Big Damn List has Hal/Kyle and tequila WHY.
So I was going to post this to the Hal/Kyle comm, but it's very much Guy's POV and reactions.
Title: Third Law
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: Guy Gardner, Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner
Prompt: 003 - ENDS
Word Count: 2002
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Hal deals with the consequences of the Third Law. Guy has to put up with it.
Author's Notes: Hal/Kyle slash (referenced). Set some time after GLC #31.
The Book Of Oa - Third Law. Physical relationships and love between Green Lanterns is forbidden within the Corps.
No such thing as an actual quiet morning existed on Oa, not since the planet had been reconstituted and the Guardians brought back to life. The very existence of the Corps ensured that something weird happened on a daily basis, and for some inexplicable reason, it seemed that Guy’s bar invariably ended up at the forefront. Today, in the wake of hundreds of rings flying back to Oa after the Guardians’ newest law, Guy finally had nothing better to do than put his bar back in order.
The new law involved suddenly naming inter-Lantern relationships taboo, leading to hundreds of Corps members quitting rather than split up with their partners. While hundreds out of thousands wasn’t as horrific a result as Guy had imagined, it still meant all those rings had to be recalibrated and sent out, and newbies had to be trained - again - and the empty sectors had to be covered. After far too much time dealing with fallout, Guy had gotten the day off, but of course something screwy had to happen.
Telling Hal to go away when he walked into the bar at ten in the morning was a temptation, but Guy resisted it. He also resisted the temptation to make zombie jokes at Hal’s expense, because he wasn’t completely heartless, no matter what everyone else thought, and if even Hal’s hair was all flat and lifeless, something had to be going on. He suppressed his misgivings and did not hide behind the bar and wait for Hal to leave, either. He started to regret it when Hal silently grabbed the single bottle of tequila - completely full, seal still unbroken - and a clean glass with the ring. Hal didn’t even speak, just started drinking.
The morning only got worse from there. Guy left the closed sign up, locked the door for good measure, and closed the blinds. Maybe if he just dealt with whatever Hal’s problem was, or at least got him to go away, nothing else would go wrong. As the level of tequila in the bottle went steadily downwards, Guy was seriously regretting not taking his day off somewhere far, far away with women to be chased and bar fights to be had. When Hal looked up at him and asked if he knew anything about drunken boxing, Guy was distracted enough to answer yes without thinking about it, which only led to Hal asking for a lesson.
“Not a good idea.” Guy polished the clean mug in his hands for the third time. Even if drunken boxing involved actual alcohol, he didn’t know any more about it than what he’d learned in one lesson in college as payment for a tutoring job.
“Is.” Hal wasn’t even completely upright anymore; he was leaning heavily enough against the bar that Guy was almost sure he was going to fall right off of it.
“Ain’t.” Maybe if he pushed Hal, just a little.
“How hard-“ Hal started.
“So help me, Hal, if you say ‘how hard can it be,’ I will put an end to this right now,” Guy warned him, and something in his voice must have penetrated the fog that was clearly in Hal’s brain.
“It wasn’tha’much tequila. Really. I’m fine,” Hal protested, making an only marginally successful effort to sit up straighter.
“People only say that when they’re completely wasted,” Guy muttered under his breath.
“What?” Hal blinked, leaning forward carefully, pupils so dilated that Guy wasn’t sure how he could see anything at all.
“Nothin’,” he answered, putting the mug back on the shelf and taking the opportunity to swipe the glass Hal had been using.
“Well?” Hal demanded.
“Well, what?” Guy didn’t think he was talking about the glass, but he wasn’t about to give that back, either.
“Show me how’ss works.” Hal waved his hands around in an extremely vague approximation of some kind of martial art and nearly knocked the tequila bottle over. Guy rescued what remained of it and moved it out of reach.
“I already told you, I ain’t showin’ you drunken boxing. Not when you’re already drunk,” he said, not that he thought it was going to help.
“I’m not,” Hal insisted. He’d managed to stop leaning on the bar, but now he was listing to the right.
“What’s this, then? It was full when you started,” Guy retorted, waving the tequila bottle. The way Hal’s eyes didn’t track it was further confirmation of exactly how drunk he was, not that Guy needed said confirmation.
“’M a grown man. I c’n handle a little -“ Hal lurched suddenly, clamping his mouth shut.
“Oh, shi-“ Guy dove under the bar, searching for a bucket.
“Fine, ‘m fine, no problem.”
“Yeah, sure.” Guy poked his head up to see that Hal did indeed look fine, in that he probably wasn’t about to redecorate the floor. “Here.”
“Wha’th’ fuck - I don’ need water, Guy.” Hal had forgotten to stop leaning on the bar again, but somehow he still managed to project indignation with every line of his body.
“Shut up and drink it.” Guy wrapped Hal’s hand around the glass and pulled out the bucket he’d found, just in case.
“Yeah, yeah.” Hal took a sip of water, and then another. Guy watched him until he emptied the glass and then refilled it. Hal slowly drank that one, too, not that it had any positive effects that Guy could see.
“Look, I ain’t good at this, but I can listen. If, you know, you wanna talk.” He didn’t know why he said it; it was just that he’d never seen Hal like this, not when he was bouncing from job to job after breaking up with Carol Ferris, not after that business in Russia with the woman pilot, never. Hal didn’t mope when something went wrong; he picked up and kept going. Occasionally he kept going batshit insane, but Parallax had turned out to be a yellow fear bug and Hal couldn’t be entirely blamed for that. Regardless of what Hal had or hadn’t done to Guy or anyone else, he was still a friend.
Hal was silent for long enough that Guy gave up on waiting for an answer and started to walk away. “It sucks,” he said suddenly and clearly, and Guy stopped moving.
“Yeah?” There wasn’t really much else he could say in answer.
“This new law.” Hal pushed the glass away with the deliberately careful movements of a man who knows perfectly well how inebriated he is and is trying not to let anyone else find out, but Guy wasn’t about to pay attention to Hal’s attempts to appear sober with obscene amounts of tequila in him. Of all the things he might have expected to hear from Hal, a complaint about the new law wasn’t one of them.
“The… that’s what… Hal, who were you…?” He couldn’t think of a single woman currently in the Corps with whom playboy Hal spent enough time to be this upset over, and besides, there were rumors about that pilot back on Earth. He spent a lot of time with Kyle, sure, but they couldn’t possibly be serious.
“I had t’choose,” Hal said, quietly enough that Guy had to lean in to hear him. Typical of Hal to ignore even a direct question, Guy thought.
“Must’ve been somethin’ special,” he said after a moment, trying to remember who was stationed where and coming up completely blank.
“Had t’choose this.” Hal ignored the hint just as thoroughly as he’d ignored directness, and Guy gave up.
“Yeah, man. I know.” He refilled Hal’s water glass behind the counter and pushed it back into reach.
“This is who I am,” Hal insisted, words slow and deliberate, wrapping his hands around the glass and blinking earnestly in Guy’s general direction. With that lost expression, he looked ridiculously young. He looked almost as if he would cry - no no no, Guy chanted under his breath - but then he buried his face in the water glass.
“Yeah, well, it’s probably who she is too. Or she’d’ve quit and you wouldn’t be makin’ a mess of my bar.” Crisis averted - there were limits to what he was willing to sit through for Hal - Guy grabbed a clean rag and started polishing the bar for the fifty millionth time.
He’d gotten all the way down to the other end and back before Hal spoke again. “So you gonna teach me?”
“What?” Guy just stared at him, having no idea where Hal’s pickled brain had gone this time.
“Drunk’n boxing,” Hal said impatiently, as if the intervening conversation had never taken place.
Guy stared at him for a moment, tempted to ask the “How many fingers?” question, but maybe if he gave Hal a five minute lesson in something that looked like drunken boxing, the man would go away and sleep off the tequila and maybe even deal with his ex-girlfriend and the Guardians’ screwy laws. “Fine. Stand up.”
Hal grinned, shockingly bright, and slid right off the barstool. Guy waited a moment to see if he’d just lost his balance, but that was so very unfortunately not the case.
“Hal.” Nudging Hal with his toe did not produce the desired response - Hal standing up and getting out of his bar - and neither did sparking him with the ring. “Oh, for the love of…”
A crashing sound from the doorway had Guy not only reflexively ringing on his uniform but also surrounding Hal with a protective shield before he saw what had made the noise. He dropped the shield in disgust when he saw that it was just Kyle, a tray of broken glass at his feet. Kyle took a hesitant step forward, the light from the bar falling over him for the first time, and Guy noticed abruptly that the blood had drained from his face. He crossed the floor with quick steps, replacing the shield over Hal and looking for possible damage to Kyle.“Are you all right?”
Kyle wasn’t physically injured, according to his ring, and Guy saw no sign of a disturbance when he peered outside. He dissolved the shield around Hal again and Kyle was across the room like a shot, without answering Guy’s question.
“Hal.” That one word told Guy everything he didn’t want to know about just how involved Hal and Kyle were; like nearly everyone else, he’d thought they had an on-again-off-again fling. It wasn’t something Guy wanted to think about, much less see, but Kyle was his partner and Hal was his friend. He wasn’t about to condemn either one of them. The look on Kyle’s face, though, told him not only how strong the connection between the two of them was, but also why the new law had to be enacted and strictly followed. Neither Hal nor Kyle was capable at this point of thinking clearly where the other was concerned. That could end up losing a fight, a battle, even the entire upcoming war.
“I thought he didn’t care,” Kyle said, so softly that Guy wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear, but Kyle was looking directly at him.
“I’m sorry, kid.” It wasn’t the right thing to say, but he didn’t know what was.
“Would you, um, I- I have to go.” Kyle pushed past him, into the bright street outside.
“Yeah,” Guy said, but Kyle was already gone. Using the ring to haul Hal (and a bucket, just in case) up to a guest bedroom was absolutely not a matter of personal gain or misuse, nor was using it to clean up the glass Kyle had spilled. Guy relocked the door, leaning against it. Just because the law made some kind of sense after all didn’t mean he had to like it. ‘What would you do, if it were Tora?’ Kyle had asked. He hadn’t known then, still didn’t. There wasn’t a right answer that he could see, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
FINIS
Title: Third Law
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: Guy Gardner, Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner
Prompt: 003 - ENDS
Word Count: 2002
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Hal deals with the consequences of the Third Law. Guy has to put up with it.
Author's Notes: Hal/Kyle slash (referenced). Set some time after GLC #31.
The Book Of Oa - Third Law. Physical relationships and love between Green Lanterns is forbidden within the Corps.
No such thing as an actual quiet morning existed on Oa, not since the planet had been reconstituted and the Guardians brought back to life. The very existence of the Corps ensured that something weird happened on a daily basis, and for some inexplicable reason, it seemed that Guy’s bar invariably ended up at the forefront. Today, in the wake of hundreds of rings flying back to Oa after the Guardians’ newest law, Guy finally had nothing better to do than put his bar back in order.
The new law involved suddenly naming inter-Lantern relationships taboo, leading to hundreds of Corps members quitting rather than split up with their partners. While hundreds out of thousands wasn’t as horrific a result as Guy had imagined, it still meant all those rings had to be recalibrated and sent out, and newbies had to be trained - again - and the empty sectors had to be covered. After far too much time dealing with fallout, Guy had gotten the day off, but of course something screwy had to happen.
Telling Hal to go away when he walked into the bar at ten in the morning was a temptation, but Guy resisted it. He also resisted the temptation to make zombie jokes at Hal’s expense, because he wasn’t completely heartless, no matter what everyone else thought, and if even Hal’s hair was all flat and lifeless, something had to be going on. He suppressed his misgivings and did not hide behind the bar and wait for Hal to leave, either. He started to regret it when Hal silently grabbed the single bottle of tequila - completely full, seal still unbroken - and a clean glass with the ring. Hal didn’t even speak, just started drinking.
The morning only got worse from there. Guy left the closed sign up, locked the door for good measure, and closed the blinds. Maybe if he just dealt with whatever Hal’s problem was, or at least got him to go away, nothing else would go wrong. As the level of tequila in the bottle went steadily downwards, Guy was seriously regretting not taking his day off somewhere far, far away with women to be chased and bar fights to be had. When Hal looked up at him and asked if he knew anything about drunken boxing, Guy was distracted enough to answer yes without thinking about it, which only led to Hal asking for a lesson.
“Not a good idea.” Guy polished the clean mug in his hands for the third time. Even if drunken boxing involved actual alcohol, he didn’t know any more about it than what he’d learned in one lesson in college as payment for a tutoring job.
“Is.” Hal wasn’t even completely upright anymore; he was leaning heavily enough against the bar that Guy was almost sure he was going to fall right off of it.
“Ain’t.” Maybe if he pushed Hal, just a little.
“How hard-“ Hal started.
“So help me, Hal, if you say ‘how hard can it be,’ I will put an end to this right now,” Guy warned him, and something in his voice must have penetrated the fog that was clearly in Hal’s brain.
“It wasn’tha’much tequila. Really. I’m fine,” Hal protested, making an only marginally successful effort to sit up straighter.
“People only say that when they’re completely wasted,” Guy muttered under his breath.
“What?” Hal blinked, leaning forward carefully, pupils so dilated that Guy wasn’t sure how he could see anything at all.
“Nothin’,” he answered, putting the mug back on the shelf and taking the opportunity to swipe the glass Hal had been using.
“Well?” Hal demanded.
“Well, what?” Guy didn’t think he was talking about the glass, but he wasn’t about to give that back, either.
“Show me how’ss works.” Hal waved his hands around in an extremely vague approximation of some kind of martial art and nearly knocked the tequila bottle over. Guy rescued what remained of it and moved it out of reach.
“I already told you, I ain’t showin’ you drunken boxing. Not when you’re already drunk,” he said, not that he thought it was going to help.
“I’m not,” Hal insisted. He’d managed to stop leaning on the bar, but now he was listing to the right.
“What’s this, then? It was full when you started,” Guy retorted, waving the tequila bottle. The way Hal’s eyes didn’t track it was further confirmation of exactly how drunk he was, not that Guy needed said confirmation.
“’M a grown man. I c’n handle a little -“ Hal lurched suddenly, clamping his mouth shut.
“Oh, shi-“ Guy dove under the bar, searching for a bucket.
“Fine, ‘m fine, no problem.”
“Yeah, sure.” Guy poked his head up to see that Hal did indeed look fine, in that he probably wasn’t about to redecorate the floor. “Here.”
“Wha’th’ fuck - I don’ need water, Guy.” Hal had forgotten to stop leaning on the bar again, but somehow he still managed to project indignation with every line of his body.
“Shut up and drink it.” Guy wrapped Hal’s hand around the glass and pulled out the bucket he’d found, just in case.
“Yeah, yeah.” Hal took a sip of water, and then another. Guy watched him until he emptied the glass and then refilled it. Hal slowly drank that one, too, not that it had any positive effects that Guy could see.
“Look, I ain’t good at this, but I can listen. If, you know, you wanna talk.” He didn’t know why he said it; it was just that he’d never seen Hal like this, not when he was bouncing from job to job after breaking up with Carol Ferris, not after that business in Russia with the woman pilot, never. Hal didn’t mope when something went wrong; he picked up and kept going. Occasionally he kept going batshit insane, but Parallax had turned out to be a yellow fear bug and Hal couldn’t be entirely blamed for that. Regardless of what Hal had or hadn’t done to Guy or anyone else, he was still a friend.
Hal was silent for long enough that Guy gave up on waiting for an answer and started to walk away. “It sucks,” he said suddenly and clearly, and Guy stopped moving.
“Yeah?” There wasn’t really much else he could say in answer.
“This new law.” Hal pushed the glass away with the deliberately careful movements of a man who knows perfectly well how inebriated he is and is trying not to let anyone else find out, but Guy wasn’t about to pay attention to Hal’s attempts to appear sober with obscene amounts of tequila in him. Of all the things he might have expected to hear from Hal, a complaint about the new law wasn’t one of them.
“The… that’s what… Hal, who were you…?” He couldn’t think of a single woman currently in the Corps with whom playboy Hal spent enough time to be this upset over, and besides, there were rumors about that pilot back on Earth. He spent a lot of time with Kyle, sure, but they couldn’t possibly be serious.
“I had t’choose,” Hal said, quietly enough that Guy had to lean in to hear him. Typical of Hal to ignore even a direct question, Guy thought.
“Must’ve been somethin’ special,” he said after a moment, trying to remember who was stationed where and coming up completely blank.
“Had t’choose this.” Hal ignored the hint just as thoroughly as he’d ignored directness, and Guy gave up.
“Yeah, man. I know.” He refilled Hal’s water glass behind the counter and pushed it back into reach.
“This is who I am,” Hal insisted, words slow and deliberate, wrapping his hands around the glass and blinking earnestly in Guy’s general direction. With that lost expression, he looked ridiculously young. He looked almost as if he would cry - no no no, Guy chanted under his breath - but then he buried his face in the water glass.
“Yeah, well, it’s probably who she is too. Or she’d’ve quit and you wouldn’t be makin’ a mess of my bar.” Crisis averted - there were limits to what he was willing to sit through for Hal - Guy grabbed a clean rag and started polishing the bar for the fifty millionth time.
He’d gotten all the way down to the other end and back before Hal spoke again. “So you gonna teach me?”
“What?” Guy just stared at him, having no idea where Hal’s pickled brain had gone this time.
“Drunk’n boxing,” Hal said impatiently, as if the intervening conversation had never taken place.
Guy stared at him for a moment, tempted to ask the “How many fingers?” question, but maybe if he gave Hal a five minute lesson in something that looked like drunken boxing, the man would go away and sleep off the tequila and maybe even deal with his ex-girlfriend and the Guardians’ screwy laws. “Fine. Stand up.”
Hal grinned, shockingly bright, and slid right off the barstool. Guy waited a moment to see if he’d just lost his balance, but that was so very unfortunately not the case.
“Hal.” Nudging Hal with his toe did not produce the desired response - Hal standing up and getting out of his bar - and neither did sparking him with the ring. “Oh, for the love of…”
A crashing sound from the doorway had Guy not only reflexively ringing on his uniform but also surrounding Hal with a protective shield before he saw what had made the noise. He dropped the shield in disgust when he saw that it was just Kyle, a tray of broken glass at his feet. Kyle took a hesitant step forward, the light from the bar falling over him for the first time, and Guy noticed abruptly that the blood had drained from his face. He crossed the floor with quick steps, replacing the shield over Hal and looking for possible damage to Kyle.“Are you all right?”
Kyle wasn’t physically injured, according to his ring, and Guy saw no sign of a disturbance when he peered outside. He dissolved the shield around Hal again and Kyle was across the room like a shot, without answering Guy’s question.
“Hal.” That one word told Guy everything he didn’t want to know about just how involved Hal and Kyle were; like nearly everyone else, he’d thought they had an on-again-off-again fling. It wasn’t something Guy wanted to think about, much less see, but Kyle was his partner and Hal was his friend. He wasn’t about to condemn either one of them. The look on Kyle’s face, though, told him not only how strong the connection between the two of them was, but also why the new law had to be enacted and strictly followed. Neither Hal nor Kyle was capable at this point of thinking clearly where the other was concerned. That could end up losing a fight, a battle, even the entire upcoming war.
“I thought he didn’t care,” Kyle said, so softly that Guy wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear, but Kyle was looking directly at him.
“I’m sorry, kid.” It wasn’t the right thing to say, but he didn’t know what was.
“Would you, um, I- I have to go.” Kyle pushed past him, into the bright street outside.
“Yeah,” Guy said, but Kyle was already gone. Using the ring to haul Hal (and a bucket, just in case) up to a guest bedroom was absolutely not a matter of personal gain or misuse, nor was using it to clean up the glass Kyle had spilled. Guy relocked the door, leaning against it. Just because the law made some kind of sense after all didn’t mean he had to like it. ‘What would you do, if it were Tora?’ Kyle had asked. He hadn’t known then, still didn’t. There wasn’t a right answer that he could see, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
FINIS