maskormenacelogs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

WHO: Jaime/Blue Beetle (

khajidont); Hal/Green Lantern (

aviate); Wally/Kid Flash (

runningstart)
WHERE: The skies and ground of Heropa
WHEN: IMMEDIATELY (okay Tuesday night)
WHAT: Friends being friends and then FIGHTING and then ANGRY YELLING!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HAL
WARNINGS: maybe (probably) some cursing (hal & jaime internally)

"Okay dude, I understand you're like Ghandi or something, but talking to the guy robbing the liquor store about his life choices?"

He's running. And he's overjoyed. He'd only been in a cell for a few days but by virtue of being a speedster (or maybe not, he's never asked), he's a little claustrophobic. By the time Monday morning rolled around he had been ready to take Traci up on that offer of a breakout, and completely seriously.

There was also the fact that the girl in the cell across from him was a murdering psychopath doctor. There was that.

Robin had spoiled him in his own particular way when he got back to the cave and Gar pretended not to have missed him, even though he did and wouldn't go very far without checking back in on Wally like he wouldn't notice or something. (He didn't. Robin pointed it out and laughed at them both.) Bart had latched on and clung to him, even when he got up and went to his bedroom and ended up dragging him down the hallway, which had been funny until Bart did it again when Wally had to pee really bad.

But it was nice. Knowing he'd been missed.

Speaking of missed, he'd really missed knocking together the skulls of jerks who wave guns at people. He'd also missed running, and he'd missed picking on Jaime in that way that Jaime knows is because Wally sort of kinda respects him probably or whatever. Also, he's secretly hoping Khaji Da does something to embarrass Jaime so Jaime screams at him for ten minutes again because KF has honestly never laughed so hard in his life, and he's easily amused.

Kid Flash shakes his head. "You were like this close to handing him a pamphlet for a staffing agency and signing him up for the Big Brothers and Sisters program."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jaime sucks in a deep, shuddering breath and closes his eyes. "Okay. Okay, okay, you're right, you're right," he says, but it's clear that he's not talking to Hal, but to Wally, who's finally managed to get their attention. And Jaime means that, truly. Losing his temper and flying off the handle and wanting nothing more than to punch someone's lights out? That's not how he does things. As loath as he is to admit that Hal's right about anything, if that's how he operated, then he didn't deserve to have the powers that they did.

He lands back onto the ground and - despite the Scarab's loud, heated protestations - lets the suit sink back into his skin. It's a gamble, considering that Hal seems perfectly prepared to kill him, but it's a risk he'll run. Slowly, he raises his arms on either side of his head, fingers spread; don't shoot. The way he's staring Hal down ensures that it's perhaps the most petulant version of surrender there's ever been, but he hopes the gesture's enough.

"We're friends," he says, voice hard. "You never told me that he's your nephew, and even if you did, I don't ditch my friends just because someone tells me to. You want a fight, you've got it. But don't expect me to fight back."

He keeps his hands up.

"Ohhhh my god," KF says, tipping his head back and rubbing his hands over his face. "I am- oh my god." These two. Theeeeese two. Kid usually isn't a pacifist but Hal and Jaime (or Khaji, whatever) are just sucking all the aggression out of the air and leaving Kid Flash to play peacekeeper. But he can do that, so long as nobody is getting punched or- or killed.

"No fighting. We're not fighting here, everything is cool. Dude, Jaime, could you gimme a sec with GL? I'll be one second." KF has to reach up to sling an arm around GL's shoulders and steers him-

Steers-

Tries to steer him a few feet away (seriously Hal that is some impressive foot-planting) so they can have a whispered conversation that is probably not nearly as quiet as Wally thinks it is. "Dude. He's my bro. He's saved my life, he's saved other people's lives- you gotta trust me. Bart says our version of Jaime back home is a hero too. I think it's a universal constant. He's not gonna hurt anybody, least of all me. He's probably my best friend here, after Rob."

Hal very reluctantly lets Wally pull him away upon seeing Jaime back down. It at least displays a willingness to make it look like he's not going to pull something even if he's guessing he doesn't need to be suited up to do anything.

He stares at Wally incredulously and has a kneejerk defensive reaction on Kyle's behalf. So what if Kyle wouldn't be around in Wally's world until years later. That's his best friend spot Jaime has claimed. Flash and Green Lantern were generational, they had to keep it up until they had a new GL for Bart to befriend.

Hal also keeps his voice down and a lot more carefully than Wally. "I trust you, but I don't trust his intentions." He'd asked his ring for more details and nothing he heard sounded good. "I want to believe you, you think I like thinking this kid is going to try take over the world? I was there when he first came onto the scene, he didn't stick around because John and I were getting too close, but he did good work."

Hal had absolutely been willing to genuinely give him a chance until one of his innocuous comments got taken the wrong way which lead to continued belligerence and Hal wondering if it was worth the risk.

"We were just on patrol together dude, nothing was going on. I've been here months with this guy; trust me, he's harmless. Well, to good people. Sometimes even to bad people. Look-"

Kid leans a little closer and gives Hal a searching look, eyes squinted. "Is there something else happening here? I mean, when you said you'd be my guardian you said- and I quote, no bedtime, no curfews, only giving you a heads up when I'm in trouble. You've been on me like white on rice since we printed out those forms. Is everything okay with you, do you wanna talk about anything?"

Hal takes a step back, this time his outraged voice carries. "I'm not being that responsible!" Because that's exactly what people needed to know, the protector of the universe refusing to take responsibility.

"Besides you didn't give me a heads up. I had to see your prison selfie with your 'awesome' tattoo plastered over the network."

"One, you're absolutely being responsible! You're putting me on a tighter leash than the Flash ever has. Two, I just woke up in prison and so I decided to deal with it via selfie! I mean, I couldn't text anybody separately or anything and when I asked for my phone call they said already used it. That was the only way I could get the word out! And the tat and stuff was to soften the blow!" KF steps back and scrubs his hands through his hair, frustrated. "For being the one who has to teach me to loosen up and be cool, you're being really uptight and uncool."

"Phones still exist! You ask for your phonecall and look up the number to my place!"

Are they doing this now? Yes they are. Forget about Jaime and the Reach, this is what needs to be dealt with now. This would be a good time to butt in and ask how things stood between them, Jaime. The other option is watch while they argued loudly and not actually come to an agreement.

"This is completely different to sneaking out to meet a girl. All I have to do then is remind you to take a damn condom and make sure she says yes!"

It seemed to be going okay at first. Wally vouched for him - and in a great way, so thanks for that one, buddy - and Hal argued, which was about expected. What he hadn't been expecting was the argument about Hal's apparent guardianship over Wally, and how Hal felt that it wasn't his responsibility to be responsible, which were, frankly, alarming words out of the mouth of someone who had been yelling about being licensed to kill not so long ago.

As he watched, Jaime lowered his hands and stuffed them into his pockets, aggression bleeding off of him not because of some inherent pacifistic streak (which he did have, thank you), but because this scene was getting too personal for Jaime to poke his head in there and say: hey, so you were about to punch me, are you going to get on that? This is like the Teen Titans all over again. People argue about stuff he doesn't understand, and he stands in the back and waits for them to finish, only this time, they're probably not going to finish and nobody would react very well to him quietly leaving the room like he usually does.

So he just waves awkwardly, clears his throat and says, "So, um, obviously you guys have some stuff you need to talk about. But."

I still need to know whether or not I should be frightened for my life.

Jaime ends up pointing at himself a little questioningly. "Are we done?"

If he's going to get punched in the face, he'd like a little advance warning.

Kid's practically seething by the time Jaime pipes up and he glares at him for a second like it's his fault. It's not. He's just becoming increasingly pissed off with all the adults here and kind of wants to break some stuff. Now he knows how Conner feels all the time.

"Yeah." KF zips back over to Jaime's side and throws an arm over his shoulders, lifting his chin at Hal in defiance. Probably not the best move, but nobody ever accused Kid Flash of having good ideas. "For the record? My friend. Right here. And you are totally more than welcome to not look out for me if that's a problem for you."

Hal straightens up, jaw clenched and his military background comes in clear from his posture. He's not in parade rest because they'd be considered civilians and they're children, but he holds himself with authority. This really isn't the place for this, but the way they are means that if this isn't addressed now, it's never going to be and with the interruption Hal has no intention of picking it back up. This matter is going to have to fester.

"Fine, I'll back off." For now. He's at least acknowledging that going at it now would be a bad decision and so far this is a misunderstanding. Whether or not this was part of the Reach's plan was yet to be discovered and if it was it was a really smart plan. Alienating the one person who could be a threat by picking fights with him and then acting innocent to everyone else.

"I'll see you around, neighbour."

And then he flies off. Those two would have a lot to discuss and he didn't need to be here for that. It should be enough that they've re-established their boundaries.

"Ohhh boy," Jaime mutters as he watches Hal go, wincing at the venom with which Hal said neighbour and quietly dreading having to go back home. Khaji's been on overdrive with the alarms this whole time, and he knows that living beside Hal, it's only going to get worse. This time, he can't even blame Khaji for being alarmed; why wouldn't he be scared of a very serious potential threat? He pinches at the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut for a second. "This is going to be fun."

What he should do, he thinks, is try to talk to Hal and get this tiny ball of anger and dread from out of the pit of his stomach, but the mere idea of it seems nothing short of intolerable. It's faded now, mitigated by Wally's own argument with Hal, but he knows the anger's bubbling underneath the surface, ready to come back at full blast. He hates being treated like a weapon, like a loose cannon just waiting to go off in the direction of his friends.

But then there's Wally standing beside him, arm slung over his shoulder, which is a nice reminder of the fact that the people who have the most reasons to think of him as a danger also happen to be his closest friends.

"Thanks for that, dude," he says, and though his voice is quiet, it's no less genuine for it.

"Sure," KF mutters, watching the sky as Hal's green light trail fade away, his shoulders slowly relaxing as it disappears into the night. Wally has never been afraid of Green Lanters, not once; he hangs with the most powerful people on Earth on a semi-regular basis and not once as he ever been scared of any of them. Never had a reason to. But seeing him go after Jaime like that...

"Dude." KF keeps his eyes on the sky, like he's worried Hal will come back. "You wanna stay at Mt. Justice 2.0 for a couple days? Okay I'm gonna shorten that. Just until Hal chills out." Or forever. Preferably forever, but unlikely. "You can have my room, I'll bunk with Rob."

"Yeah. That sounds good. I don't mind just crashing on the couch, but I -- I probably shouldn't go back to my place for a little while."

A part of him wants to point out that he may well be making things worse for both himself and Wally in the long run, knowing that Hal takes such an issue with him and Wally hanging out, but he still stays at his place immediately after. But in the end, that's where he wants to say, so even if it's selfish, he's going to take the offer and run. He's got plenty of places he could stay at. After everything, Shinji would be willing to let him crash at his place for a few nights, and so would Traci, or Laurie, or Kaidan, or even Booster, but he doesn't want to. He wants to be somewhere where he's comfortable enough to hunker down and sulk in peace, because that's honestly all he wants to do right now.

He scrubs his hands through his hair, making a low, frustrated noise deep in the back of his throat, and if the tension in him had bled away in front of Hal, it had been a temporary thing; it's all coming back now, carried in his jaw and his shoulders, in his curled hands and his furrowed brow.

"Ugh, I'm just... I think I'm gonna go flying for a bit."

Wally will just break it to Jaime later that there's no couch, so he's stuck using Wally's room too bad. Probably when he gets to the cave, when he stops looking like he wants to crawl out of his skin.

"Sure, dude." KF gets it. He runs cross country to clear his head. He definitely gets it. "I'll let the others know you're gonna spend the night. We can lock GL's code out if it makes you feel better?"

Edited 2015-02-23 06:56 (UTC)

"Nah, it's fine. If he really wants to get in, he'll get in one way or another. At least if he's still got a code, he's not just gonna bust everything up."

That's the thing about having a Green Lantern set on watching him, isn't it? With anyone else, Jaime would be able to fly up and away from anyone who wanted to hurt him, but Hal is, in all probability, stronger and faster and more agile than he is. If he decides that he wants to bust into Mt. Justice, he'll get in there one way or another.

But Jaime doesn't think he'll come now, which means that Jaime has the freedom to take to the air and fly as hard and fast as he can until he burns off some of this excess energy bubbling in the bottom of his gut. He lets the suit rise up from underneath his skin again and lets his wings come out with a snapping sound before pushing off the ground and into a hover.

"Dude," KF calls up to him, because he's upset but seeing Jaime this upset just makes his stomach twist in a way it usually doesn't. Jaime never gets upset, not like this.

But what the hell can KF say? Sometimes talking is pointless, and this feels like one of those times. Not to mention he clearly doesn't know as much about Jaime as he thought he did. "...Call me if you need me." He backs up a few steps to give Jaime room to take off.

He should talk to Hal. Which means he absolutely won't.

"I will. Thanks, man. I'll see you later."

Much later, Jaime thinks, because he probably won't be crashing into Mt. Justice until late - after something like this, he needs his alone time. Wally's plenty used to him flying away, wings leisurely flapping off into the distance, but now, Jaime needs to fly fast and far.

It doesn't take long for him to disappear.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(no subject)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

LAUGHS THANKS FOR THE HINT MICHELE I WAS WAITING FOR A GO AHEAD

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject