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“Anyway,” Hal said, clearly building up to the climax of the story, and why he’d chosen Bruce of all people as the lucky lucky recipient of this display of storytelling prowess was not a point Bruce wanted to spent too much time on, “so that’s when I tell the Kevorkian—”
Bruce felt half a smile curl the corner of his mouth and Hal, of course, sharp-eyed even, what was it, four, five whiskies down? caught it at once. “What?” he demanded cheerfully.
“They’re not actually called Kevorkians,” Bruce said.
Hal flashed him a blinding grin. “Not actually, no,” he confirmed, “but it’s the closest the human tongue can get to the name of their species. When their old get past a certain age, they practically put ‘em out on ice floes and everything. Terrible people, but like, what are the chances?”
“Kevorkian is the closest the human tongue can get,” Bruce said, flatly disbelieving, but he knew the effect was being ruined by the grudging half-smile that wouldn’t leave his mouth.
“Closest I choose to get,” Hal allowed, shrugging. “Xenolinguistics,” he added slyly, “means you get to choose what to do with your tongue.”
Bruce rolled his eyes, ignoring the quicksilver flash of heat in his chest. There were a lot of things he ignored about himself when he was around Hal Jordan.
He surveyed the crowd scattered amongst the pub’s booths, the largest of which had been commandeered by half the League, who were drunkenly attacking Barry’s birthday cake with more vigor than, let’s say, accuracy. For half a second, he wondered why Hal was sitting here, next to Bruce, rather than at his best friend’s birthday table, and then, in the next half second, pushed that thought away too. He looked away from the League’s booth, and across the bar, in the benign, safe middle distance. Across the circular bar that dominated the center of the pub, there was a woman, dark-haired and gorgeous, and his eyes caught hers.
“What’s got you so distracted?” Hal asked after a quiet beat.
“There’s a woman over there.” Bruce tore his eyes away. “I think she’s looking at me.”
“Really?”
“Hm?” The sound at the League’s table had roared briefly — Oliver had managed to wrestle Barry into a scrabbling half-nelson and Diana had migrated from her spot in the booth directly onto Clark’s lap. Somehow these things seemed to be related.
“Is she looking at you?” Hal repeated with some amusement.
“Oh. I think so. I don’t know.” And then, in an unfathomable burst of honesty, Bruce admitted, “I never know when they’re looking at me.”
Hal was quiet for a long enough moment that Bruce glanced back at him - and caught the look of pure incredulity on his face. “What,” he demanded.
“I’m sorry,” Hal said, sotto voce, “weren’t you trained by secret ninja assassins on how to read people’s entire life histories by the way they, I don’t know, the way they twitched their left pinky or something? And you’re telling me you never know if women are looking at you?”
“This might shock you,” Bruce muttered irritably, “but the League of Shadows, in between teaching me all the four hundred different nerve points I could use to kill, maim or incapacitate an enemy combatant, didn’t actually have the time - or the inclination - to teach me to assess sexual availability.”
But Hal was grinning at him, that bright flawless smile of pure entertainment. “Holy shit, you’re not kidding! You really can’t tell when people want to, I don’t know, drag you into the nearest coat closet and rip your pants off?”
Bruce paused for a second and fought off the image of Hal dragging him into the nearest coat closet and— well, it took longer than a second to get rid of that image. “No,” he said shortly, when he had wrested back control of his suddenly dry throat. He took another sup of his mediocre scotch. “I can't. And you don’t need to sound quite so surprised.”
“Hell yeah I do! I though you were a fucking telepath, for the first, like, six months after Doomsday!”
“You think I’d have made as many mistakes as I did if I were a telepath?” Bruce asked with a wry, dark laugh. “And besides, it helps if the interested party is... obvious about their interest.”
“Obvious, huh? How obvious is obvious enough, I guess that’s the question, isn’t it? Hey, hang on a minute, is this why you slept with Selina fucking Kyle?”
Bruce couldn’t help the irritated frown that crossed his brow, the sickening lurch in his gut. It had blunted considerably over the years, but… “I was going to marry the woman—”
“—until you came to your senses, thank God, and realized she was a raging nutjob and you could do better—”
“—so if you could speak of her with some respect—”
“—not to mention, you do just fine without the telepathy there, pal, I’m not sure what you think a permanent headache tells you that you can’t already puzzle out.”
Bruce was breathing hard by then, and he forced himself to look away from Hal — ‘You gotta not let the man wind you up that easy,’ Clark was forever telling him, and considering that Clark was not ten feet from the two of them and had almost certainly overheard the vast majority of this conversation and would, if Bruce gave in to his totally justifiable urge to smash a right hook into the Green Lantern’s face, stare at Bruce and look disappointed at him, Bruce was forcing himself to reconsider his unholy desire to rearrange Jordan’s face.
What the hell was it he and Jordan had even been talking about? Telepathy, of all the asinine… And was it possible Jordan had even used that last blithe line to compliment Bruce? Unwillingly, Bruce’s eyes flicked back to Hal, who was watching him still, with that warm, inscrutable smile.
“Telepathy might not have helped in the field,” Bruce said, slowly, and with a tired sigh, “but it would’ve done a hell of a lot to help me with the kids.”
“I don't know man. You’re the one who trained Robin to the world's tiniest cutest lethal-est weapon. You should be okay with the consequences, don’t you think? Plus, he’s a pretty good kid.”
“In point of fact, I did not train him to be a weapon. That was his mother’s doing.” And then, as the last sentence clicked, “Did you just call Robin cute?”
Hal ignored him. “Riiiight,” he drawled instead. “His mother. Talia al-Ghul. Daughter of the Demon. Interesting dating history you got there, you know that?”
“I do know that. And if you’re going to start naming names and aliases all in one breath, I think it’s time we put you in a cab,” Bruce said tersely, signaling the bartender for the check, who arrived promptly, courtesy most likely of the generous tips Bruce had been sliding her with every top-up.
“Uh-huh,” Hal said, deeply sardonic. “I see how you didn’t mind so much when I was naming names about negotiating intergalactic peace treaties with the Beta Epsilon Quadrant.”
Bruce leveled him a flat stare, and got out of his seat. Hal, to his credit, remained mostly steady on his feet, balancing admirably the moment Bruce had slid an arm around his shoulders. “When you talk about your day job,” Bruce said, as they wove through the jostling crowd, towards the exit, “you just sound like you’re confusing real life with video games. Perfectly common affliction amongst white, single, middle-aged, heterosexual men, Jordan, you’re right in the middle of that bell curve.”
“….okay, ignoring all the everything you got wrong there—”
“—I got nothing wrong there—”
“—I’m guessing Talia was also…..helpfully obvious?”
“Very much so.”
Hal mimed gagging with elaborate drama. Bruce considered dropping him, weighed it against Clark’s Look of Eternal Disappointment, and decided against. “Good god,” Hal croaked, “I want brain bleach for that image.”
Bruce rolled his eyes for the second time that night. “But not actually.”.
“Shut up, I can be in denial if I want. Hey,” he said, tugging Bruce sideways as they were walking past the hostess’ podium, “I left my jacket back here.”
“Jordan…” Bruce protested as he was dragged into a barely lit coat closet that stank like sweat and mothballs, coats shushing as they shouldered their way in towards the back.
“No,” Hal insisted, with drunken mulishness, “it’s here, really.”
“For fuck’s sake— You weren’t wearing a goddamn coat when you came in, you idio—” But then Bruce was being grabbed and spun around, pressed backwards into a cool wall and Jordan was crowding him in, looking remarkably sober for someone who hadn’t been able to walk straight two minutes ago without bodily draping himself over Bruce’s side. “...Jordan?”
“Yeah?” Hal said, smiling quietly and looking sort of enormously pleased with himself. It was exactly the kind of look that made other people want to punch Hal Jordan. Bruce just wished it made him feel the same way.
“What…” he began and then trailed off when Hal stepped towards him, closing the last inch of distance between them. Bruce could feel Hal’s hand sweeping up his chest and curling gently around his nape. It was making him dizzy a little bit, the racing beat of his heart. “What are you doing?” Bruce asked carefully. His voice was hoarse.
Hal smiled. His thumb brushed softly at the corner of Bruce’s mouth. “Being,” he said, in a whisper that Bruce could feel all the way down to his toes, “helpfully obvious.”