bossymarmalade: blue door (broken your vow a thousand times)
miss maggie ([personal profile] bossymarmalade) wrote in [community profile] thejusticelounge2014-03-26 11:49 am

three conversations from the isolation room, bungalow #6

Oliver is surrounded by dead hornets in the isolation room. They’re spread out scattered on the floor around him, as if they’d all suddenly died at once. None of them are near Ollie — he could swing his legs out along the floor and never hit one — but he can see and feel the evidence of their attack. His skin is mottled and discoloured, big deep purple welts in the places they’d stung him repeatedly, smaller lavender smears and bright pink dots in the places they’d only managed to land one or two stings. And it burns, it sears and itches and there’s heat running under his skin like electrified netting, but that’s fine. Ollie’s never understood penance all that well, either the theology behind it or the desire in the penitent for scourges and hair shirts. But this must be what it feels like. He props himself up again to his seated-slumped position under the window and closes his eyes. He’s already tried to burn Mar’i and Roy at the stake. Down to the bone, Bruce had told him, voice shaking with rage. Mortification of his flesh seems very insignificant in comparison, for having uncovered their bones.

Dick sits outside of the isolation room and scratches at the door—one, two three. He nibbles on an apple slice and scratches at the door again—one, two, three.

Oliver blinks blearily at the door. The first time the sound comes he’s not sure if it’s real; the second time, he says, “Who’s there.” His voice is rusty, prickly. Dick stops humming and smiles at the door, even though Ollie can’t see him. “It’s Dick. I thought you’d be lonely. I was lonely in there.”

Oliver watches one of the hornet corpses that seems like it might still be moving. “I’m not lonely. I have plenty to think about.” After a moment he adds, “…don’t go.”

Dick leans against the door. “I won’t leave you. Sometimes it’s better to think with others. What are you thinking about?”

Oliver considers this for a moment and nods. It seems like sound enough logic. “Hi, Dick,” he says belatedly. “I’m thinking about how things went wrong. That’s the way these things work, right? It all goes to hell and then you chew it over endlessly.”

"Yeah." He scratches at the door again—one, two, three—and nods. "They give us things and then take them away and leave us to think about what they did. What they’ll do."



Oliver draws circles against the floor with his finger, figure eights, infinity symbols. “Have you — d’you know how they are? Mar’i and Roy?” Ollie taps his fingernail against the floor, one two three. It seems like the proper way to communicate with Dick.

Dick smiles and mirrors Ollie, though he can’t know that, carving infinity into the door with his nail. “They’re resting. They have some big changes ahead of them, but they’ll survive. They’re in love.”

Oliver leans his head back against the wall. “Yeah,” he agrees. “They’re in love. That’ll help get them through. Are you … Dick, are there changes ahead for you too?”

Dick stares down the hallway toward the outside and nods. “Yes, I think so. I’ve lost hope and I have to go find it. But not yet.” He opens his bag, one finger brushing over the wrapped apple slices. “There are still too many apples left. But I will soon.” He scratches at the door again—one, two, three—and rests his palm flat against it. “I’ll bring back enough hope for all of us. I promise.”

"That would be nice, Dick. Make sure to kiss everybody and say goodbye before you go. You never know what’ll happen when you leave." He thinks over what Dick just said, and then asks, "What apples? Ones that The Child gave you?"

Dick nods at Ollie’s advice. Yes, he must say goodbye to everyone before he leaves. And tell them to wait for him. “No, Mar’i found them. They’re all I can eat now. Candy apples from the mermaid at the lake. Everything else tastes like rot or Bruce.” That’s not true. He blinks and rubs his eyes, frowning at what he’d said. When he speaks, his voice is more solid, less airy than it had been before. “Ollie, you pulled me out of the pool. I remember that. Did you… Did I say anything?”

Oliver is silent for a long time. “It’s hard to remember,” he finally says by way of explanation, a touch of defensiveness in his voice even though Dick hadn’t chided him for anything. “I think you might have said something about letting somebody … do something? You let him … something. Close to that, anyhow.” He frowns. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Now it’s Dick’s turn to be silent. He rests his head against the door, his palm flat against it, fingertips almost touching his forehead. “Yes. …I heard it speaking to me. Someone. About things he could— I wanted—” He opens and closes his mouth several times, searching for any words that wouldn’t let him admit what he really thought. What he knows. “It told me what Bruce could do to me and I let him use me because I knew it’d never happen…so I let it happen.” He swallows hard, the emptiness in his stomach tugging at him. He should eat, but he’ll run out of apples. It pulls and hollows. Dick takes a deep breath and sighs it out, unable to speak.

Oliver considers this for a while. “How long have you wanted that?” he asks, although he has an idea. It would’ve taken an idiot not to notice that period, when Dick was a teenager just starting to become aware of what kind of sexual delights he could use his supple body for — and how that had coincided with his new frustration to be acknowledged by Bruce in ways that went beyond a word or two of approval for a night’s patrol well done. With typical self-centredness, Ollie’d wondered and worried that Roy might go through that phase as well, but no. Roy had found other ways to act out his need for Ollie’s acknowledgement.

Dick pulls his knees to his chest and moves the bag of apples behind him. He needs his head clear and the hunger in his gut and call of the apples are clouding it again. He shakes his head and tucks his chin to his chest, wrapping himself into a ball. “Years, I guess. I thought I’d… But, you know, I’d gotten over it, right? When I knew that wouldn’t… that it’s not what I really wanted, not if it meant losing him… So I got over it.” Had he? All the men he’d mooned over were older, taller, bigger than him. Ollie himself was so much like— “He knows. I think that’s why I need to leave. If I can’t… He doesn’t trust me, so I need to stay away from him. Just for a bit. Find what I’ve lost.”

"I don’t think his not trusting you has to do with that, Dick." Ollie gnaws his lip, weighing something out, before saying, "It’s not like he didn’t know. It’s something we talked about, ‘round the League, you know. What it’s like when your ward-slash-sidekick-slas​h-whatever develops a crush on you. It’s not uncommon." He rearranges his legs. "Anyhow. Are you saying the only reason you tried to stop wanting it was because you thought you’d lose Bruce otherwise? Not because you /actually/ stopped wanting it?"

Dick looks up at the door, a mix of curiosity and low horror on his face. “You all knew?” No one ever said… He would’ve stopped being so… But he’d never been good about being subtle with his affections. “It was easier before he adopted me. I was just his ward. He wasn’t my father; he didn’t want to be and I didn’t want him to be. He was more like a… brotherly mentor, but not…. It was easier. But as I grew up I realized how he saw me. Alfred told me once, the year I gave Bruce a Father’s Day card and didn’t change it. I felt wrong after that, like I’d been something terrible.” He’s silent for a moment before he realizes he never actually answered Ollie’s question. “Yes,” he says quietly, just loud enough to be heard through the door. “I never want to lose him. Nothing’s worth that.”

Oliver gives a low hrrrm at Dick’s explanation. “Okay,” he says. “So the longing’s still there, underneath? At least, that’s what this place or the demon or whatever it was drew out of you. You, um…” Ollie grunts, uncomfortable. “When I gave you mouth-to-mouth, after I pulled you out’ve the pool. You tasted like Bruce. Like his come. Even though I know there’s no way that could’ve happened.”

Dick curls around himself tighter. “I know. I mean, I know what I tasted. I didn’t know you knew.” He takes a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have known what it was.” He can’t taste it anymore, even if he thinks he can. There’s nothing there but the sticky sweet tang of the candy apples, and he has to keep reminding himself that’s for the better. “Whatever it was, I think it knew everything.” He swallows hard and looks at the door, his mind filling in Ollie’s face out of memory. “…Are you disgusted by me?”

Oliver answers immediately, leaning forward as if this would make his voice more earnest. “Oh, god, Dick — no, I’m not disgusted. There’s longing in all of us, and a kind of desperation, when it comes down to it. Everybody wants to be loved and sometimes that want comes out tangled and in a way that can’t be fulfilled, through no fault of anybody’s.” He taps the ground, one two three. “D’you believe me? You know what I’m saying?”

Dick echoes the taps on the door—one, two, three—and rests his palm against it again. “Yes. I do. I… I understand.” He rests his forehead against the door and rubs the way he would against Ollie’s shoulder if he could hug him. “Thank you, Ollie. You shouldn’t be in there…”

His voice goes hard then, carrying through the space and the door between them with no effort. “Yes, I should,” Ollie says. “I very much fucking should. Don’t even think of trying to spring me because I’ll lay you out myself.” He sighs, rubbing the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Dick,” Ollie says, “Bruce and Kate and me. We’re together. You know that, right?”

Dick blinks at the shift in Ollie’s tone and sits back, stretching out his legs in front of him. “Yes, I know.” He smirks. “World’s second greatest detective, remember?” He laughs and though he cuts it short, it’s genuine. “You two make him happy, I can tell. Even if it’s Bruce-happy.”

"Good. Okay, good." Ollie stretches his legs out too, wobbling his toes back and forth as he rocks his bare heels against the floor. "That’s how I could tell it was him you tasted like, of course." He clears his throat. "Are you still thinking about it? I mean … you seem relatively okay, for this place, but I dunno how much of that is you actually having worked through being fucked by a demon substitute for Bruce, and how much is—" Ollie sings the next part in a crackly growl, "—‘no people like show people, they smile when they are loooow’…"

Dick chuckles, leaning back against the door with a small smile. “If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry and I don’t think I could take that right now. Of course, hysterical laughter isn’t quite the same thing. I’ll think about it all when we’re home, when I can let it hit me in a safe place.” He bites his lip. “I didn’t push Damian, y’know. He slipped. I haven’t thought much about that, either.”

Oliver takes in this new information. “I’m not sure how much it matters if you pushed him or not,” he says. “In the long run. I guess the important thing is if you feel responsible for it or not.”

Dick wraps his arms around his middle. “Bruce said he’d put me down like a rabid dog if I ever hurt Damian again. But I didn’t hurt him!” He sighs, deflating a little. “But it was my fault. I should’ve been stronger. That’s what I keep telling myself about everything. I should’ve just been stronger and maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”

"It’s true." Ollie nods, liking the taste of that concept. "If you’d been stronger it wouldn’t have happened. It’s true for me too, so don’t feel special." He grins a little at the teasing, even though Dick can’t see it. "You and me, Dick, we’re alike in a lot of ways. Tossed on the tempests of our emotions and impulses. But if we don’t want to hurt the others, people we care about, we have to be stronger." Bruce had threatened to put Dick down like a dog? Ollie thinks of the longhouse kitchen, his face slammed into the side of the fridge. He can’t remember Bruce’s words, the specifics of his threat, but that will do for now, he’ll co-opt Dick’s. Anything more and Bruce will put Ollie down like a rabid dog.

Dick hums and nods, processing this. “We are alike, and like what we do. I fly, but not really. It’s more like falling with the hope that someone or something will be there to catch you and toss you up again. You soar, constant and flexible, but every arrow has to come crashing down sometime.” He chuckles slightly, liking this little metaphor. “If we were stronger, maybe we wouldn’t feel as much. There has to be a balance somewhere.”

Oliver tries to bring his knees up, without thinking, and winces when the tethered one jerks against its bond. He settles for pointing one knee up. “No, no,” he says, and there’s a flush of enjoyment that he’d almost forgotten, the simple pleasure of debating philosophies and worldviews with his friends and loved ones. There hasn’t been much time for it here, in Cachement. “No, I can’t believe that it’s a good thing to not feel as much. I /like/ how strong my emotions are. That’s what gives me an edge out there, is following impulses and feelings. I don’t wanna lose any of that, I just wanna … temper it, somehow. Figure out a way to direct it properly. Y’know?”

"Direct it where you want it instead of at everything and anything nearby." He leans against the door and closes his eyes, imagining them back on the Watchtower in a lounge, happily sharing how they feel over a drink as the Earth turns below them. The hunger in him subsides. "Channel it into something else. Feed all your feelings to somewhere helpful instead of holding them back where they just build inside you. Yeah, I think I know what you mean."

"Yes!" Ollie’s voice bounces up in excitement as Dick makes his points. "Yeah, that’s exactly it. Instead of getting slopped around by the tide, actually fucking set a course and a direction to follow. I’ve been trying — at least, I /think/ I was trying, back in the world." He frowns. It’s hard to remember. "But here all of that effort got erased. I just keep getting swamped and I can’t bail out fast enough."

Dick sighs in relief. Being able to talk about this, even here, knowing that someone else understands, that someone else doesn’t have it all put together…it’s a huge fucking relief and he smiles wide at the realization. “It’s so much, trying to just stay afloat or not drag anyone else down with you. Controlled by everything instead of controlling it, and not being able to ride the waves as they come….” He nods decisively, his eyes sharper than they’ve been in weeks, and mutters, “That’s why I need to go. Yes.”

Oliver can’t find it in himself to dissuade Dick. That sureness in the young man’s voice whets his own interest, in fact; he cranes forward, wanting more of it. “Yes,” he agrees. “If you know it’s what you need to do — and even more important, if it doesn’t hurt anybody else in the slipstream — then you need to go, Dick. You and me, the shit we try to do doesn’t help, it all just seems to backfire. So the two of us need a different strategy. You try yours and when the time comes I’ll try mine, and with any luck we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”

Dick glances toward the door and smiles. “Yes. Yes, if the two of us try, I think we’ll make it. I’m not ready yet; there’s a couple things I need to know and make sure of. When I do go, will you be ready to try? And will you help look after everyone? I think Bruce is going to need you very much.”

Oliver nods, then says out loud, “Yeah. I’ll do that, Dick. As best I can, as much as he’ll let me.” He considers, then adds with a short chuckle, “No, more than he lets me. Bruce being Bruce and all.”

Dick snorts. “It really is good we’re a lot alike, Ollie. We understand him. And we’re both just unwholesome enough to talk frankly about it.” The smile in his voice reaches his eyes, and even if no one is there to see, he can feel it..

Oliver laughs, hearing something in Dick’s tone approach the way the young man used to sound, a lightness in his voice that wasn’t studied and glossy, pantomimed. “Thanks for coming to talk to me, Dick,” Ollie says, rubbing his fingertips against the floor. He doesn’t feel the need to tap, not anymore. “It helped me sort through some things. I dunno if going over them in my own head was helping much.”

Dick smiles. “It’s hard to shake out of stuff when you’re the only one talking. I know how that feels.” He reaches back for his bag and pulls out one of the wrapped slices of caramel apple, turning it over in his hands. “I don’t know if it will, but this might help shake out a few cobwebs, or at least be tasty.” He finds a large enough gap between the door and the floor and flicks it inside. “They’ve helped me last this long, but I don’t think I need them anymore.”

Oliver watches as the wrapped-up item skids through the field of hornet corpses, almost as if they move aside for its passage. He curls forward and picks it up, lifting it wrapped to his nose. “Cincin, bluebird,” Ollie says, the sweet butter-crisp smell of it making him slow, drowsy again. “I might save it for a little while, if that’s all right with you.”

"Of course. It’s for when you’ll need it." He stands and knocks twice on the door in goodbye. "I’ll see you around. Or at least come back and visit again."

Oliver raps his knuckles against the ground. “Whichever one comes first, hey?” He settles, turning the wrapped slice of apple over in his fingers. “Thanks again, kiddo.”

"You’re always welcome, Ollie. Anytime." He pats the door and heads out of the bungalow to go find something to eat. He can do it now, he’s sure of it.

000 —- 000 —- 000

Bruce knocked on the door, not lightly, three times.

Ollie swallowed. His mouth worked a few times soundlessly before he was able to say, “What. Who is it, what.” Bruce opened the door, holding a tray—the soup was still steaming, the mason jar of juice chilled—and the edges of the two clinked together when he jolted, in place, looking down at Oliver.

He did not move.

"Hello," Ollie said, banally. When he looked up at Bruce it felt like there were pouches of fluid below his eyes, the skin there tight and swollen. He moved his feet, the tether around his ankle clanking, and looked around at the hornet bodies. Of all things, he felt slightly embarrassed, and the ridiculousness of that made him laugh, a little. "If I knew you were coming, baby, I woulda cleaned up the place."

Bruce set the tray down, slowly, the muscles in his back bunching visibly through his thin shirt—Kate at the lake had claimed the black one he usually wears—making him look like a bull. All subdued power, all well tempered rage, that just barely brimmed through when he spoke: “..when did they come?”

Ollie did a dry retch to demonstrate, his hand splaying fingers to imitate the expulsion of the globs, the swarms of hornets. “Just like the needles,” he said. “You shoulda put me away back then, Bruce. I should’ve asked you to instead of asking you to tell me I was okay.”

"If it was anyone’s mistake, it’s mine," he stated, Batman’s manicured monotone back, as he slung out the facts. He looked to the tray that he’d set in front of Ollie. "You need to eat so I can take the tray back."

"Well, if you like." Ollie picked up the bowl of soup with his good hand and brought it to his mouth, downing it in three, four gulps. He rested the still-warm bowl against his belly after, panting slightly. "If you wanna share the blame for that I won’t stop you. I have enough to deal with on my own."

He put down the bowl and picked up the juice. It was cold against his hand, sweating chilly moisture, and he couldn’t resist pressing it against the biggest and purplest of the welts from the hornet stings, mouth dropping open in a sigh of relief. Ollie looked up at Bruce. “How is she?”

"She hasn’t woken up."

Bruce watched, any warmth he had been carefully cultivating over the past days, weeks, months, years.. for him, has gone. It had evaporated, in the face of all that had happened in the past few days. He looked down at the man’s arms.

"I’ll come right back with something for the stings." He held his hand out for the tray.

Ollie drained the juice from the mason jar and clanked it back onto the tray with the bowl, holding it up for Bruce to take. “It doesn’t matter,” Ollie said, tiredly. “You don’t have to. It’s not like it matters.”

"Why doesn’t it matter?" Bruce asked, and the question itself was strange, though the tone did not change: he was not the type of man prone to uselessness, in any arena, let alone his speech. Yet, there was a note of clinical curiosity laced into the core of each word.

He took the tray and moved to the door, standing with his back to the corridor, as he looked to Oliver.

"Because it doesn’t." The words were clipped and forceful, moreso than anything else Ollie’d said since Bruce came in. "The Raven’s blown up and Roy and Mar’i are burned half to death. God only knows what else is gonna happen before you get us out of here. Don’t waste anything on me. I’m fine."

Bruce listened to Ollie, his expression unresponsive, before he nodded and exited the room. The locks clanked softly in the jamb, the man’s footsteps silent as he stepped away.

Yet, despite the archer’s well plotted case, Bruce returned, a whole ten minutes later, a towel, three bottles, and broom in hand. He began to sweep, all the hornets tiny yellow-black bodies making a tumbling pile of thoraces, out of the door. He is neat and precise with his motions, turning and tapping the broom before he has finished with the whole room.

"Do you hate me."

Ollie had kept that question locked behind his teeth the whole time, but the tap of the broom, for some reason, forced it out of him. It was like the rap of a ruler against a desk, maybe that was it.

Once it was out, though, he grimaced and turned against the wall, curling his leg up. The other one stayed stretched out, tethered. “Don’t answer that,” Ollie muttered. “It was stupid and unfair of me to ask, anyhow. Don’t answer.”

Bruce continued to sweep the last of the insects out, every last leg and wing and devilish, pointed head. He did not pause when Ollie spoke, did not do anything in his motions to give the other man any hint that he had heard what he had asked.

Bruce placed the broom outside, closed the door near silently, and walked back in taking a seat on the other side of Ollie’s extended leg. Still, he did not speak, bringing the small bottle out, unscrewing the tap and delicately applying the tincture to the edge of the towel.

His hands were /gentle/, then, when he set them on the other man’s ankle, applying the solution directly to the welt; it tingles, goes cold. Bruce works silently, Ollie’s question hanging in the air between them.

"I told you not to do that," Ollie said, tonelessly. He felt like he was swinging between protest and defeat, his energy stores shooting up and down in no distinguishable pattern. "I wish you wouldn’t. If you really wanna tend to me, you can check my arm. But don’t bother trying to make me comfortable. I don’t want to be."

Bruce continued to clean, to wipe, before his lips descend on Oliver’s skin. The first kiss is a biting one, Bruce’s teeth scraping along a patch of skin untouched on Ollie’s arm. The next one was harder, the following soft, lips and tongue. Bruce shifted forward, spreading his own legs to bracket his thighs around Ollie: one against his extended leg, the other around his ass on the floor. ”..are you fighting?”

"Am I ever *not* fighting?"

With the first touch of Bruce’s teeth and lips to Ollie’s skin, he’d turned his head to look at him, watching, rolling his tongue out against his bottom lip as Bruce’s tongue moved against the mottled skin. “It’s hard when I can’t see what the fuck I’m fighting against, though,” he admitted, putting his good arm across his stomach, latching his fingers into his shirt to keep from reaching out to touch Bruce’s hair. It was too tempting. No impulsive motions, not after what had happened. “You’re the detective, not me. I’ve always been better when I had something to shoot at.”

Continuing to kiss along Ollie’s shoulder, Bruce arrived at the damaged arm. He slowly unwrapped it, surveying the damage before he wipes, here, too, at the sutures. The tincture doesn’t tingle, but warms, feeling as if it bonds the skin together. Bruce continued to kiss, to move against Oliver’s skin.

Ollie touched him then, slowly, unfurling his hand out against Bruce’s massive shoulder. The feel and weight of it made him groan; after the night spent in this room, full of old ghosts and new stings, he’d started feeling a certain upsetting detachment, as if he was turning as hollow as a dead hornet, a cicada shell. Bruce’s muscle and mass under his hand brought Ollie back into his body with a heaviness that he welcomed.

"If there’s any way I can make it better," he said, marvelling at the feeling of the tincture along that long, angry wound. "Any way."

Bruce brought his teeth to the edge of Ollie’s ear, and bit it, too sharply to be pleasurable, his voice equally so.

”..keep fighting it,” the man panted, unable to stop the edge of need that etched, injected itself into the marrow of his words. He brought his hand up, curling it against the fringes of hair at Oliver’s temple. “Keep fighting and when you can’t..” Bruce shudders an exhale, the force of the words making the muscles in his abdomen ripple, twitch.” ..tell me and I’ll fight it /for/ you.”

"No," Ollie said, closing one eye as Bruce bit down on his ear. "You have too much else to concentrate on. I know how to fight, Bruce, that’s something I’m good at. Hell, not just good at — I wouldn’t know how to stop." He turned his face then, pushing his mouth against Bruce’s face, his chin, his lips, inhaling hard when he felt Bruce’s breath.

Bruce didn’t speak for minutes, fingers and mouth occupied. He continued to smooth the tincture over the stitched, splinted arm, against the welts and stings, noting how the swelling had already begun tor recede on the bites he had applied it to already. His mouth travelled a rough journey, along the man’s shoulder, his neck, up into his hairline as Bruce pushed forward, the soft bulge of his cock cradled between their bodies, his legs spread wide. He isn’t hard, isn’t anywhere close to being aroused, but Bruce found himself unable to pull his focus from there, the flaccid length coiled along his thigh, the heat from Oliver’s body so familiar now, how his body became less tense the longer they were in direct contact with each other.

A child’s reaction.

He spoke, quietly.

"I’m beginning to forget what it was like before.. To be alone."

"Don’t you want that?" Ollie leaned towards Bruce, barely realizing he was doing it. But his body, too, instinctively wanted to be close to the other man, to create the intimacy that he’d come to crave the way he craved Kate’s nearness. "I do. The last thing I want is to remember what it was like to be alone." Ollie shuddered, fingers tightening in the soft jersey of his t-shirt. "I’ve finally, fucking /finally/ reached a point where I don’t feel like I’ve done something to deserve being alone, Bruce. I’d give anything and do anything to never feel that alone again."

Bruce pressed himself right up against Oliver, for what he says next. He wasn’t sure it was wise, nor was it particularly logical, but Bruce says it anyway. He didn’t make his voice gentle, soft, or quiet. He merely states it, as is.

"You have to stop trying to get his arm back. He’s alive. It’s enough."

A surge of emotion filled Ollie’s chest, whether from Bruce’s body solid and dependable against him, or from those words, he couldn’t tell. Maybe it didn’t matter, when it came down to it. “I can’t stop trying,” he responds, voice as bare and unembellished as Bruce’s. “I promised him I would get it back. I can’t break one more promise to him, Bruce, not after all the other ones I’ve broken. You know that.”

"And if it kills you? If it leaves you maimed and unable to—" Bruce exhaled, roughly, still rubbing his lips against Ollie’s hair. Then, a measure of tension slipping into his body he responded: "..what if you kill someone else trying to save it?"

"I won’t," Ollie said, and there was no hesitation or unsure tone to his voice. "I talked to Dick earlier and sorted some things out in my head. I won’t be putting anybody else in danger from now on, don’t worry." He angled himself, pushing his shoulder against Bruce’s collarbone, sliding until his back rested against Bruce’s chest. Ollie didn’t know if Bruce would allow this kind of presumptuous contact just now, just yet, but if he was going to do anything impulsively it was going to be only this, a bid for closeness.

"You still shouldn’t let me out, though," Ollie added. "I won’t drag anybody else into anything. But I should stay in here."

Bruce did not nod, but allowed the contact, even shifted his legs around so he could have Ollie between his thighs more comfortably. “And.. you? What about you, Ollie?” Bruce shushes the words out, the archer’s name warm and malleable in his mouth, alloy-free, pure.

"I’m in no rush to be maimed or anything like that, Bruce." Ollie settled back, grateful that Bruce was allowing him to. "But I can hardly tell Roy with one breath that he can live a full life without an arm and then do everything in my power to avoid maybe losing some part of me myself. I’ve had enough of talking out of both sides of my mouth." He touched his fingers to Bruce’s knee. "I told you, right? Did I tell you? That I had my own stint with addiction." Ollie cupped his palm over the joint. "I can’t remember who I’ve told what, now."

"You didn’t tell me. I knew." Bruce said it without ego, exhaling against Ollie’s ear. His hand moved, from where it had been to the archer’s chest, his sternum. He pressed his fingers against the bone. "..he’s alive and he’s here," he repeated, dragging his fingers down. "It’s enough, Oliver." Bruce’s fingers continued to droop down, low, curling under the hem of the jersey shirt, against the spiral of hair under his navel.

"I made it worse." The words came out in barely a mumble, Ollie’s body going slacker and slacker against Bruce’s. "Didn’t I. Trying to make it better." He drew in a ragged breath and let it out in a loud sigh. "It’s not enough. I made a promise. I don’t know what the fuck else there is I can do but try and keep it."

Ollie moved his hand to the side of Bruce’s knee, stroking his thigh. “At least you’ll be there for Kate,” he said, his fingers mirroring Bruce’s, making circles and swirls. “While I’m in here.” He didn’t bother asking Bruce to be there for her, to help her. That was a given.

Against Ollie’s back, Bruce’s cock twitched. Began to go hard. Bruce, himself, made no motion to acknowledge it, it was as if the member had acted of its own accord, and he refused to shed the light of his understanding on such mutiny.

”..you’re her husband,” Bruce intoned, as a warning, against some unknown threat.

Ollie snorted. “I’m not planning to go anywhere in a hurry,” he said dryly, clanking his ankle tether. “I just mean it’s good that you’re out there with her after what happened, after the lake. You’re more stable than I am right now. You two’ll need to rely on each other if you’re gonna get us out of this place.” He tilted his head and scootched down a little, so he could rest the back of his head against Bruce’s shoulder. “You’re one of her boys,” he said. “It’s not a hierarchy, Bruce.”

Bruce continued to shift his fingers against Oliver’s stomach, relishing in the roughness of the hair on his belly, while Oliver spoke. Slowly, the flourishing swirl of the digits pushed lower, under the band of the other man’s pants; Bruce did nothing to stop this, turning his head to kiss the side of Oliver’s face, his ear.

”..I never said it was,” he replied, too quickly, and it was a lie, even to his own ears. Mutiny. Mutiny everywhere.

He slid his fingers to the inch of space just above Ollie’s dick.

"Not in those exact words, no. But you say it enough." Ollie pushed up against Bruce’s fingers, only half on purpose; the rest was instinct, a need to feel Bruce touching him, tracing reassurance against his abused and tender skin. The hornets hadn’t been content with sticking to the exposed areas, before they’d tired and died, but at least the ones inside his clothes are single-stings. "We both love you as much as we love each other. Clearly you need me to say it, so there, I’ve said it. I love you as much as I love Kate, and it’s the same for her. Equilateral." He moved his hand to describe a triangle in the air, and then tipped his head up to kiss Bruce’s jawline.

Bruce eased his head into Ollie’s kiss, his fingers hooking into the waistband of the man’s pants, and he slung them, low. He fit them under his cock, under his balls, and Bruce was about to answer when he spotted the sting against the edge of Ollie’s cock. Immediately, he hissed and brought the small bottle of tincture back, smothering the towel and pressing it against the rise of it.

”..my sweet boy,” he whispered, smoothing the solution over the length of his sex. “My sweet boy and my darling girl.”

Ollie didn’t make any noise when Bruce discovered that swelling — he was barely aware of it himself, his entire skin buzzing with fire, too much to pick out individual stings — but the bridge of his nose tightened and wrinkled as Bruce applied the tincture to it. “Shit, there too, huh,” he mused, needlessly, shoulders curving in. He watched Bruce tend to him before saying, “She didn’t seem like herself, Mar’i. She was … she was something else, some kind of mermaid or siren or something. Whatever she was, that fire demon that came out of her, it wanted — I was trying to make a deal with it. But I failed.” He stopped talking there, dulled by the baldfaced ugliness of it.

”..and you are going suffer for what you did,” Bruce stated, easily, and without warning, drew his thumbnail down, across the welt, tightening his fingers along the shaft. He shifted forward, pushing Ollie against the wall, under the window. He brought his mouth to the other man’s neck, biting down against an inch of skin.

The words and the accompanying movement of Bruce’s hand, so gentle and solicitous not a moment before, made Ollie start, a noise of protest barely out of his mouth before Bruce was pushing him back, his shoulders thumping against the wall and then Bruce’s mouth at his neck, all teeth. He started to say something, continue protesting, offer more explanations, ask if the kids would be all right, but what came out was one word: “Good.”

000 —- 000 —- 000

It’s several hours after Ollie and Dick speak that Kate is awake enough, strong enough, to go to the other bungalow. To isolation. She knew when she first awoke that little aside from hell or high water would have kept Ollie away from her, and she also knew what had happened, knew the look on Bruce’s face that she’d seen in glimpses when she’d woken here and there. He had stepped away now, perhaps to check on Mar’i and Roy, and while she didn’t want to trick him, she’s not certain she can face the conversation that would ensue. Instead, she slips away, crouches at the bungalow door and knocks softly. “Cielo?”

Oliver starts out of half-drowsing when he hears her voice, papery on the other side of the door but real enough. “Katie?” he says, getting up and moving closer, as far as the tether around his ankle will allow. Bruce had come in after Dick, cleaned up the hornet bodies, so at least he doesn’t have to deal with that. “Sweetheart, are you okay? Should you be out of bed? How are you feeling?”

Kate presses her hand against the door, as if Ollie would be able to feel it that way. “I’ll be alright,” she says, voice a bit crackly and raw, and eases her crouch into a sitting position when her tendons and ankles protest. “I wanted to come see you. I had to.”

"Come inside," Ollie blurts, because it’s too much that she’s kept from him by a door, by any sort of space at all. Not after what she went through. Not after what he pulled out from inside her with his mouth. "Don’t freak out, honey, I’m not at my prettiest, but come inside. I need to see you. I need you in my arms."

Bruce had entered the medical bungalow and not found her, so he’d gone, easily, to isolation. He enters the corridor when Oliver is speaking, and perhaps he heard him, perhaps he didn’t, but Bruce states: “..I have the keys.”

Kate looks up at Bruce, eyes dark, somewhere between accusatory and afraid—not afraid of him, but afraid of what she might find. “I know. I thought about stealing them,” she says to Bruce. “Let me in? I need to see him.” What she doesn’t say is that she’s fairly certain he needs to see her.

Bruce sees the accusation in her eyes and a coldness sets into him—see? SEE?—giving him reason to pause, before he speaks, with surety. “You wouldn’t have been able to.” He is, after all, the man who had been in love with.. He closes the door to the bungalow behind him, and enters the other room, gathering the towel, tincture he had left in there. He moves then, and, lifting the necklace from under his shirt that he’d slung the key onto, opens the locks to the door.

Oliver flings out his arms towards them both once the door’s open. “Kate, Katie,” he implores, practically stamping his foot in impatience. She looks so small, dusky and shadowy, as if the ordeal has left an indelible mark on her, and his stomach does a slow flip to think about it.

Kate says simply, “I know. And I knew not to.” She knew he would, if she asked, let her in. Carefully, she eases to her feet, walks slowly through the door, and god, Ollie looks a mess, even worse than how she looks in the mirror. Kate stares at him for a moment, walking in closer, then falls to her knees, presses her head to Ollie’s shoulder, one hand splayed out on the floor, left open for Bruce. Always left open for him. “I want to go home,” she says, weeping quietly.

Oliver sinks to the floor with her, pulling her body against him with a wince. Kate’s always been on the thin side, but it’s muscle and wiry strength; in his arms, now, she feels worn, as papery as her voice. He cradles her and his hand drifts down, low on her belly. “You and Bruce’ll find a way out,” he tells her. “I know you will. You’re both smart as fuck and even more tenacious than that.” He kisses her head, over and over, nuzzling her lustreless hair. “Don’t lose hope.”

Bruce doesn’t feel the coldness within him ease, it’s unfair, and he knows it, but he pays little attention as he shuts this door, too. He steps forward, and when he sees her hand, he steps, slowly. Hesitantly, into it. He sinks, with the towel and tincture, and even as he hums a low note of assent, he applies the solution to Oliver’s skin. “..I’ll get you both back,” he murmurs, moving his body so he crowds Kate against Oliver, shielding them both. Just like before, the tincture cools, shrinks the welts, bruises, sores the hornets have left.

"With you," Kate says, and it’s not petulant or childlike, it’s one of the shards of sheer determination she has left, bolstered by the two of them alongside her. It’s said in the Kate tone of voice that brooks no question.

”..yes. With me.” He hums, smoothing the solution over Ollie’s arms, his neck and shoulders.

Oliver keeps his nose buried in Kate’s hair, but he looks at Bruce and the expression in his green eyes underlines what she’s said. “All of us together,” he amends. “I’ll do whatever it is I can too. Even if that’s just staying locked up for the good of everybody else.” He cups her stomach and rolls his shoulders into Bruce’s touch, the tincture leaving a welcome coolness. “Katie. How is it? D’you … is there anything left? Anything you feel?” Bruce watches Kate’s face, from behind her, over her shoulder.

Kate doesn’t quite want to tell them how she feels, tensing a little between them. “It’s gone,” she says, honestly, finally. “It’s all gone. Except for how I feel.” That was what she didn’t want to admit. Kate pauses for a very long moment, then says, very quietly, “I feel like I’m never going to be clean ever again.” Like she would wince whenever her son called her Mama; like she wouldn’t ever understand why anyone would want to touch her intimately ever again.

Bruce sets the towel down, draping it over the bottle, and shifts a hand to the small of her back, rucking up the hem of it so he can slide his calloused fingers against the soft skin at the side of her hip, gently. He watches her, gauging.

Kate lets Bruce touch her, resting her head on Ollie’s shoulder.

Oliver tugs Kate a little closer against him, reaching out to pull Bruce in too. “We’ll help,” he tells her. He shouldn’t be making rash promises, not after the one he made to Roy, but this is different. This is one that Ollie knows is in his power to make, and fulfill, with all his heart. “We’ll help you heal however we can, love. Whatever it takes.” He kisses her then, bringing his hand up from her belly to tip up her chin, letting his eyes drift shut at the first taste of her. It feels like it’s been so long.

Kate exhales, very slowly, her kiss featherlight but lingering as her fingers wrap around Bruce’s hand for additional reassurance. “Okay,” she says quietly, suddenly very exhausted. “Okay. I love you. My boys.”

"We love you too," Ollie says, as if Bruce can’t speak for himself.

Bruce watches, but doesn’t interrupt, keeping himself upright against them, his hand shifting up her back, making an active point not to make it seem like he is being distant. He squeezes her hand, and exhales, bringing his mouth to the back of her skull. “..nothing has changed,” he states, firmly, and as per usual, does not state what the hell he’s referring to.