ears, his mind spinning at what could cause that type of reaction. “It’s not a deathray, is it? If today’s the day you turn into a supervillain just give me a heads up cause I still have superman on speed dial and I don’t want to make this harder than it has to be.”
Bruce did not look amused. At all. “You’ve used that joke twice now.”
“What joke?” Being pointedly obtuse was a gift, truly.
The stare morphs into something a little more serious. “Using Clark as some asinine punchline, cut it out.”
“Sorry, forgot how touchy you can get over your boyfriend.” Hal hoped the bitterness didn’t shimmer too close to the top for that one but, based on Bruce’s expression, he was unsuccessful.
“This again? Christ.” Bruce turns and subjects him to the full assault of his disappointed scowl.
“You can’t honestly tell me he doesn’t-“
“Hal.” He’s using his warning voice that was only reserved for his literal children or his spouse who he thinks he can talk to like one of his literal children. That contemptuous expectant tone always had a knack for making him furious.
“We’re pinning this,” he says softly instead of storming out of the room in an (in his opinion wholly justified) rage. “because it is our anniversary and we are deliriously happy ok? But the minute the day ends- we are talking about this.”
Bruce heaves a tired sigh but chooses not to answer him verbally. Searching out his hand as a way of apology, Hal squeezes accepting the gesture for what it was, and lets the ‘Superman’ issue die down.
For now.
“...It’s a particle accelerator. It is supposed to, in theory, rip into the fabric of our reality and connect it to others. It works much like a makeshift wormhole- depositing matter from one dimension to this one in a controlled environment,” Bruce explains gesturing at the sparking wires and tubes.
“Ah,” he says diplomatically thankful for the change in topic.” and why does the League need a dimension-traveling time machine?”
An embarrassed cough. “It doesn’t. I was just- commandeering some of the League advanced equipment for a side project, but I’ve hit a bit of a snag with the power supply.”
“Holy shit you stole official league equipment for this?” Hal asks with a grin.
“It wasn’t- it’s not stealing per se.”
“Baby that’s what commandeer means- it’s just stealing with a fancy title.”
Hal’s grin loosens into a broad shining smile, arms hooking just above his waist tugging him back. “You're lucky I have a thing for bad boys. Granted this bad boy is essentially stealing office supplies but hey, it’s enough for me to fantasize.”
Hal could hear the fond exasperation hidden in Bruce’s voice when he replies. “Did that line sound better in your head? Because it was something to hear out loud.”
“Bruce.”
“Yes?”
“Shut the fuck up before I divorce you.” The rumbling mirthful laugh that greets him reminds Hal just how far he could get being an asshole.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Bruce murmurs tracing patterns on Hal’s shoulder before moving out of the loose embrace and heading for the door. “I have a spare suit in my quarters, take pity on me and clean the mess?”
“Wha-” Before he had the chance to argue the other man had promptly shut the door behind him leaving Hal alone in the workshop hugging nothing but the air. “you little shit.”
Although left to his own devices Hal refuses to bow to the whims of a man who regularly dresses up as a bat for a living and pointedly ignores the coffee-stained mugs on the countertop. Walking around the space he pauses at the blueprints laid out flat on the desk, rings of spilled coffee, and marks of blue pen smudge the sides of it, who knows how long they’ve been there.
Looking them over he can’t help the sudden burst of pride at everything his partner had accomplished in his time toiling away in here. The admiration he would never share with the man, of course, can’t go rewarding bad behaviour and show his kids that ‘oh yeah if you want to accomplish something just lock yourself alone with it in a room for weeks and it’ll solve itself!’ Because stepdad of the year he was not, but even he had common sense.
It didn’t take long to reach the point Bruce was stuck on when he had walked in, a power supply of that magnitude was hard to come by, and even with his knowledge of powers outside of earth, he was drawing a blank. Hal counts himself lucky he had caught onto Bruce’s little project before it got any bigger than what it was because one shady alien tech trade later and suddenly the League really would have to step in for the unintentional death ray. Sure there were some more niche power supplies off-planet that could do the trick, but they would be a pain to bargain for, and even if nothing went wrong and the deal goes smoothly they would still have to wait for intergalactic shipping and the paperwork Hal would have to do for that was nightmare-inducing. No, there was a far cheaper less paperwork-filled route they could go instead. Hal looks down at his ring.
He’s done dumber things.
Going over the calculations in his head he knows that one small burst would be enough to power up the thing for a couple of seconds, nothing concrete but just enough for it to light up and hypothetically become a mirror into a different world. The possibility was rousing and maybe Hal could see the appeal of such a machine.
“Bruce you have ten seconds to stop me from doing something incredibly stupid!” The endless void of space does not answer him. Hal makes an educated guess that Bruce had gone to freshen up with a shower before their date which, while sweet, was suddenly very convenient for him. “Well, can’t say I didn't try and warn you.”
Hal raises his hand with the ease of someone who’s done this for years and aims it at a shallow gauge hole on the right side of its frame. Better now than never.
Power pulses through him, his body alight in green. It was just a beam, not much bigger than his fist, that pumped out and hit it square on. The light that erupted from the machine was blinding and it felt as if he were staring directly into the sun.
“What- Hal!” What sounded like Bruce's horrified shout did little to keep him conscious. It was like every cell of his body was ripping him apart bit by bit before putting him back together slightly wrong.
He could do nothing else but cradle the arm still bursting with heat and wait it out, praying that all of his body parts would still be attached.
The pure white pain that surged through his body finally faded leaving a battered but not seemingly bruised green lantern. Hal folded into a pile on the ground gripping at his head to will the migraine down before he had to get up and assess the damage. The classic stars and stripes peppered his vision for a bit before it realigned with objects around him.
Surely Bruce wouldn’t take this long to put on a suit? Did something else happen? It must have, Hal wasn’t fully conscious of the whole power resurge thing but he was positive it was Bruce's voice calling out his name. ‘Maybe,’ Hal thinks glumly, ‘there was an attack at the tower on top of his horrible idea- christ Bruce is gonna kill me.’
Laying on the ground for the extra seconds was a blessed, blessed time and when his head felt clear enough to stand up he rose with a groan. Bones crack and pop but in times like these (not unlike the time the hair dye didn’t cover all the greys) what makes him feel better is the knowledge that Bruce would have cracked twice as much.
“Make space!” The muffled commands from the other room jolted him to attention, perhaps, his theory wasn’t entirely wrong.
Flash and Green Arrow are the first through the door determined and no-nonsense it’s clear there was a causality, but a casuality from what, Hal couldn’t tell. Rushing towards them he tries to assess the damage and blink away his own pain, rushing straight into the action.
"Someone catch me up, what did we-" Whatever question he had ready dies once he sees who it is they are rushing in with.
Bruce, suit bloodied and torn, lays unmoving in Diana's arms. Hal forgets how to breathe.