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thejusticelounge2012-11-04 11:39 am
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2012-11-04 11:39 am
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objects in the rear view mirror
“—one of my favourite coffee places in Star City, which is saying something, because there’s a helluva lot of coffee places in Star City.” Ollie grinned and gestured grandly at the front window of a renovated heritage building on the waterfront boardwalk. “Carolina’s Café con Libros. Figured you might like a bookstore-slash-coffee shop, huh? If you get bored with me you can go check out her huge section on Latin American authors!”
Guy grinned at Ollie’s enthusiasm. It was almost enough to make him feel at ease with this rendezvous - almost. They’d gone from barely speaking at all to one another for a month, to a difficult video chat where a lot of anger was resolved but the wounds hadn’t quite healed over…and then Ollie almost died. It had shaken Guy enough to dismiss what pain he still had over the previous incident, but had still left things unsaid.
And now, Ollie wanted to talk to him…about Guy’s issues. Guy realized that the last time he’d opened up to Ollie, it had come back to haunt him - though through no directly betrayal of Guy’s confidence on Ollie’s part - Guy’d sworn off confiding in people in general, save precious few. It didn’t include Ollie anymore, and the idea of being grilled by a man who knew him so well he might as well be transparent, well, it was as close to jumpy as Guy Gardner got.
“Ollie Queen, borin’? Wouldn’t that actually involve you using short words, or not speakin’, or somethin’ terribly out of character like that?” he teased.
“Usually I’m the most boring when I’m being very, very careful about what I’m saying,” Ollie said, then paused in front of the coffee counter and frowned at Guy as a thought occurred to him. “Or maybe that’s not so boring for the *other* person, but it sure is for *me*.”
Shrugging with a smile — no use dwelling! — he ordered himself an obscenely large green tea frappucino and some lemon loaf. “We’ll go sit up with the Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Nobody except high school english students bother with authors of the Lost Generation anymore, so it’ll be nice and quiet.”
Ollie shuffled his drink and cake and napkins around as Guy made his order, watching his friend closely. He looked tired. They all did, it wasn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary (Ollie was sure that he didn’t look too hot himself, still getting tired out easily halfway through most days), but with Guy there was a certain transparent, delicate blue that happened in the skin under his eyes when he was working on something in his head, not just working it through his body.
Guy debated on his order briefly, ultimately ordering the same thing Ollie did out of convenience and indecision. He wasn’t really all that familiar with specialty coffee shops; coffee was coffee and tea came in regular or a choice of herbal, as far as he was concerned. Next heart-to-heart, he’d insist on doing it at a microbrew pub.
Ollie was a health nut, though, so whatever he ordered was probably low-cal and tasted okay. He joined Ollie and settled into his seat, leaving the tea untouched until it was cool enough to drink, and slipped his hands comfortably into the pockets of his shapeless, oversized hoodie. He regarded Ollie in silence a long moment, then smiled, “What a fuckin’ week, huh?” he half-joked, realizing they both probably felt as worn out as they looked. “Just when we bounce back, the League gets wrung out again…and you got wrung out the hardest both times, Ols. I’d say you’ve paid yer dues and then some.”
“Well, you know what they say — you don’t join if you can’t take a joke.” Ollie stretched his legs out long with a sigh. “Still, I didn’t intend for this conversation to be a commiseration. Not about that, anyhow.”
All the stuff with Roy … it was raw, and it wasn’t that Ollie so much minded talking about it as he didn’t *know* how he felt, exactly, just yet. Maybe in the future he might bring it up with Guy, ask about what exactly being a Red Lantern entailed, but not right now.
“Right now,” he said, “I’m more interested in how you’re doing. You seem a step beyond wrung out, buddy, and the cracks are showing.” Ollie paused, considered, and then added, “I’m not gonna bother beating around the bush, I think we’d both appreciate forthrightness. Are you feeling down on yourself physically? Like, body image-wise?”
And there it was, the conversation target bull’s-eyed with Queen’s first shot. Archery was never Guy’s strong suit, but he could play a tough target, at least, and keep the depth of the hits from going deeper than he was comfortable.
“Y’know the problem with havin’ a wardrobe you can just ring-on every day?” he answered with another question, “Ya don’t notice yer a size XXXL or somethin’ until ya see yourself compared to others. And then, it just hits ya…or rather, it hit me. I ain’t so young anymore, an’ in another twenty years, I’m gonna look like Wildcat, if I’m lucky. These young studs, they’re gettin’ all the action with the girls, an’ each other, an’ the one thing they got in common is they’re all slimmer builds.”
“Don’t sell us big ol’ buffalo types down for the count, Guy,” Ollie drawled. “I do pretty good for not being in the category of svelteness.” He smiled as he said it, but he didn’t want Guy to think he was trivializing the matter, so then he took a thoughtful breath.
“Y’know,” Ollie said slowly, “After I got back from the trip with Hal, when Dinah and me moved to Seattle — I lost a shitload of weight. I built it back up slow, back to the same amount I had when we were on the road, but it took a lot of time. Because I was working through things, about me and Hal, about coming to grips with … with figuring out I was in love with him. That I wasn’t the — for lack of a better expression — straight arrow skirt-chaser I always saw myself as.”
Ollie raised his eyebrows at Guy. “I thought maybe that might be some of it for you, too. It’s no easy shakes for guys like us, with the whole big-muscled macho thing going on, to suddenly figure out we like other men, too. It was a huge fucking paradigm shift for me, and it knocked me completely out of orbit for a long time.”
Guy leaned back in his chair, stretching out the hoodie with his hands still in the pockets, weighing that testimony. Perhaps he could allow the delving to go a little deeper, but how much did he really want to reveal? This was treading into Hal territory now, and Guy was still uncertain about the Ollie-Hal-Kyle dynamic.
It wasn’t that he felt he himself fit in or belonged anywhere in that equation, even if he was Kyle’s partner, but he had to be wary; what one was told, might spread to the other two far too easily. They formed the new, improved “Green Team” as Guy saw it, probably before long with a secret fraternal handshake. The one bright spot on the Lantern front, for himself at least, was at least John Stewart had come back to stay.
“Sure, I guess that was part of it?” he conceded, “Truth is, the minute I got back to Earth I saw a League full of younger “kids”, all lounging comfortably together, no personal space issues among a single one of ‘em. At first I thought it was just a Titans thing, but I later I wasn’t so sure. I even mocked them a little, to myself, but then I *could*. I had lover. I was happy. And then…well, I realized more about myself, and there was Kyle, an’ me and Dinah split…and next thing I know, I was alone.”
He shifted in his seat, “So I struck out with both sexes…and I was thinkin’ it can’t be an age thing. You an’ Hal are my age or a little older. An then there were some photos people took with us at a beach party, stuck on the bulletin board in the lounge, an’ I see me with all these thin guys. I stuck out like a sore thumb.” He paused, deciding he could go a little further, as long as he kept Hal’s name out of it.
“An’ then shortly after that, someone just said it outright - the *exact* thing I’ve been thinkin’ an’ tellin’ myself for awhile: I’m too big, my body size is a sexual turn-off. It’s the first thing people see; it’s intimidatin’, an’ hey, that’s great if I’m fightin’ a bunch of Sinestro Corps jerks, but it ain’t so great if I wanna get out of the friend zone, ya know?”
Ollie watched quietly as Guy spoke, thoughts that clearly had been marching around in his brain for quite a while. By this point in their friendship, he’d come to realize that Guy liked to have a personal script, one he could memorize when it came to sensitive topics and recite when necessary. Not that it was a bad thing — the orderliness was entirely Guy-ish — but it sure wasn’t something Ollie could do himself, have a file of index cards with his feelings and thoughts carefully, protectively inscribed on them for when other people asked questions.
And considering what Guy was saying, Ollie was feeling loathe to riffle through those cards and fling them in the air, as he’d been wont to do before. The way Guy curled in on himself in his oversized hoodie, how he hid his big hands, even the way he locked his ankles over each other when he stretched his legs out. Ollie knew those gestures. He knew what somebody looked like when they were trying to make themself smaller, take up less space.
A feeling of ineffable sadness washed through him as he weighed out what he should say next. You couldn’t just come out and tell your friend he had body dysmorphia over some lemon cake. Ollie was no psychologist, he couldn’t *begin* to address the serious issues of what was going on in Guy’s head that made him perceive his own body so harshly.
“I think,” he said hesitantly, “I think I can honestly say that I didn’t find you that much bulkier than everybody else. In the photos, I mean, or hell, in real life. Clark, me, Ted — we’re all around the same size, right? J’onn too, more or less…” This was the wrong tactic. Guy’s self-image was warped right now, and no comparisons would work. Ollie’s mouth twitched.
“What I’m saying is, maybe it’s more internal than that. You’re sorting through a lot of warring perceptions of yourself, your entire —” he waved a hand in a big looping oval between them, “—your entire sexual identity. And yeah, I know there’s other stuff going on and it’s not all about sexuality, but that shit’s so tied up in the flesh and the body that it’s impossible to work through without judging your physicality. Sometimes too harshly, Guy.”
Guy’s annoyance flared the second the comparisons he’d already made were refuted. It was all he could to do hold his tongue until the other had finished speaking. “Supes has more charisma than anyone else to make up for it. J’onn can be any shape he wants to be, or more to the point, what anyone else wants in a mate. Ted’s the exception that proves the rule, and you…” Guy reigned it in, tightly. It wasn’t Ollie’s fault. It wasn’t even Hal’s…hell he wasn’t even attracted to Hal…was he? No, not like that, he reconfirmed. Hal was special. Hal’s was the approval he sought but would never solicit. “I’m told you’re considered one of the lythe ones.”
He fumbled with the lid of his tea. Why was he feeling angry about this? This wasn’t anyone’s fault, damnit, stop yelling at Ollie. ”Sorry….sorry. Just, if it were just me alone doin’ the judgin’, I might buy that. Besides what’s wrong with wantin’ a new image? I could do worse….I could go back to bowl-cuts,” he tried to joke. “Maybe I just don’t wanna string of one-night stands or casual flings. Maybe I like the idea of havin’ something real again…”
So maybe now they were getting to some of the crux of the matter. Guy had always struck Ollie as being an extraordinarily lonely person. More along the lines of Bruce than like, say, J’onn (who was lonely due to being one of a kind, an eternal outsider); more … building walls to prevent rejection, more Byronic, more we-enter-this-world-alone and can only truly depend on ourselves.
And underneath, so much bloody ragged longing for connection and closeness, to be recognized as somebody worth cutting through the thorns for. It was one of the things that had made Ollie feel so kindly towards Guy, way back when, and one of the reasons he kept forgetting the details of whenever he and Guy argued. Ollie’d never worried too much about getting his fingers pricked tearing down thorns.
“Nothing wrong with it, not at all,” he said. “And nothing wrong with wanting a partner. I’m the type of cat who needs to be in a relationship myself.” Ollie sipped his drink and added, “Dinah wasn’t a beard, just to get that clear. Kate isn’t either.”
Guy’s smile slowly returned, bemused. “Ols, just a heads-up, the kids don’t call each other ‘cat’ anymore. I think it’s ‘dog’ these days.” Unconsciously he mirrored Ollie, and he sipped his own tea. At least his companion had acknowledged he wasn’t doing anything wrong; it wasn’t like Guy’s foot had planted itself in his mouth again, or that he was affecting anyone else around him. For once, at least he was doing no harm to others.
“I know your relationships with them have been real, Ols. For what it’s worth, Dinah told me the same thing. And any idiot can see you’ve got a great thing going with Kate. I oughtta know better than to joke about that; you’re right, it’s insulting to them, when all I meant to do was pun on yer Van Dyke, there. I’ll stop.”
Ollie’s eyes widened in disappointment. “But cat is so much better than dog!” he protested. “Cooler! Slinkier. It’s — ahhh, shit, it probably is totally lame. But it would be lamer if I tried to use the new slang, wouldn’t it.” He sighed theatrically, picking up his slice of cake to bite off a corner.
“There were times I worried about that, is all. With Dinah,” he elaborated. “After Hal, falling for him … I never saw it coming. Neither of us did. One day we were best friends and the next it all changed, forever. It made us both question everything, and I threw myself into my relationship with Dinah and moved out of the state to be away from him, while he filled up the emptiness with one-night women.”
Ollie scratched at the leather arm of his chair. “You don’t need to tell me,” he said, looking levelly at Guy. “But I thought maybe it might help, to talk to me about the whole coming-out thing, coming to grips. I spent ten years in deep motherfucking denial. I could use somebody to talk to about it sometimes myself, y’know? I’m still not entirely there yet.”
He took a long sip of his drink and glanced out the window in time to see a thirty-something woman snap a photo of them with her phone. It probably wasn’t an odd sight, to see former Mayor Ollie Queen around town, and since Guy had opted to go maskless for years he didn’t expect to escape being recognized out of costume. They were just two minor celebs, chillin over tea. No big deal.
“The only problem with one-night women is they don’t fill the emptiness,” Guy agreed, “I’m glad Hal figured that out, and you two found your way back together. Best thing that ever happened to him since Carol, if ya ask me,” he mused, swirling his tea to cool it a little more. He was wondering if he should have added sugar; the bottom was tasting more bitter when the tea leaf particles had settled.
“I’m….I’m not sure I’m ready for that,” Guy said when he addressed the topic of talking of his own sexuality, and suddenly he felt that caution, that wariness return. It was even stronger than before, when they talked about his body image issues. “I still haven’t come out to everyone, yet. I’m…I know what I yearn for, I’ve tried to… ‘expand my field of consideration’, if ya will, not limit it to just one guy who’s unavailable anyway and who I just gotta give up on entirely…”
He squirmed, internally warning himself to watch what he said, and at the same time tempted to come right out and say he found it hard to trust them, since all that happened before he left for Europe. No. Mend bridges, don’t burn them. He could cross the mended ones only when it felt safe, though. “I want to take it slow, comin’ out. Maybe that isn’t fashionable anymore, to stay in the closet, but I don’t give a damn what Kyle or anyone else thinks, it’s no one else’s business but mine. I know who I’ve told, and I know who they’ve told…” he let that hang a few seconds, let Ollie see the significance of that last statement. “Already there’s at least one too many people who know, and that number had better not go up. I-I just wanna say that up front, ya know?”
“Okay,” Ollie nodded, “It’s not like I make a habit out of discussing your personal life with all and sundry, so that should be easy enough. And since we’re being up front, Guy, I have to wonder how much of this reluctance is due to anxiety that people will treat you shittily if you did come out. Considering how Hal and me got ranked out by some of our friends even *before* we decided we could do this without hiding it.” Ollie left a pregnant pause of his own. “Maybe you don’t trust us to not give you some of your own medicine, once we get the chance.”
Finishing off his cake, Ollie wiped his fingers and balled up the napkin. “We wouldn’t, though,” he added. “Come out or don’t, whichever you’re more comfortable with, but you need to understand that nobody is gonna laugh at you for being queer. At least, not me, or Hal, or Kate. I’m pretty sure not anybody else, since I haven’t had a problem with it.”
Ollie pulled his legs in, leaning forward and clasping his hands between his knees. “I’m not gonna push you, Guy,” he said earnestly, “But I know your type. If I say I’ll leave it alone until you feel like you want to talk with me, I’ll never see hide nor hair of you. So I’m gonna keep slow but steady pressure on you instead. I want you to know you don’t have to keep all this shit bottled up, and you don’t have to be afraid of what people will think of you. I’m not people. I’m just Ollie.”
“It ain’t that I’d be treated shittily…” Guy frowned. “And ya know what, go right ahead and call me a hypocrite, because I fuckin’knew that was comin’ sooner or later.”
“Jeez, take it easy, Gardner.” Ollie scratched his beard. “I know the word, if I wanted to call you a hypocrite I would’ve. But don’t blow up at me just because now you feel bad for some of the crap you said about me and Hal and I’m not choosing to conveniently pretend it never happened, okay?”
“Well, ya wanted to know what my hesitation stems from, it’s that. Right or wrong, ya can’t expect me to look forward to facin’ the music. I ain’t sayin’ I don’t deserve it, Ols, but I can’t pretend it never happened either…I just…I don’t know how to ‘join the club’ gracefully with that hangin’ over me. No one likes a hypocrite.”
“No, they don’t.” Ollie leaned across the little table between them to pat Guy’s knee. “But people tend to like it when somebody cops to having been a jackass in the past and expresses remorse, which I know you feel. Obviously, and for good reason. So no hypocrites in the house, okay? Just fellas who’ve made mistakes and are trying to make up for it.”
Guy nodded slowly, taking it in, his eyes on the hand on his knee. Seven years earlier, he’d have felt uncomfortable with a gay man - hell, any man - touching him in a genuinely caring gesture of offered trust and friendship. Then again, seven years earlier he was a brain-damaged jerk with the mental capacity and maturity of a ten-year-old. He smiled to himself as he realized that it said a lot about the haters of the world.
“Thanks…thank you, for that.” He still hated that Hal knew, but if there was one man on this earth who could speak for him, it was Ollie.
“I guess the other thing that worries me about comin’ out, other than the hypocrisy of it, is the expectations others’ll have when they find out.” He looked up at Ollie, “I meant it, when I said I wanted somethin’ real, before. I don’t wanna learn the ropes on a bunch of one-night stands. I feel like… I need someone who doesn’t mind keepin’ it quiet while I work up the nerve to come out, who’s at the same time willin’ to teach me.” He drained his tea and stared at his cup, warring with himself about whether to tell Ollie about Dick. It was difficult making something that was already a reality sound as though it were hypothetical. “I wanna come out for them, not come out, be all clumsy, an’ hope things work out while I get rejection after rejection.”
Ollie rubbed his thumb along Guy’s knee and patted it again before sitting back, listening as Guy haltingly outlined his needs and desires, his hopeful wishes. It hurt, a little bit, to hear him, because there were echoes of that same wistful tone that Hal would always have, shades of the unarticulated longing that was sometimes in the back of Kyle’s voice. Lantern aloneness, endemic of the breed.
“I’m …” he stopped. What? Not sure if that’s how things could work? Worried about what it would mean to require a lover to *hide* their relationship? After all, Ollie and Hal had considered that too, hadn’t they? But the stress and strain that all that deceit and paranoia would cause had made them decide on being apart, rather than being together in secret. How could Guy possibly, possibly grow in a healthy way under that kind of shadow?
“There’s something to be said for coming out for *yourself*, Guy, rather than for somebody else,” Ollie finally settled on saying.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Guy admitted. “All I know is, everytime I’ve found out someone’s queer, they’ve usually already hooked up with someone. I just don’t know a lot of people who have come out to me, who were doing it for a reason other than because they were in a relationship and they didn’t want to hide it anymore.”
He shrugged, “What do I know? I dunno, maybe it only happens like that on TV. I guess I’d rather say, ‘Guys, this is my boyfriend, oh by the way, I was wrong, I’m not straight. Go fig?’ than say, ‘Hey everyone, I’m queer, and I have no fuckin’ clue what I’m doing. Who wants a beer?’ “
“Well,” Ollie said, spreading his hands, “It’s between you and whoever this prospective willing-to-stay-secret partner is, buddy. I know it would’ve driven me plumb outta my mind to have to sneak around and pretend to everyone. Not that Hal and me make out in public so much — I’m still working up to that, and who knows if I’ll ever be totally ready for it — but I’d go nuts otherwise.”
He tipped his head, regarding Guy. “I tell you, though — I wouldn’t mind calling the other fella a friend, either. He might be a queer with no partner and no fucking idea what he’s doing, but hey, who among us does?” Ollie grinned wide at Guy. “I’m glad you came out with me, Gardner,” he said, heartfelt. “It felt good. The talking. You’d think I’d have enough of talking considering how much I do of it, but I always find there’s nuances to explore depending on who my conversational partner is. And I liked this one a lot.”
Guy gave him a wry grin, “The talk, or the conversational partner?” He waved it away before Ollie could answer the lame joke, “I won’t lie, Ols…I wasn’t looking forward to this. Coming here to talk about my body issues, I mean. An’ I sure wasn’t expectin’ to go back down this road…”
He marvelled at Ollie a moment, “In fact, I vowed to myself I wasn’t gonna talk about this shit with you ever again. Yet here I sit, realizin’ you did it again. Sonavabitch, how do you do that, drag shit outta me that I don’t wanna tell anyone? You just got a real talent for gettin’ me to open up,” he drawled, “You shoulda been a therapist,” he grinned. Yeah go with that, Guy, another joke. The more you make them, the less cozy you seem, dumbass.
“I did have a question, actually,” he changed course, “Because I wasn’t planet-side at the time, I heard about you two second-hand; how did you and Hal actually come out? I mean, what do you do, tell friends one at a time and let gossip do the rest? Make an announcement? Start doing PDA’s and let everyone put two and two together?”
“They do say that people who are in dire need of therapy often become therapists!” Ollie laughed, loud, not really caring who heard him. “And I know you’ve been gun-shy when it comes to having any kinda heart-to-heart with me, ever since our last falling out. I’m still sorry that all happened, but I’m glad you did take me up on this invite, and I’m glad you’ve got other people to talk to as well. Everybody needs a good support system, and I’d be truly pleased to be part of yours.”
He grinned and saluted at Carolina, the proprietress, who peeked in to check on them and deposited a little dish of salted pepitas before leaving them alone again. “As for Hal and me, hunh …” Ollie scooped up some of the pumpkin seeds, munching them thoughtfully as he recalled.
“Well, I told Kate first of all, because we were already dating, then I told Mia, who had already assumed Hal was my boyfriend when he came to stay in the guest room, and other people just as it came up. Zee, Dinah, so forth. And yeah, we let Watchtower scuttlebutt take it from there. Not much stays secret ‘round these heah parts, hoss, you know that!”
“Don’t I, though,” Guy returned a rueful smile. “An’ don’t be hard on yourself, it was because of trust in general with a few folks, not just because of our fallin’ out. Besides…that’s water under the bridge, as far as I’m concerned. It has been since the second I realized…well…ya put a good scare into me, Ols, when I brought ya up to the Watchtower, an’ I realized how dumb it was to have that unresolved anger between us be the last thing we ever shared…” He reddened a little, but hoped Ollie understood; Guy’d been a stubborn ass again about letting things go, had recognized it, and all Ollie’s wrongdoing was forgotten, not just forgiven. “I’m just grateful you’re still around to have invited me here, man.”
“You said you had a few issues of your own, Ols…an’ I feel like I’ve been monopolizin’ yer ear, here. I don’t know what yer schedule’s like, but if ya want another tea, I can get the next round…?” he offered. ”I’d be honoured to be part of your support system too, if you want.”
Ollie grinned wide at Guy, nodding. “I’d like it a whole lot if we could do this on some kind of regular basis,” he said. “Nothing formal, just get together every now and again to vent and shoot the shit. Like you say, time’s too precious to waste it on grudges and misunderstandings, hey?”
Getting up, Ollie stretched and dusted crumbs off his knees. “I think we better call this round to a close, though, if you don’t mind. We covered a helluva lot of ground and I dunno ‘bout you, but I need some time to digest it all, think it through, see what I come up with. Plus the family has me on strict orders to treat myself gentle through recovery and not go a million miles a minute like I’d normally do, heh.”
Ollie picked up his cup and napkin. “Oh, hey, which reminds me,” he said, raising his eyebrows at Guy in delight. “The medicos finally told me that they tapped a couple pints of Guy Gardner American Red to refill me when I was running low! Jesus Christ, Garder, that makes us practically related!”
Taking his cue, and understanding Ollie was tiring quickly, he rose and gathered his own garbage as well. “Well, anytime, y’know? Maybe I oughtta nudge you more to take me up on that offer.”
Guy reddened more and looked down when Ollie mentioned the transfusion. He hadn’t really wanted anyone to know, least of all Ollie. “Hey, Like you said, no secrets aboard the Watchtower…” He met Ollie’s eyes, several snappy comebacks leaping to mind, many self-deprecating. He settled on the mildest: “I hope for your sake, you got the best of me.”
“Plenty of that to go ‘round,” Ollie said, leaning in to wrap his arms around Guy, mug, napkin, salt-dusted fingers and all. “I appreciate it like hell, buddy. And my bickering brood back home do too.”
“Aw, you told them too?” Guy sighed as he hugged him back, mindful of his friend’s still-recovering body, “There goes my reputation. But hey, if you lose your taste for that chili ya make, at least they’ll know who to blame.” He followed Ollie to the recycle bin and then out the door. “Ya want a lift home?” he offered. Ollie looked tired.
“Would you?” Ollie didn’t bother keeping the gratitude from his voice. Lantern lifts could be undignified sometimes (he particularly hated when Hal carted him around in outer space), but the energy was slipping out of him fast, and Guy was much more comforting than the idea of a car ride back home. “That would be great, man.”
“That’s what friends are for, Ols,” Guy gave him a soft smile as he ringed on his uniform outside the shop, “To bring ya home.”
Guy grinned at Ollie’s enthusiasm. It was almost enough to make him feel at ease with this rendezvous - almost. They’d gone from barely speaking at all to one another for a month, to a difficult video chat where a lot of anger was resolved but the wounds hadn’t quite healed over…and then Ollie almost died. It had shaken Guy enough to dismiss what pain he still had over the previous incident, but had still left things unsaid.
And now, Ollie wanted to talk to him…about Guy’s issues. Guy realized that the last time he’d opened up to Ollie, it had come back to haunt him - though through no directly betrayal of Guy’s confidence on Ollie’s part - Guy’d sworn off confiding in people in general, save precious few. It didn’t include Ollie anymore, and the idea of being grilled by a man who knew him so well he might as well be transparent, well, it was as close to jumpy as Guy Gardner got.
“Ollie Queen, borin’? Wouldn’t that actually involve you using short words, or not speakin’, or somethin’ terribly out of character like that?” he teased.
“Usually I’m the most boring when I’m being very, very careful about what I’m saying,” Ollie said, then paused in front of the coffee counter and frowned at Guy as a thought occurred to him. “Or maybe that’s not so boring for the *other* person, but it sure is for *me*.”
Shrugging with a smile — no use dwelling! — he ordered himself an obscenely large green tea frappucino and some lemon loaf. “We’ll go sit up with the Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Nobody except high school english students bother with authors of the Lost Generation anymore, so it’ll be nice and quiet.”
Ollie shuffled his drink and cake and napkins around as Guy made his order, watching his friend closely. He looked tired. They all did, it wasn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary (Ollie was sure that he didn’t look too hot himself, still getting tired out easily halfway through most days), but with Guy there was a certain transparent, delicate blue that happened in the skin under his eyes when he was working on something in his head, not just working it through his body.
Guy debated on his order briefly, ultimately ordering the same thing Ollie did out of convenience and indecision. He wasn’t really all that familiar with specialty coffee shops; coffee was coffee and tea came in regular or a choice of herbal, as far as he was concerned. Next heart-to-heart, he’d insist on doing it at a microbrew pub.
Ollie was a health nut, though, so whatever he ordered was probably low-cal and tasted okay. He joined Ollie and settled into his seat, leaving the tea untouched until it was cool enough to drink, and slipped his hands comfortably into the pockets of his shapeless, oversized hoodie. He regarded Ollie in silence a long moment, then smiled, “What a fuckin’ week, huh?” he half-joked, realizing they both probably felt as worn out as they looked. “Just when we bounce back, the League gets wrung out again…and you got wrung out the hardest both times, Ols. I’d say you’ve paid yer dues and then some.”
“Well, you know what they say — you don’t join if you can’t take a joke.” Ollie stretched his legs out long with a sigh. “Still, I didn’t intend for this conversation to be a commiseration. Not about that, anyhow.”
All the stuff with Roy … it was raw, and it wasn’t that Ollie so much minded talking about it as he didn’t *know* how he felt, exactly, just yet. Maybe in the future he might bring it up with Guy, ask about what exactly being a Red Lantern entailed, but not right now.
“Right now,” he said, “I’m more interested in how you’re doing. You seem a step beyond wrung out, buddy, and the cracks are showing.” Ollie paused, considered, and then added, “I’m not gonna bother beating around the bush, I think we’d both appreciate forthrightness. Are you feeling down on yourself physically? Like, body image-wise?”
And there it was, the conversation target bull’s-eyed with Queen’s first shot. Archery was never Guy’s strong suit, but he could play a tough target, at least, and keep the depth of the hits from going deeper than he was comfortable.
“Y’know the problem with havin’ a wardrobe you can just ring-on every day?” he answered with another question, “Ya don’t notice yer a size XXXL or somethin’ until ya see yourself compared to others. And then, it just hits ya…or rather, it hit me. I ain’t so young anymore, an’ in another twenty years, I’m gonna look like Wildcat, if I’m lucky. These young studs, they’re gettin’ all the action with the girls, an’ each other, an’ the one thing they got in common is they’re all slimmer builds.”
“Don’t sell us big ol’ buffalo types down for the count, Guy,” Ollie drawled. “I do pretty good for not being in the category of svelteness.” He smiled as he said it, but he didn’t want Guy to think he was trivializing the matter, so then he took a thoughtful breath.
“Y’know,” Ollie said slowly, “After I got back from the trip with Hal, when Dinah and me moved to Seattle — I lost a shitload of weight. I built it back up slow, back to the same amount I had when we were on the road, but it took a lot of time. Because I was working through things, about me and Hal, about coming to grips with … with figuring out I was in love with him. That I wasn’t the — for lack of a better expression — straight arrow skirt-chaser I always saw myself as.”
Ollie raised his eyebrows at Guy. “I thought maybe that might be some of it for you, too. It’s no easy shakes for guys like us, with the whole big-muscled macho thing going on, to suddenly figure out we like other men, too. It was a huge fucking paradigm shift for me, and it knocked me completely out of orbit for a long time.”
Guy leaned back in his chair, stretching out the hoodie with his hands still in the pockets, weighing that testimony. Perhaps he could allow the delving to go a little deeper, but how much did he really want to reveal? This was treading into Hal territory now, and Guy was still uncertain about the Ollie-Hal-Kyle dynamic.
It wasn’t that he felt he himself fit in or belonged anywhere in that equation, even if he was Kyle’s partner, but he had to be wary; what one was told, might spread to the other two far too easily. They formed the new, improved “Green Team” as Guy saw it, probably before long with a secret fraternal handshake. The one bright spot on the Lantern front, for himself at least, was at least John Stewart had come back to stay.
“Sure, I guess that was part of it?” he conceded, “Truth is, the minute I got back to Earth I saw a League full of younger “kids”, all lounging comfortably together, no personal space issues among a single one of ‘em. At first I thought it was just a Titans thing, but I later I wasn’t so sure. I even mocked them a little, to myself, but then I *could*. I had lover. I was happy. And then…well, I realized more about myself, and there was Kyle, an’ me and Dinah split…and next thing I know, I was alone.”
He shifted in his seat, “So I struck out with both sexes…and I was thinkin’ it can’t be an age thing. You an’ Hal are my age or a little older. An then there were some photos people took with us at a beach party, stuck on the bulletin board in the lounge, an’ I see me with all these thin guys. I stuck out like a sore thumb.” He paused, deciding he could go a little further, as long as he kept Hal’s name out of it.
“An’ then shortly after that, someone just said it outright - the *exact* thing I’ve been thinkin’ an’ tellin’ myself for awhile: I’m too big, my body size is a sexual turn-off. It’s the first thing people see; it’s intimidatin’, an’ hey, that’s great if I’m fightin’ a bunch of Sinestro Corps jerks, but it ain’t so great if I wanna get out of the friend zone, ya know?”
Ollie watched quietly as Guy spoke, thoughts that clearly had been marching around in his brain for quite a while. By this point in their friendship, he’d come to realize that Guy liked to have a personal script, one he could memorize when it came to sensitive topics and recite when necessary. Not that it was a bad thing — the orderliness was entirely Guy-ish — but it sure wasn’t something Ollie could do himself, have a file of index cards with his feelings and thoughts carefully, protectively inscribed on them for when other people asked questions.
And considering what Guy was saying, Ollie was feeling loathe to riffle through those cards and fling them in the air, as he’d been wont to do before. The way Guy curled in on himself in his oversized hoodie, how he hid his big hands, even the way he locked his ankles over each other when he stretched his legs out. Ollie knew those gestures. He knew what somebody looked like when they were trying to make themself smaller, take up less space.
A feeling of ineffable sadness washed through him as he weighed out what he should say next. You couldn’t just come out and tell your friend he had body dysmorphia over some lemon cake. Ollie was no psychologist, he couldn’t *begin* to address the serious issues of what was going on in Guy’s head that made him perceive his own body so harshly.
“I think,” he said hesitantly, “I think I can honestly say that I didn’t find you that much bulkier than everybody else. In the photos, I mean, or hell, in real life. Clark, me, Ted — we’re all around the same size, right? J’onn too, more or less…” This was the wrong tactic. Guy’s self-image was warped right now, and no comparisons would work. Ollie’s mouth twitched.
“What I’m saying is, maybe it’s more internal than that. You’re sorting through a lot of warring perceptions of yourself, your entire —” he waved a hand in a big looping oval between them, “—your entire sexual identity. And yeah, I know there’s other stuff going on and it’s not all about sexuality, but that shit’s so tied up in the flesh and the body that it’s impossible to work through without judging your physicality. Sometimes too harshly, Guy.”
Guy’s annoyance flared the second the comparisons he’d already made were refuted. It was all he could to do hold his tongue until the other had finished speaking. “Supes has more charisma than anyone else to make up for it. J’onn can be any shape he wants to be, or more to the point, what anyone else wants in a mate. Ted’s the exception that proves the rule, and you…” Guy reigned it in, tightly. It wasn’t Ollie’s fault. It wasn’t even Hal’s…hell he wasn’t even attracted to Hal…was he? No, not like that, he reconfirmed. Hal was special. Hal’s was the approval he sought but would never solicit. “I’m told you’re considered one of the lythe ones.”
He fumbled with the lid of his tea. Why was he feeling angry about this? This wasn’t anyone’s fault, damnit, stop yelling at Ollie. ”Sorry….sorry. Just, if it were just me alone doin’ the judgin’, I might buy that. Besides what’s wrong with wantin’ a new image? I could do worse….I could go back to bowl-cuts,” he tried to joke. “Maybe I just don’t wanna string of one-night stands or casual flings. Maybe I like the idea of havin’ something real again…”
So maybe now they were getting to some of the crux of the matter. Guy had always struck Ollie as being an extraordinarily lonely person. More along the lines of Bruce than like, say, J’onn (who was lonely due to being one of a kind, an eternal outsider); more … building walls to prevent rejection, more Byronic, more we-enter-this-world-alone and can only truly depend on ourselves.
And underneath, so much bloody ragged longing for connection and closeness, to be recognized as somebody worth cutting through the thorns for. It was one of the things that had made Ollie feel so kindly towards Guy, way back when, and one of the reasons he kept forgetting the details of whenever he and Guy argued. Ollie’d never worried too much about getting his fingers pricked tearing down thorns.
“Nothing wrong with it, not at all,” he said. “And nothing wrong with wanting a partner. I’m the type of cat who needs to be in a relationship myself.” Ollie sipped his drink and added, “Dinah wasn’t a beard, just to get that clear. Kate isn’t either.”
Guy’s smile slowly returned, bemused. “Ols, just a heads-up, the kids don’t call each other ‘cat’ anymore. I think it’s ‘dog’ these days.” Unconsciously he mirrored Ollie, and he sipped his own tea. At least his companion had acknowledged he wasn’t doing anything wrong; it wasn’t like Guy’s foot had planted itself in his mouth again, or that he was affecting anyone else around him. For once, at least he was doing no harm to others.
“I know your relationships with them have been real, Ols. For what it’s worth, Dinah told me the same thing. And any idiot can see you’ve got a great thing going with Kate. I oughtta know better than to joke about that; you’re right, it’s insulting to them, when all I meant to do was pun on yer Van Dyke, there. I’ll stop.”
Ollie’s eyes widened in disappointment. “But cat is so much better than dog!” he protested. “Cooler! Slinkier. It’s — ahhh, shit, it probably is totally lame. But it would be lamer if I tried to use the new slang, wouldn’t it.” He sighed theatrically, picking up his slice of cake to bite off a corner.
“There were times I worried about that, is all. With Dinah,” he elaborated. “After Hal, falling for him … I never saw it coming. Neither of us did. One day we were best friends and the next it all changed, forever. It made us both question everything, and I threw myself into my relationship with Dinah and moved out of the state to be away from him, while he filled up the emptiness with one-night women.”
Ollie scratched at the leather arm of his chair. “You don’t need to tell me,” he said, looking levelly at Guy. “But I thought maybe it might help, to talk to me about the whole coming-out thing, coming to grips. I spent ten years in deep motherfucking denial. I could use somebody to talk to about it sometimes myself, y’know? I’m still not entirely there yet.”
He took a long sip of his drink and glanced out the window in time to see a thirty-something woman snap a photo of them with her phone. It probably wasn’t an odd sight, to see former Mayor Ollie Queen around town, and since Guy had opted to go maskless for years he didn’t expect to escape being recognized out of costume. They were just two minor celebs, chillin over tea. No big deal.
“The only problem with one-night women is they don’t fill the emptiness,” Guy agreed, “I’m glad Hal figured that out, and you two found your way back together. Best thing that ever happened to him since Carol, if ya ask me,” he mused, swirling his tea to cool it a little more. He was wondering if he should have added sugar; the bottom was tasting more bitter when the tea leaf particles had settled.
“I’m….I’m not sure I’m ready for that,” Guy said when he addressed the topic of talking of his own sexuality, and suddenly he felt that caution, that wariness return. It was even stronger than before, when they talked about his body image issues. “I still haven’t come out to everyone, yet. I’m…I know what I yearn for, I’ve tried to… ‘expand my field of consideration’, if ya will, not limit it to just one guy who’s unavailable anyway and who I just gotta give up on entirely…”
He squirmed, internally warning himself to watch what he said, and at the same time tempted to come right out and say he found it hard to trust them, since all that happened before he left for Europe. No. Mend bridges, don’t burn them. He could cross the mended ones only when it felt safe, though. “I want to take it slow, comin’ out. Maybe that isn’t fashionable anymore, to stay in the closet, but I don’t give a damn what Kyle or anyone else thinks, it’s no one else’s business but mine. I know who I’ve told, and I know who they’ve told…” he let that hang a few seconds, let Ollie see the significance of that last statement. “Already there’s at least one too many people who know, and that number had better not go up. I-I just wanna say that up front, ya know?”
“Okay,” Ollie nodded, “It’s not like I make a habit out of discussing your personal life with all and sundry, so that should be easy enough. And since we’re being up front, Guy, I have to wonder how much of this reluctance is due to anxiety that people will treat you shittily if you did come out. Considering how Hal and me got ranked out by some of our friends even *before* we decided we could do this without hiding it.” Ollie left a pregnant pause of his own. “Maybe you don’t trust us to not give you some of your own medicine, once we get the chance.”
Finishing off his cake, Ollie wiped his fingers and balled up the napkin. “We wouldn’t, though,” he added. “Come out or don’t, whichever you’re more comfortable with, but you need to understand that nobody is gonna laugh at you for being queer. At least, not me, or Hal, or Kate. I’m pretty sure not anybody else, since I haven’t had a problem with it.”
Ollie pulled his legs in, leaning forward and clasping his hands between his knees. “I’m not gonna push you, Guy,” he said earnestly, “But I know your type. If I say I’ll leave it alone until you feel like you want to talk with me, I’ll never see hide nor hair of you. So I’m gonna keep slow but steady pressure on you instead. I want you to know you don’t have to keep all this shit bottled up, and you don’t have to be afraid of what people will think of you. I’m not people. I’m just Ollie.”
“It ain’t that I’d be treated shittily…” Guy frowned. “And ya know what, go right ahead and call me a hypocrite, because I fuckin’knew that was comin’ sooner or later.”
“Jeez, take it easy, Gardner.” Ollie scratched his beard. “I know the word, if I wanted to call you a hypocrite I would’ve. But don’t blow up at me just because now you feel bad for some of the crap you said about me and Hal and I’m not choosing to conveniently pretend it never happened, okay?”
“Well, ya wanted to know what my hesitation stems from, it’s that. Right or wrong, ya can’t expect me to look forward to facin’ the music. I ain’t sayin’ I don’t deserve it, Ols, but I can’t pretend it never happened either…I just…I don’t know how to ‘join the club’ gracefully with that hangin’ over me. No one likes a hypocrite.”
“No, they don’t.” Ollie leaned across the little table between them to pat Guy’s knee. “But people tend to like it when somebody cops to having been a jackass in the past and expresses remorse, which I know you feel. Obviously, and for good reason. So no hypocrites in the house, okay? Just fellas who’ve made mistakes and are trying to make up for it.”
Guy nodded slowly, taking it in, his eyes on the hand on his knee. Seven years earlier, he’d have felt uncomfortable with a gay man - hell, any man - touching him in a genuinely caring gesture of offered trust and friendship. Then again, seven years earlier he was a brain-damaged jerk with the mental capacity and maturity of a ten-year-old. He smiled to himself as he realized that it said a lot about the haters of the world.
“Thanks…thank you, for that.” He still hated that Hal knew, but if there was one man on this earth who could speak for him, it was Ollie.
“I guess the other thing that worries me about comin’ out, other than the hypocrisy of it, is the expectations others’ll have when they find out.” He looked up at Ollie, “I meant it, when I said I wanted somethin’ real, before. I don’t wanna learn the ropes on a bunch of one-night stands. I feel like… I need someone who doesn’t mind keepin’ it quiet while I work up the nerve to come out, who’s at the same time willin’ to teach me.” He drained his tea and stared at his cup, warring with himself about whether to tell Ollie about Dick. It was difficult making something that was already a reality sound as though it were hypothetical. “I wanna come out for them, not come out, be all clumsy, an’ hope things work out while I get rejection after rejection.”
Ollie rubbed his thumb along Guy’s knee and patted it again before sitting back, listening as Guy haltingly outlined his needs and desires, his hopeful wishes. It hurt, a little bit, to hear him, because there were echoes of that same wistful tone that Hal would always have, shades of the unarticulated longing that was sometimes in the back of Kyle’s voice. Lantern aloneness, endemic of the breed.
“I’m …” he stopped. What? Not sure if that’s how things could work? Worried about what it would mean to require a lover to *hide* their relationship? After all, Ollie and Hal had considered that too, hadn’t they? But the stress and strain that all that deceit and paranoia would cause had made them decide on being apart, rather than being together in secret. How could Guy possibly, possibly grow in a healthy way under that kind of shadow?
“There’s something to be said for coming out for *yourself*, Guy, rather than for somebody else,” Ollie finally settled on saying.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Guy admitted. “All I know is, everytime I’ve found out someone’s queer, they’ve usually already hooked up with someone. I just don’t know a lot of people who have come out to me, who were doing it for a reason other than because they were in a relationship and they didn’t want to hide it anymore.”
He shrugged, “What do I know? I dunno, maybe it only happens like that on TV. I guess I’d rather say, ‘Guys, this is my boyfriend, oh by the way, I was wrong, I’m not straight. Go fig?’ than say, ‘Hey everyone, I’m queer, and I have no fuckin’ clue what I’m doing. Who wants a beer?’ “
“Well,” Ollie said, spreading his hands, “It’s between you and whoever this prospective willing-to-stay-secret partner is, buddy. I know it would’ve driven me plumb outta my mind to have to sneak around and pretend to everyone. Not that Hal and me make out in public so much — I’m still working up to that, and who knows if I’ll ever be totally ready for it — but I’d go nuts otherwise.”
He tipped his head, regarding Guy. “I tell you, though — I wouldn’t mind calling the other fella a friend, either. He might be a queer with no partner and no fucking idea what he’s doing, but hey, who among us does?” Ollie grinned wide at Guy. “I’m glad you came out with me, Gardner,” he said, heartfelt. “It felt good. The talking. You’d think I’d have enough of talking considering how much I do of it, but I always find there’s nuances to explore depending on who my conversational partner is. And I liked this one a lot.”
Guy gave him a wry grin, “The talk, or the conversational partner?” He waved it away before Ollie could answer the lame joke, “I won’t lie, Ols…I wasn’t looking forward to this. Coming here to talk about my body issues, I mean. An’ I sure wasn’t expectin’ to go back down this road…”
He marvelled at Ollie a moment, “In fact, I vowed to myself I wasn’t gonna talk about this shit with you ever again. Yet here I sit, realizin’ you did it again. Sonavabitch, how do you do that, drag shit outta me that I don’t wanna tell anyone? You just got a real talent for gettin’ me to open up,” he drawled, “You shoulda been a therapist,” he grinned. Yeah go with that, Guy, another joke. The more you make them, the less cozy you seem, dumbass.
“I did have a question, actually,” he changed course, “Because I wasn’t planet-side at the time, I heard about you two second-hand; how did you and Hal actually come out? I mean, what do you do, tell friends one at a time and let gossip do the rest? Make an announcement? Start doing PDA’s and let everyone put two and two together?”
“They do say that people who are in dire need of therapy often become therapists!” Ollie laughed, loud, not really caring who heard him. “And I know you’ve been gun-shy when it comes to having any kinda heart-to-heart with me, ever since our last falling out. I’m still sorry that all happened, but I’m glad you did take me up on this invite, and I’m glad you’ve got other people to talk to as well. Everybody needs a good support system, and I’d be truly pleased to be part of yours.”
He grinned and saluted at Carolina, the proprietress, who peeked in to check on them and deposited a little dish of salted pepitas before leaving them alone again. “As for Hal and me, hunh …” Ollie scooped up some of the pumpkin seeds, munching them thoughtfully as he recalled.
“Well, I told Kate first of all, because we were already dating, then I told Mia, who had already assumed Hal was my boyfriend when he came to stay in the guest room, and other people just as it came up. Zee, Dinah, so forth. And yeah, we let Watchtower scuttlebutt take it from there. Not much stays secret ‘round these heah parts, hoss, you know that!”
“Don’t I, though,” Guy returned a rueful smile. “An’ don’t be hard on yourself, it was because of trust in general with a few folks, not just because of our fallin’ out. Besides…that’s water under the bridge, as far as I’m concerned. It has been since the second I realized…well…ya put a good scare into me, Ols, when I brought ya up to the Watchtower, an’ I realized how dumb it was to have that unresolved anger between us be the last thing we ever shared…” He reddened a little, but hoped Ollie understood; Guy’d been a stubborn ass again about letting things go, had recognized it, and all Ollie’s wrongdoing was forgotten, not just forgiven. “I’m just grateful you’re still around to have invited me here, man.”
“You said you had a few issues of your own, Ols…an’ I feel like I’ve been monopolizin’ yer ear, here. I don’t know what yer schedule’s like, but if ya want another tea, I can get the next round…?” he offered. ”I’d be honoured to be part of your support system too, if you want.”
Ollie grinned wide at Guy, nodding. “I’d like it a whole lot if we could do this on some kind of regular basis,” he said. “Nothing formal, just get together every now and again to vent and shoot the shit. Like you say, time’s too precious to waste it on grudges and misunderstandings, hey?”
Getting up, Ollie stretched and dusted crumbs off his knees. “I think we better call this round to a close, though, if you don’t mind. We covered a helluva lot of ground and I dunno ‘bout you, but I need some time to digest it all, think it through, see what I come up with. Plus the family has me on strict orders to treat myself gentle through recovery and not go a million miles a minute like I’d normally do, heh.”
Ollie picked up his cup and napkin. “Oh, hey, which reminds me,” he said, raising his eyebrows at Guy in delight. “The medicos finally told me that they tapped a couple pints of Guy Gardner American Red to refill me when I was running low! Jesus Christ, Garder, that makes us practically related!”
Taking his cue, and understanding Ollie was tiring quickly, he rose and gathered his own garbage as well. “Well, anytime, y’know? Maybe I oughtta nudge you more to take me up on that offer.”
Guy reddened more and looked down when Ollie mentioned the transfusion. He hadn’t really wanted anyone to know, least of all Ollie. “Hey, Like you said, no secrets aboard the Watchtower…” He met Ollie’s eyes, several snappy comebacks leaping to mind, many self-deprecating. He settled on the mildest: “I hope for your sake, you got the best of me.”
“Plenty of that to go ‘round,” Ollie said, leaning in to wrap his arms around Guy, mug, napkin, salt-dusted fingers and all. “I appreciate it like hell, buddy. And my bickering brood back home do too.”
“Aw, you told them too?” Guy sighed as he hugged him back, mindful of his friend’s still-recovering body, “There goes my reputation. But hey, if you lose your taste for that chili ya make, at least they’ll know who to blame.” He followed Ollie to the recycle bin and then out the door. “Ya want a lift home?” he offered. Ollie looked tired.
“Would you?” Ollie didn’t bother keeping the gratitude from his voice. Lantern lifts could be undignified sometimes (he particularly hated when Hal carted him around in outer space), but the energy was slipping out of him fast, and Guy was much more comforting than the idea of a car ride back home. “That would be great, man.”
“That’s what friends are for, Ols,” Guy gave him a soft smile as he ringed on his uniform outside the shop, “To bring ya home.”