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thejusticelounge2014-12-31 05:37 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-12-31 05:37 pm
push just a little too late
Roy leans against the counter in the Pharmacy adjacent to the Medbay on the Watchtower, staring at the game he’s playing, intently. When the pharmacist returns, he puts the device away, nodding at her. He signs the little screen, declining advice, and takes the bag. As he walks, he tears open the plastic, tucking the bottle into his back pocket, trashing the bag in the compost receptacle on the wall, and heads towards the cafeteria.
Ollie sits at one of the cafeteria tables, going through a bunch of photos of himself on his tablet. He has a half-crumbled blueberry muffin and a horchata in front of him, along with a bag of salted peanuts, and when he sees Roy come in, Ollie considers for a moment before raising a hand to give him a short salute.
Roy spots Ollie, and lifts his chin at the other man, before he walks over to the food line. He goes for some mashed potatoes and corn.
Roy , with his back turned, removes the bottle from his bag pocket and as surreptitiously as possible, taps a pill out, laying it on his tongue. He swallows it dry, cocking his head back sharply, before he chases it with a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Walking towards Ollie, he slips the bottle back into his pocket. Roy doesn’t bother with politics that anyone else might. “You said you wanted to talk.”
"I did." Ollie nods at Roy’s hand, since he can’t do it in the direction of his pocket. "You hurt yourself or something?"
Roy responds, in a no-nonsense way: “Headache.” He takes another bite of his mashed potato, corn, and gravy mashup.
Ollie nods, watching Roy eat. It’s been a while, a long while, since they’ve lived together the way they used to. But Ollie can still recognize how Roy dry-swallows pills, and his comfort foods. “We don’t have to talk about it while you’ve got a headache. Sure as hell not while you’re eating. It’s fine to wait, Roy, I know you’ve got a lot going on.” Ollie pulls a blueberry out of his muffin, squashing it on the plate under his thumb.
Roy smirks, and it’s usually a warm, crackly expression on his browned, freckled face. But right now, it’s dry, and he shakes his head, as if it itched: “Nah, I’d rather just get it over with.”
Ollie makes a considering sound, putting aside his tablet and muffin. “This is important to me. I’m not gonna talk to you about it while you’re not feeling well and having dinner just because you wanna … get it over with.”
Roy exhales, roughly. “Look, I don’t get why there has to be so much friggin’ pomp and circumstance around this, old man. You and me, we don’t do the waiting thing.” He sets his bowl of mashed potatoes down, and scrubs at the back of his head. He takes a breath and looks over at his father. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”
Ollie grunts, looking uncomfortable. “It’s not pomp and circumstance,” he says, and repeats, “It’s important to me and I don’t want to bring it up and have you throw your damn food in my face and stomp off in a huff.” Rubbing his hands against his hair, he leaves a purple streak on his temple from the blueberry juice and says, mostly to himself, “Fine. Fine, we’ll give it a go.” Ollie puts his palms down on the table, looking at Roy. “It’s about me being queer.”
Roy blinks, and instantly feels his appetite evaporate. He doesn’t attempt to pick up his bowl, and instead, crosses his arms over his chest. “Why—what about it?”
Ollie makes a wry expression, as if to say, “See?” But he doesn’t say that out loud, instead tapping a forefinger on the table. “It’s what I am. It’s who I am. I love Bruce and I’m not about to change that for anybody.” Before Roy can protest or answer, Ollie says, “—it’s your shitty attitude about it that needs to change.”
Roy nods. “That it?”
Ollie sits up straighter, his eyebrows pulling together. “That /it/?” he repeats, incredulously. “That IT, that’s fucking IT? Maybe this isn’t of any goddamn interest or significance to you, Roy, although it was enough for you to say some pretty fucking hateful things, but is sure as fucking hell is to me! So yeah, yeah that’s IT.”
Roy ’s eyes narrow, pupils thinning to pinpricks, as he pushes his tongue over his teeth. “You ever realize how many fuckin’ words you put in my fucking mouth, man?” He bares his teeth. “I’m not laughing or cussin’ you out, I’m askin’ if that’s what you had to fucking tell me. Is that it? That it’s my shitty attitude that has to change?”
Ollie sits back, eyes narrow and unreadable. “I don’t need to put words in your mouth. I remember the words you said very clearly.”
Roy sucks his teeth, loudly, uncrossing his arms. “I’m talkin’ about right now!! I didn’t say any of the shit you just said!! I wanted to know if that was it!”
"This is exactly the goddamn attitude I didn’t want to deal with. Forget it. Enjoy your dinner." Ollie gets up, taking his tablet and abandoning his own food.
Roy shouts at Ollie’s retreating back. “..stop actin’ like this is something I am suddenly just supposed to be okay with!”
Ollie doesn’t answer him or turn around, leaving the cafeteria.
Roy follows after him, even though he hates leaving the food for the service staff to pick up. He walks out of the cafeteria. “What do you WANT from me?”
Ollie keeps walking, assuming Roy will keep up if he wants to. “What d’you want from ME, Roy?”
Roy does follow after him. He hates himself for it, he hates himself more for every step, but he follows Ollie down the hallway. None of this argument has been rendered private, Roy’s voice unrelenting. “I’m askin’ first! What do you want? An apology?” He stops short, and shouts after Ollie. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said what I did, I’m sorry I talked shit about somethin’ that means so much to you, I’m SORRY I’M A FUCKING ASSHOLE.”
That makes Ollie stop walking, and he turns to look at Roy. “You think I want you to beat yourself up and call yourself an asshole?” he says, and people either divert from coming down this hallway or skitter on past quickly, none of it mattering to the two Arrows. “That’s not what I want. All I want is for you to understand that this is what I want. This is what makes me happy and this is who I am.” He takes one step closer. “It doesn’t make me disgusting. It doesn’t make me his bitch. It isn’t something that will /contaminate/ my granddaughter. It doesn’t—” Ollie stops to take a breath, all of that having come out in a rush, “—doesn’t mean I went from fanboy hard-on to wide-on. That’s how you put it, right? All of that? I remember every word, even if you don’t.”
Roy raises both his hands, before bringing them down against his sides, the noise resounding from how hard he does it. “Fine! Be happy! Do whatever makes you happy, Ollie, jesus, when has what I ever thought mattered to you?” He stops, licking his lips. Had he said that? He did. So, he repeats, because it’s out there. “Since when does what I thought of you mattered to you?”
"What the hell are you even asking that for? You’re my son!" Ollie frowns, perplexed, studying Roy’s expression and suspecting that this might not be enough of a reason. "What’ve I done that would make you think it /doesn’t/ matter?"
Roy doesn’t answer that, and pushes on, changing the subject, his mashed potatoes rising up in his throat, Adam’s apple blocking it from returning entirely. He gestures at Ollie. “So-so, what now? You wanna apologize to me for going and telling Mar’i what you did?”
Ollie regards him, that same narrow-eyed look. “Is that what you would like? An apology?”
Roy feels the rage mount in him, rising high, a haze settling over his vision. “Wow, you know what, fuck you, Ollie, jesus FUCKING Christ.” He inhales, his voice rattling. “I just apologized—I just fucking apologized and now you—you goddamn—” He sputters, the words no longer coming, and turns, walking away from Ollie.
Ollie raises his voice just enough so Roy can hear it as he leaves. “You feel I don’t care what you think of me? I almost left him because I couldn’t get what you said out of my mind.”
Roy doesn’t answer him, walking back into the cafeteria. He moves back to the table he had left his food, slamming his bowl on top of Ollie’s plate, on the tray, picking up everything before moving towards the self-service area. They probably break from how he throws them into the bins used to sterilize and clean the plates, but he doesn’t care. Stalking away, exiting the cafeteria through the back door, Roy removes the bottle from his back pocket and taps out another two pills, throwing them into his mouth.
Ollie makes a wide circuit of the Watchtower hallways, finally ending up going to the gym to run himself on the treadmill to exhaustion. He goes to his room on the Watchtower, for a shower and just enough whiskey to pass out completely.
Bruce walks into Ollie’s room no more than three minutes after he’s laid down, and when the door locks behind him, pulls his cowl down and off, in the safety of the room. He doesn’t speak, removing the gloves as well, before unclipping his cape.
Ollie turns over onto his stomach, one arm trailing off the bed and half his face still in the pillow. “I was gonna lock the door,” he mumbles.
Bruce doesn’t laugh, but the humour is in the rolling hum of his words, as he takes a seat on the edge of the bed, his hand moving to push his fingers through the archer’s hair, lazily. “..and seeing as how I write the security codes, that obviously would have kept me out.”
Ollie moves back, out of Bruce’s touch as he turns onto his back. “Not to keep you out. To keep me in.” He lays his palm on Bruce’s leg for a moment, then realizes where his hand is and shifts it off. He laughs, the sound stumbling and drunk. “I’m supposed to be good and not do self-destructive things anymore. So to keep me in. The lock.”
Bruce leans over Ollie, his brow furrowing, and clips his fingers against the other man’s chin. He doesn’t jerk it towards him, but there is no yielding when he pulls Ollie’s head to his. Leaning down, he kisses his mouth, as if to confirm that he is, in fact, drunk. “..what happened?”
Ollie doesn’t answer that question. Instead, he lets Bruce kiss him, although his face is tight and his breathing picks up. “Did you know,” he says in a sodden plod, “when I was a teenager, did you know, I was one’a those people who really benefits from being young. I was pretty as a girl, Bruce. I was an ordinary looking kid and I roughed up as I got older, but there were those handful of years when youth made me fucking … ethereal.”
Bruce murmurs, as he moves a hand over Ollie’s face, down the side of his neck. His gaze moves over his partner’s face. “..You still are.” He rises up, slowly, to make sure that Ollie realizes he isn’t leaving, walking to the kitchenette in his quarters. Pouring a glass of water, he returns, setting it down on Ollie’s nightstand. “What happened, Oliver?”
Ollie snorts. “No, I’m not. And that’s fine. I’m nearly forty fucking years old, ethereal is the realm of the young.” He reaches over to the water, sticking a finger in it and stirring, then taking his finger out to watch the mini whirlpool. “Did you know,” he starts again, “some of the places my uncle shipped me off to when he didn’t want me. Some of those people looked at me like they got a brand new toy delivered.”
Bruce is about to argue with Ollie, to tell him to stop fighting him on Bruce’s own opinion, but when the conversation shifts, changes, Bruce falls silent. He looks over at the other man, and settles his hand against his hip, thumb moving in short circles against him, urging him to continue talking.
Ollie sits up, propped on his elbows, staring at Bruce with dark, dilated eyes. “I’m not saying anything like, y’know,” he says, as if he’s preparing for future litigation, for some point where he might be interrogated on the truth of these statements. “I’m just saying I went through some things and I learned how to wake up fast and what houses I should never leave my room at night. I’m just saying — well, you know what those prep schools were like, I don’t have to explain. I’m just saying by the time one of those dads at the houses wanted me to watch porn with him and asked me if it was good and I liked it I said yeah, I did. And maybe I meant it.” Ollie’s stare is fixed on Bruce, glassy and intense. “I’m just saying maybe it /is/ me who’s disgusting.”
Bruce moves his hands around Ollie’s face, fingers nudging up besides the ridges of his jaw and at the back of his skull, and kisses his mouth at those words, like he means to leech them from his breath. “No.” He says it before he kisses him, and then again, when he pulls back. “No, Oliver, you’re not disgusting. Nothing you could tell me about then, about that time, could make you disgusting.”
Ollie still isn’t making much of an effort to touch Bruce, but he does kiss back, and the thoughtful, solemn look on his face is one that Bruce knows. From when he’s said something that refutes one of Ollie’s deep-seated, half-buried fears or beliefs, and Ollie’s making a concerted effort to internalize Bruce’s words instead of his own internal dialogue. It doesn’t always take, and it isn’t an instant thing, but Ollie tries to treat his partner’s words with value. More than the self-loathing he’s built up around these things in the isolation of his teenage years. “All right,” he says, and then pulls Bruce down on the bed. “I know that as fathers we have to resign ourselves to our sons blaming us for everything that’s gone wrong in their lives,” he says, “but fuck, it gets exhausting sometimes, doesn’t it? Feels like you lose no matter which way you turn.”
Bruce is still mostly in the suit, and the memory foam bends under his weight, but he lays down next to Ollie when he is pulled, curving the massive bulk and weight of his form against the archer’s own. Humming low, and under his breath, Bruce speaks. “..if I’m to believe what you’ve told me, it will eventually be okay, Ollie.”
Ollie wrinkles his nose. “That’s low,” he complains. “Either I quit complaining or I admit to my own advice being stuff and nonsense.” He smacks his hand against Bruce’s thigh, the sound loud in the quiet room.
Bruce brings one of his large, rough hands to the smooth plane of Ollie’s forehead, smoothing his palm against his forehead, carding through his hair. “..whatever he said,” Bruce says, his voice not gentle, but not hard or angry, either: “Whatever he did, you aren’t disgusting. Neither of us are.”
Ollie nods, then sits up, starting to unfasten the rest of Bruce’s armour. “I need you right now,” he says, and it’s a rounded little bun of a statement, ready to be taken either way. Ollie’s fingers stroke against each place he uncovers, but he alternates baring Bruce with soft, small kisses on the centre of his lover’s mouth.
Bruce assists Ollie in removing his armor, removing the pieces and laying them gingerly on the foot of the bed. He had sat up when Ollie had, and reaches over for the water, handing it over. “You drink this first,” he all but commands, tugging one of his gauntlets off.
Ollie rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “Yes, MOTHER,” he says loudly, then pauses halfway in the glass of water. “Uh, I take that back. That would just make things weird.”
Bruce laughs, and rises up, picking up the rest of his suit and taking them over to the table beyond the bedroom set, setting them down. He brings over a reusable water bottle he sees there, for more water, and removes the rest of the suit, just down to the compression wear, jockstrap, cup, his boots. “I’d take it as a compliment,” Bruce says, lightly. “Your mother was beautiful.”
Ollie shakes his head, smiling. “Weirdo,” he says fondly, getting up on his knees on the bed to finish the water in his glass and also to reach out to rub his hand up the side of Bruce’s thigh, to curl his fingers into the waistband of the compression shorts. “Let’s get this off you. It’s like sleeping with a pile of snow tires when you’re in this junk.”
Ollie sits at one of the cafeteria tables, going through a bunch of photos of himself on his tablet. He has a half-crumbled blueberry muffin and a horchata in front of him, along with a bag of salted peanuts, and when he sees Roy come in, Ollie considers for a moment before raising a hand to give him a short salute.
Roy spots Ollie, and lifts his chin at the other man, before he walks over to the food line. He goes for some mashed potatoes and corn.
Roy , with his back turned, removes the bottle from his bag pocket and as surreptitiously as possible, taps a pill out, laying it on his tongue. He swallows it dry, cocking his head back sharply, before he chases it with a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Walking towards Ollie, he slips the bottle back into his pocket. Roy doesn’t bother with politics that anyone else might. “You said you wanted to talk.”
"I did." Ollie nods at Roy’s hand, since he can’t do it in the direction of his pocket. "You hurt yourself or something?"
Roy responds, in a no-nonsense way: “Headache.” He takes another bite of his mashed potato, corn, and gravy mashup.
Ollie nods, watching Roy eat. It’s been a while, a long while, since they’ve lived together the way they used to. But Ollie can still recognize how Roy dry-swallows pills, and his comfort foods. “We don’t have to talk about it while you’ve got a headache. Sure as hell not while you’re eating. It’s fine to wait, Roy, I know you’ve got a lot going on.” Ollie pulls a blueberry out of his muffin, squashing it on the plate under his thumb.
Roy smirks, and it’s usually a warm, crackly expression on his browned, freckled face. But right now, it’s dry, and he shakes his head, as if it itched: “Nah, I’d rather just get it over with.”
Ollie makes a considering sound, putting aside his tablet and muffin. “This is important to me. I’m not gonna talk to you about it while you’re not feeling well and having dinner just because you wanna … get it over with.”
Roy exhales, roughly. “Look, I don’t get why there has to be so much friggin’ pomp and circumstance around this, old man. You and me, we don’t do the waiting thing.” He sets his bowl of mashed potatoes down, and scrubs at the back of his head. He takes a breath and looks over at his father. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”
Ollie grunts, looking uncomfortable. “It’s not pomp and circumstance,” he says, and repeats, “It’s important to me and I don’t want to bring it up and have you throw your damn food in my face and stomp off in a huff.” Rubbing his hands against his hair, he leaves a purple streak on his temple from the blueberry juice and says, mostly to himself, “Fine. Fine, we’ll give it a go.” Ollie puts his palms down on the table, looking at Roy. “It’s about me being queer.”
Roy blinks, and instantly feels his appetite evaporate. He doesn’t attempt to pick up his bowl, and instead, crosses his arms over his chest. “Why—what about it?”
Ollie makes a wry expression, as if to say, “See?” But he doesn’t say that out loud, instead tapping a forefinger on the table. “It’s what I am. It’s who I am. I love Bruce and I’m not about to change that for anybody.” Before Roy can protest or answer, Ollie says, “—it’s your shitty attitude about it that needs to change.”
Roy nods. “That it?”
Ollie sits up straighter, his eyebrows pulling together. “That /it/?” he repeats, incredulously. “That IT, that’s fucking IT? Maybe this isn’t of any goddamn interest or significance to you, Roy, although it was enough for you to say some pretty fucking hateful things, but is sure as fucking hell is to me! So yeah, yeah that’s IT.”
Roy ’s eyes narrow, pupils thinning to pinpricks, as he pushes his tongue over his teeth. “You ever realize how many fuckin’ words you put in my fucking mouth, man?” He bares his teeth. “I’m not laughing or cussin’ you out, I’m askin’ if that’s what you had to fucking tell me. Is that it? That it’s my shitty attitude that has to change?”
Ollie sits back, eyes narrow and unreadable. “I don’t need to put words in your mouth. I remember the words you said very clearly.”
Roy sucks his teeth, loudly, uncrossing his arms. “I’m talkin’ about right now!! I didn’t say any of the shit you just said!! I wanted to know if that was it!”
"This is exactly the goddamn attitude I didn’t want to deal with. Forget it. Enjoy your dinner." Ollie gets up, taking his tablet and abandoning his own food.
Roy shouts at Ollie’s retreating back. “..stop actin’ like this is something I am suddenly just supposed to be okay with!”
Ollie doesn’t answer him or turn around, leaving the cafeteria.
Roy follows after him, even though he hates leaving the food for the service staff to pick up. He walks out of the cafeteria. “What do you WANT from me?”
Ollie keeps walking, assuming Roy will keep up if he wants to. “What d’you want from ME, Roy?”
Roy does follow after him. He hates himself for it, he hates himself more for every step, but he follows Ollie down the hallway. None of this argument has been rendered private, Roy’s voice unrelenting. “I’m askin’ first! What do you want? An apology?” He stops short, and shouts after Ollie. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said what I did, I’m sorry I talked shit about somethin’ that means so much to you, I’m SORRY I’M A FUCKING ASSHOLE.”
That makes Ollie stop walking, and he turns to look at Roy. “You think I want you to beat yourself up and call yourself an asshole?” he says, and people either divert from coming down this hallway or skitter on past quickly, none of it mattering to the two Arrows. “That’s not what I want. All I want is for you to understand that this is what I want. This is what makes me happy and this is who I am.” He takes one step closer. “It doesn’t make me disgusting. It doesn’t make me his bitch. It isn’t something that will /contaminate/ my granddaughter. It doesn’t—” Ollie stops to take a breath, all of that having come out in a rush, “—doesn’t mean I went from fanboy hard-on to wide-on. That’s how you put it, right? All of that? I remember every word, even if you don’t.”
Roy raises both his hands, before bringing them down against his sides, the noise resounding from how hard he does it. “Fine! Be happy! Do whatever makes you happy, Ollie, jesus, when has what I ever thought mattered to you?” He stops, licking his lips. Had he said that? He did. So, he repeats, because it’s out there. “Since when does what I thought of you mattered to you?”
"What the hell are you even asking that for? You’re my son!" Ollie frowns, perplexed, studying Roy’s expression and suspecting that this might not be enough of a reason. "What’ve I done that would make you think it /doesn’t/ matter?"
Roy doesn’t answer that, and pushes on, changing the subject, his mashed potatoes rising up in his throat, Adam’s apple blocking it from returning entirely. He gestures at Ollie. “So-so, what now? You wanna apologize to me for going and telling Mar’i what you did?”
Ollie regards him, that same narrow-eyed look. “Is that what you would like? An apology?”
Roy feels the rage mount in him, rising high, a haze settling over his vision. “Wow, you know what, fuck you, Ollie, jesus FUCKING Christ.” He inhales, his voice rattling. “I just apologized—I just fucking apologized and now you—you goddamn—” He sputters, the words no longer coming, and turns, walking away from Ollie.
Ollie raises his voice just enough so Roy can hear it as he leaves. “You feel I don’t care what you think of me? I almost left him because I couldn’t get what you said out of my mind.”
Roy doesn’t answer him, walking back into the cafeteria. He moves back to the table he had left his food, slamming his bowl on top of Ollie’s plate, on the tray, picking up everything before moving towards the self-service area. They probably break from how he throws them into the bins used to sterilize and clean the plates, but he doesn’t care. Stalking away, exiting the cafeteria through the back door, Roy removes the bottle from his back pocket and taps out another two pills, throwing them into his mouth.
Ollie makes a wide circuit of the Watchtower hallways, finally ending up going to the gym to run himself on the treadmill to exhaustion. He goes to his room on the Watchtower, for a shower and just enough whiskey to pass out completely.
Bruce walks into Ollie’s room no more than three minutes after he’s laid down, and when the door locks behind him, pulls his cowl down and off, in the safety of the room. He doesn’t speak, removing the gloves as well, before unclipping his cape.
Ollie turns over onto his stomach, one arm trailing off the bed and half his face still in the pillow. “I was gonna lock the door,” he mumbles.
Bruce doesn’t laugh, but the humour is in the rolling hum of his words, as he takes a seat on the edge of the bed, his hand moving to push his fingers through the archer’s hair, lazily. “..and seeing as how I write the security codes, that obviously would have kept me out.”
Ollie moves back, out of Bruce’s touch as he turns onto his back. “Not to keep you out. To keep me in.” He lays his palm on Bruce’s leg for a moment, then realizes where his hand is and shifts it off. He laughs, the sound stumbling and drunk. “I’m supposed to be good and not do self-destructive things anymore. So to keep me in. The lock.”
Bruce leans over Ollie, his brow furrowing, and clips his fingers against the other man’s chin. He doesn’t jerk it towards him, but there is no yielding when he pulls Ollie’s head to his. Leaning down, he kisses his mouth, as if to confirm that he is, in fact, drunk. “..what happened?”
Ollie doesn’t answer that question. Instead, he lets Bruce kiss him, although his face is tight and his breathing picks up. “Did you know,” he says in a sodden plod, “when I was a teenager, did you know, I was one’a those people who really benefits from being young. I was pretty as a girl, Bruce. I was an ordinary looking kid and I roughed up as I got older, but there were those handful of years when youth made me fucking … ethereal.”
Bruce murmurs, as he moves a hand over Ollie’s face, down the side of his neck. His gaze moves over his partner’s face. “..You still are.” He rises up, slowly, to make sure that Ollie realizes he isn’t leaving, walking to the kitchenette in his quarters. Pouring a glass of water, he returns, setting it down on Ollie’s nightstand. “What happened, Oliver?”
Ollie snorts. “No, I’m not. And that’s fine. I’m nearly forty fucking years old, ethereal is the realm of the young.” He reaches over to the water, sticking a finger in it and stirring, then taking his finger out to watch the mini whirlpool. “Did you know,” he starts again, “some of the places my uncle shipped me off to when he didn’t want me. Some of those people looked at me like they got a brand new toy delivered.”
Bruce is about to argue with Ollie, to tell him to stop fighting him on Bruce’s own opinion, but when the conversation shifts, changes, Bruce falls silent. He looks over at the other man, and settles his hand against his hip, thumb moving in short circles against him, urging him to continue talking.
Ollie sits up, propped on his elbows, staring at Bruce with dark, dilated eyes. “I’m not saying anything like, y’know,” he says, as if he’s preparing for future litigation, for some point where he might be interrogated on the truth of these statements. “I’m just saying I went through some things and I learned how to wake up fast and what houses I should never leave my room at night. I’m just saying — well, you know what those prep schools were like, I don’t have to explain. I’m just saying by the time one of those dads at the houses wanted me to watch porn with him and asked me if it was good and I liked it I said yeah, I did. And maybe I meant it.” Ollie’s stare is fixed on Bruce, glassy and intense. “I’m just saying maybe it /is/ me who’s disgusting.”
Bruce moves his hands around Ollie’s face, fingers nudging up besides the ridges of his jaw and at the back of his skull, and kisses his mouth at those words, like he means to leech them from his breath. “No.” He says it before he kisses him, and then again, when he pulls back. “No, Oliver, you’re not disgusting. Nothing you could tell me about then, about that time, could make you disgusting.”
Ollie still isn’t making much of an effort to touch Bruce, but he does kiss back, and the thoughtful, solemn look on his face is one that Bruce knows. From when he’s said something that refutes one of Ollie’s deep-seated, half-buried fears or beliefs, and Ollie’s making a concerted effort to internalize Bruce’s words instead of his own internal dialogue. It doesn’t always take, and it isn’t an instant thing, but Ollie tries to treat his partner’s words with value. More than the self-loathing he’s built up around these things in the isolation of his teenage years. “All right,” he says, and then pulls Bruce down on the bed. “I know that as fathers we have to resign ourselves to our sons blaming us for everything that’s gone wrong in their lives,” he says, “but fuck, it gets exhausting sometimes, doesn’t it? Feels like you lose no matter which way you turn.”
Bruce is still mostly in the suit, and the memory foam bends under his weight, but he lays down next to Ollie when he is pulled, curving the massive bulk and weight of his form against the archer’s own. Humming low, and under his breath, Bruce speaks. “..if I’m to believe what you’ve told me, it will eventually be okay, Ollie.”
Ollie wrinkles his nose. “That’s low,” he complains. “Either I quit complaining or I admit to my own advice being stuff and nonsense.” He smacks his hand against Bruce’s thigh, the sound loud in the quiet room.
Bruce brings one of his large, rough hands to the smooth plane of Ollie’s forehead, smoothing his palm against his forehead, carding through his hair. “..whatever he said,” Bruce says, his voice not gentle, but not hard or angry, either: “Whatever he did, you aren’t disgusting. Neither of us are.”
Ollie nods, then sits up, starting to unfasten the rest of Bruce’s armour. “I need you right now,” he says, and it’s a rounded little bun of a statement, ready to be taken either way. Ollie’s fingers stroke against each place he uncovers, but he alternates baring Bruce with soft, small kisses on the centre of his lover’s mouth.
Bruce assists Ollie in removing his armor, removing the pieces and laying them gingerly on the foot of the bed. He had sat up when Ollie had, and reaches over for the water, handing it over. “You drink this first,” he all but commands, tugging one of his gauntlets off.
Ollie rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “Yes, MOTHER,” he says loudly, then pauses halfway in the glass of water. “Uh, I take that back. That would just make things weird.”
Bruce laughs, and rises up, picking up the rest of his suit and taking them over to the table beyond the bedroom set, setting them down. He brings over a reusable water bottle he sees there, for more water, and removes the rest of the suit, just down to the compression wear, jockstrap, cup, his boots. “I’d take it as a compliment,” Bruce says, lightly. “Your mother was beautiful.”
Ollie shakes his head, smiling. “Weirdo,” he says fondly, getting up on his knees on the bed to finish the water in his glass and also to reach out to rub his hand up the side of Bruce’s thigh, to curl his fingers into the waistband of the compression shorts. “Let’s get this off you. It’s like sleeping with a pile of snow tires when you’re in this junk.”