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pneumaticshift · 1 day ago

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so first of all i REALLY love your batlantern fics. i love both bruce and hal's voices so much and think that their interactions are INCREDIBLY funny

second of all i have a request for you! hal gets injured protecting dickbin. (maybe dick snuck into an invasion when he was told to stay behind. maybe he and bruce got separated.) however it happens hal saves his life but gets very injured in the process. dickbin feels guilty about this and hasn't left his bedside since. meanwhile hal going to such lengths for his ward has awoken Feelings ™ in bruce

Heyyy, sorry this took so long. I've been unhealthly playing DC Dark Legion and it's ruining my creativity. I am aware of the problem and have done nothing to fix it. This was surprisingly hard to write. I had so much I wanted to add, but I didn't want to make too long for a Tumblr oneshot. Thank you for the prompt 💚💚 Hope you like it! ———

Dick disobeyed, so now Bruce ran.

The Watchtower had never felt all that big to him. He designed it specifically to be easily traversable. Function over grandeur, strategy over spectacle. There had been a few choice comments from the others in the Spartan decor, but every hallway had its purpose and every chamber was an answer to a problem that needed to be solved.

The path from the transport hub to the infirmary was especially built to be the shortest path on the station. It was direct and unbroken, just a simple corridor without indulgence or opportunity for confusion. Bruce had walked it enough times to know exactly how many steps it took to get there. Eighty-three at full stride, seventy-four if he was running. Right now, he was running.

By now, in the aftermath of days on the field, he should have been back at the manor. He should have been in the cave, reviewing all the footage and data extrapolated from the mission so he could cross-reference data, log the variables, and review the structural damage to the cities they’d saved. Every detail, no matter how insignificant, meant that more lives could be saved next time. Because there had been — casualties, that is. Names he didn’t know. Faces he hadn’t seen. Deaths that didn’t belong to him.

And after all that, he should have been dealing with Dick the day he always did. Quiet conversations that never really said what he meant, despite how hard he tried. He would’ve justified himself in a way that left no room for argument, like a guardian was supposed to do when they were protecting their ward. It wasn’t your fight, I needed you in Gotham, it was too dangerous.

Leaving him behind had been the right thing to do. The mission had outstripped caution in the first ten minutes. An Omega-level threat, with casualties stacking up before the League had even breached the city. Dick may have been forced to grow up far too soon, but he was still just a child. Reckless, brilliant, irreplaceable. Bruce wasn’t about to risk the best thing in his life.

But now there was blood on the Zeta-pad.

Just a smear. Half-wiped, like someone had tried to clean it up with the toe of their shoe before giving up. It trailed into the corridor, then into nothing. Usually, Bruce wasn’t one to make assumptions. He was far too clever a man to let postulation guide him in any matter, but logic always had its limits, and fear didn’t care about them. Not when his ward — when his son was on the line.

He hadn’t known that Dick was on the field. He had, perhaps naïvely, thought that Dick would have actually adhered to Bruce’s warnings this time. It was so, so dangerous, and no amount of late nights fighting street-level crime in Gotham could change the fact that he wasn’t ready.

Word had come over the comms. J’onn and Kal were relaying relevant data from air support while Bruce had been leading the debrief with Diana for the ground team. He had been half-listening, consolidating data absently as background noise.

It was J’onn who said it. “We intercepted an unidentified minor trying to help. Young, caped. His mind is unusually strong…” he said. “Injuries unknown. I was compelled to transfer him to the infirmary. He was quite distressed—”

That was lal Bruce needed to hear. He cut himself off mid-sentence and immediately turned to literally run to the nearest Zeta-Tube. Diana had called out to him in confusion, but he barely heard her. Though, her confusion probably made sense. He’d been with the League for two years now, and the only thing anyone actually knew about him was his dedication to the cause. To see him leave the aftermath to sort out itself probably would raise questions he’d definitely avoid later.

Dick was almost thirteen now. He’d been by Bruce’s side for almost four years, had been Robin for three, and even though he was the cleverest, most wonderful tween Bruce had ever known, he was still an entirely unknown entity to the League. Bruce had no intention of changing that.

Which brought him to the here and now, coming up to the infirmary with his heart in his throat and his pulse rocketing a little too quickly for his tastes.

The doors hissed open and he didn’t wait. He pushed through before they’d finished parting completely, shoulder-checking the frame on his way in. He barely registered it, fully expecting to see his little boy all laid up. And, incidentally, fully preparing to never forgive himself for letting it happen.

But it didn’t happen.

Dick was there, certainly, but he wasn’t the invalid Bruce had been half-ready for. Instead, he was slumped forward in a plastiform chair with his elbows resting on his knees and his little head bowed like the weight of the world was keeping him down. He was still in his suit, even though Bruce had locked it up when he left him behind in Gotham. It was torn at the shoulder and streaked with soot.

“Robin,” Bruce called. His voice was lower and far more curt than he intended. He was never good at expressing himself, so the relief fell somewhere behind the tight press of his lips and the furrow of his brow.

It was hard to catch Dick off guard, but he startled at the noise. His shoulders jumped and he snapped his head up fast enough to make the chair creak. He turned abruptly towards Bruce, half-standing at attention without pulling himself out of his chair, and he looked at him with eyes wide beneath his askew mask.

His mouth opened slightly, but nothing came out at first. He looked…wrong. Upset, like those first few months in the manor, or the time around the anniversary of the Flying Graysons’ final performance. His cheeks were flushed and blotchy and his nose was half-running like he’d been crying.

“B,” he said in a broken voice.

Instead of rushing towards his child with his arms outstretched like he was supposed to, Bruce stood frozen at the door to automatically take in the scene. Relief had flooded him enough to reboot him back to his factory settings, and he was suddenly thinking about how hasty he’d been to get here.

But even though he should head on back and finish the debrief like he was supposed to, he stayed exactly where he was in a weird purgatory of emotion.

Dick was curled in on himself like he didn’t know how to proceed. Ash was still smudged across his jaw and there was a thin line of blood beneath his ear. His mouth was trembling slightly, like he was still trying to be brave. He was good at that. Being brave. Better than Bruce had ever been.

That was when Bruce noticed Hal. He probably should’ve noticed him far sooner, given his condition.

The Lantern lay unconscious on the medical berth. His chest was bandaged up and his face pale under the sicky cast of the overhead lights, but his ring was pulsing faintly. Whatever the medical staff had done to keep him stabilised had nothing on the energy channeling into the weave of healing fields wrapped around him.

Bruce let himself be concerned for half a second. The monitors were stable and Hal was alive. Not in the best condition Bruce had ever seen him in, but not the worst either. Right now, he had more pressing matters to attend to.

Dick was as close to the bedside as the chair allowed, which was strange. He’d never been formally introduced to the League. In fact, the only person who actually knew about his existence was Kal, and that was just because the man had pushed his nose into Gotham’s business and Dick was a fan. (A few threats and promises later, and Kal had assured Bruce that he wouldn’t tell anyone — he had, however, tried to convince Bruce to at least tell Diana. Bruce was considering it.)

For as much as he was slowly beginning to trust the League, Hal was the person Bruce had the least rapport with. It was a matter of simple incompatibility and Bruce wasn’t exactly inclined to do anything to remedy it. Some people just didn’t get along, and he couldn’t foresee himself ever doing so with Hal Jordan.

It didn’t mean he wanted to see the Lantern hurt, but it was undeniably weird that Dick, after all the rants he’d heard when Bruce was particularly pissed off with Hal’s general existence, would set up camp by his bedside. His knees were bumping the frame and one hand hung loosely over the edge, like it had started to reach for Hal at some point and just stopped midway.

Yes, it was weird, but Bruce was always good at connecting the dots. He could see it now in the way Dick wouldn’t look at Hal directly. He just kept glancing over at him, furtive and quiet and just a hint of shame. He could see it in the way his lips pressed together to keep them from trembling and the way his feet hadn’t moved but his leg was bouncing nervously.

Whatever had happened that made Dick like this, it probably meant that Bruce had to thank Hal.

Now that he knew Dick was safe, Bruce’s instinctive reaction was to order a report. It would be easier to depersonalise the situation if he framed it like another mission, and Bruce was usually very, very good at separating his complicated personal feelings from the here and now. But, every now and again, very rarely so, Bruce actually knew when not to put The Mission first.

He let out a slow, grounding breath, and came up beside Dick. “Talk to me,” he said as softly as he could. Which wasn’t very soft at all, but Dick had been with him long enough now to be able to tell the difference.

“I didn’t—” Dick swallowed hard and curled his fingers into the edge of Hal’s bed. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Are you hurt?”

Dick shook his head. “No. I mean— I’m scuffed, I guess. Elbow. Nothing bad.” His voice was tight. His gaze flicked sideways toward Bruce, then back to Hal, then down at his own boots like he was ashamed of all three. “I shouldn’t have come,” he added, even softer now. “You told me not to, and he— Green Lantern, he—”

“We’ll talk about that,” Bruce said. “Later.” Not a dismissal, not forgiveness. Just…later. He looked back at Hal. “Tell me what happened, chum.”

He never wanted Dick to be nervous around him, but something visibly unfurled around the boy when the term of endearment slipped out. Dick sniffed and went to wipe his eyes. He was still wearing his domino and the mask displaced even more when he tried to rub away the moisture beginning to brim. Bruce couldn’t see the tears, not behind the mask. He knew they were there, though.

“I thought I could help,” Dick muttered. “I tracked the signal. I saw you were on the ground team, and when the alerts came in, the ones from the orbital relay—” He broke off, shaking his head like the words were too heavy to push out. “I knew it was big. But I thought if I just— if I was careful, then I’d—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. His hand stayed near Hal’s arm, fingers hovering just above the blanket like he didn’t know if he was allowed to hold on.

“I didn’t know he was gonna—” Another pause. Another broken thread of sound. “I didn’t think it’d go that wrong.”

This was a learning experience for him, Bruce thought. He hated that it was one of the first things that came to mind, especially when his kid was looking so vulnerable and when one of his coworkers was unconscious.

“He saved you,” he said rather than asked.

Dick nodded and Bruce looked at him a little longer before turning to look at Hal. Really looked at him, for perhaps the first time since they met. He made himself stop calculating vitals and injury ratio, and he stopped parsing the rhythm of the machines for signs of decline of recovery. He hadn’t even realised he had been doing all of that until he forced himself to stop.

Even though he never thought much of Hal, he also knew — had always known — that he would’ve done anything to save a kid. And clearly he had. No ring could fake that level of duty. No construct could fabricate what Bruce saw now in the aftermath: a Lantern lying half-broken, unconscious and quiet for once, because he had chosen to step in when Bruce couldn’t. And the fact that it was his kid, his Dickie…

Oh, that was a problem. Bruce felt something brand new twist hard in his chest. Something with sharp edges and raw heat, something that crawled under his ribs and tried to claw its way out through bone. Gratitude didn’t come easy to him. Guilt did. Both were now crashing into him in silent tandem, buried deep where no one could see.

There was something a little more too, just the sparks of something even harder to name. Not affection, not exactly, but something annoyingly near it. It felt complicated and raw, tangled up in this image of Hal, broken and still, and Dick sitting beside him like he was the most important person here.

Bruce acknowledged it, then ignored it. He set it down in the place in his mind where he buried everything else that threatened to make him feel too much, too fast. Later, when Hal woke up, he would thank him properly. Dick would want to, too. Probably as Dick, and not as Robin. That was something to think about later, though.

“What did the medical staff say?” he asked.

Dick sniffed once and rubbed the heel of his palm against his nose like he used to when he first came to the manor. “They said he stabilised fast,” he replied. “The ring did most of the work before we even got here. They— uh…I had to give them your access code so they’d let me stay. They tried to kick me out ‘cause I don’t have clearance. Um. Sorry…”

Another thing to worry about later, but not Bruce’s immediate concern. He gave Dick his access codes for a reason. Something like this was always going to happen. “They think he’ll wake up soon?”

“Yeah…’cause the ring, and all.” Dick shifted in the chair, arms pulled in tight to his chest, like he was trying to make himself smaller. “Can I stay, B? Just for a little while?”

It was against protocol, Bruce thought, but…well…

“Move over,” Bruce said. Dick blinked for a moment, then scrambled out of the chair like he was responding to an order on the field. He hovered for a second, uncertain, until Bruce sat down in his place. The kid didn’t need another invitation.

He climbed into Bruce's lap like he had a hundred times before — back when he was smaller, younger, and it was less embarrassing for a kid to seek comfort. Back when his limbs didn’t dangle awkwardly over the sides, when he could curl up tight and disappear into the fold of the cape like it was a hidey-hole.

Lately, he'd been pulling away from those kinds of childish interactions as best he could. He was coming up on his teen years. Trying to be taller than he was. Braver. Older. He didn’t lean on Bruce the way he used to. Not in public, at least. Not even at home unless he was half-asleep or had forgotten he wasn’t supposed to need it anymore.

Now, he pulled the cape around himself, tucked his head beneath Bruce’s chin, and sighed out one long, shaky breath.

Bruce didn’t know how long they sat there, but it was long enough for the ring to finish its preliminaries. He had sent a message to Alfred at some point, brief but clear: We’re safe. I’ll explain soon. He knew the old man would read between the lines, hear everything that wasn’t written.

He had also dropped a locked ping on the League comms, redirecting anyone trying to enter the infirmary. No visitors. Not right now. Which was probably a dick move.

Oliver and Barry would’ve come by. Maybe even some of the other Lanterns, if they managed to get wind of what happened. Hal had friends. People who gave a damn. People better than Bruce who would want to see him and make sure he was still breathing.

But Bruce didn’t want anyone else in this room, not while Dick was still sleeping and not while Bruce was still figuring out what he was supposed to do when Hal woke up.

And he did eventually wake up. The combination of the ring’s healing propities, coupled with the medical staff’s expertise meant that injuries of this nature didn’t keep a man down for long. Bruce was also half-certain that the ring was starting to affect Hal’s actual nervous system, so he always healed a little quicker than most.

The infirmary lights had dimmed into their night cycle at some point, so Bruce didn’t catch the exact moment Hal woke up. One second, the room was still. The next, he caught movement — barely a twitch from the bed, then a sharp intake of breath.

“Goddamn,” Hal muttered from the bed. “Either I died and you're here to collect, or this is some kind of fever dream.”

“Lantern,” Bruce greeted. “Stay down.”

“Screw that, I’m fine.”

Hal immediately tried to sit up, because he was one of the most stubborn bastards Bruce had ever met. The attempt lasted all of two seconds before he winced hard and flopped back down like the bed had sucker punched him .Bruce didn’t move to stop him.

Partly because he knew Hal was too stubborn to listen anyway, but mostly because Dick was still bundled under the cape, tucked close to Bruce’s chest, dead asleep. The kid didn’t even stir at the commotion. He just mumbled something unintelligible and curled in tighter, frowning slightly in his sleep.

Hal caught the movement and froze.

“Batman…what are you doing under your cape right now?”

Bruce gave him the flattest look. Without a word, he lifted the edge of the cape.

“Oh my god,” Hal breathed. Dick was out cold, his cheek pressed against Bruce’s chest, one hand still clinging loosely to the edge of the cape like he thought someone might try to take it from him. “Nobody’s ever gonna believe me.”

Huffing out something that may have resembled a laugh if Hal looked too deep into it, Bruce let the cape drop and readjusted his grip around his son.

“Robin,” Bruce said simply.

“...I’m gonna assume that’s his name and not just you being all cryptic and weird.” Hal flopped his head back on the pillow and glared at Bruce. “That your kid?”

“Hm.”

“The hell was he doing in the field, Batman?”

Bruce didn’t respond to that. He didn’t owe Hal anything. Or, maybe he did. After what happened, after what Hal had done without even knowing who he was protecting, maybe Bruce did owe him a few answers. Maybe more than a few. But Bruce was still Bruce, and words, real ones, always failed him when they didn’t involve strategy, contingencies, or command.

Hal let out a soft breath that turned into a wince. “My bad. Should’ve known you were too much of a douche to actually willingly give out information,” he said. It was an out Bruce was going to take. “He alright?”

“He will be.”

And Hal, flat on his back with half his ribs taped together and a ring flickering dimly at his side, managed a crooked smile. “Good,” he said. “’Cause I don’t think I’ve got another one of those in me.”

“He—” Bruce paused and Hal glanced at him again. “He wanted to wait for you to wake up.”

Hal blinked. Then he looked down, toward the edge of the cape still drawn over Bruce’s front, where the faint rise and fall of breath gave away the shape of a small form nestled beneath. He couldn’t see Dick from his angle, just the dark ripple of fabric and the way Bruce’s arm curled almost imperceptibly around something fragile.

So instead, Hal watched Bruce. And that, Bruce realized, was strange. People didn’t watch him like that. Not when he was still. Not when he wasn’t speaking. They watched for his movements, for orders, for the turn of his head that meant something was about to happen, But Hal looked at him now like he was trying to figure him out.

Bruce didn’t shift under it. Didn’t avert his gaze or curl the cape tighter around him like he wanted to. He simply let the moment stretch between them, unspoken and unguarded, which was even stranger. It was almost disarming.

Then, Hal snorted. “Of course he did. I’m the Green Lantern,” he said. “Kid’s got taste.”

The expected thing to do now would be to engage in conversation. He was supposed to thank Hal, promise to treat him better in the future, and acknowledge that his opinion on him had recently gone up more than Bruce was strictly comfortable with.

It would’ve been easy to stay. Just another hour. Just until Hal drifted off again. But Dick needed real rest in a real bed. He wouldn’t get that in the Watchtower, no matter how long he clung to Bruce’s side.

So Bruce figured he’d overstayed his welcome. Slowly, he gathered the boy closer and stood, the cape keeping Dick cocooned in shadow and warmth. Dick barely stirred, just buried his face instinctively against Bruce’s chest with a small sound of protest before settling again.

He could feel Hal watching him. “Bring him by again sometime,” he said, voice softer now. “Maybe when I’m not half-dead.”

Bruce paused at the door, glanced back. No real promises and no answer. Just a quiet nod. And then he was gone, with a whole new problem brewing in his chest.

#i'm like 50/50 on this #i like and hate it in equal parts #bruce wayne #hal jordan #dick grayson #batlantern #sort of??#answered #sam writes

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