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John was sweet with the bird. Gentle and smiling in a way Hal could never make him, on his own. The way he’d pet its head with his knuckle, staring adoringly down at the thing when he’d made it was almost child-like.
Hal had wanted to keep him like that. Joy made him so much prettier. And damn it John liked the thing, that much was obvious, who was Hal to take it away from him?
Anyway, he expected it to dissolve away somewhere in the air between Utah and Wyoming, so there was really no reason to kill it before then, unless he wanted to be cruel.
He didn’t. John didn’t need any more of that.
So he’d given him that bullshit impossible assignment, “come back with the bird alive”. John liked a challenge. He’d hate failing at it, but it wouldn’t break him. Just make him try that much harder the next time Hal gave him the ring. Maybe it’d even push him to finally fly.
But then John—impossible, incredible John—had strolled right back up to him, hours after being beaten and tazed and kidnapped, with the bird still circling and tittering around him.
The willpower on this kid. The drive. He’d make a great lantern one day. Better than Hal ever was.
“It’s just a bird.”
In that stoic monotone, eyes low, fixed on his hands as he crushed it gone. John moved like a man used to killing the things that brought him joy. Hal’s cold stone heart chipped a little watching it.
They never seemed to understand each other. Maybe that was Hal’s fault, for being a tight-lipped jackass, but John wasn’t ready to know everything Hal knew. And Hal certainly wasn’t ready to tell him.
Still, Hal couldn’t get that blank look out of his head. The dead eyes, the flattened lips, fingers slow and steady curling around the only thing Hal had ever seen make the kid smile…
“I answer to you.”
What is he supposed to do with that kind of loyalty? How is he supposed to hold it without breaking it?
The moon is high in the sky by the time he gets back from the prison. It’s easy to slip out of the suit; doesn’t fit so good anymore. Doesn’t feel so ‘right’ as it used to.
John is asleep, or pretending to be, on his side of the bed, closest to the door. His back—broad, tense, covered only with a thin white tank—faces Hal.
He keeps the ring on when he slips in beside him. Been doing that more, lately. Junior’s good with it, creative; and he wants it, that much is clear in his eyes when he looks at it sitting on Hal’s finger. Hal’s not sure if part of the cageyness isn’t because of that look. Because, deep down, he wishes it wasn’t just his finger John was eyeing.
Whatever. To hell with it. The whole situation’s fucked and they’ve already fucked about it. Greedy to ask for more, and even if there is something there, it’s only gonna end one miserable way. Hal’s old enough to know that.
“Mmh.” John says, unintelligibly. He shifts, sheets a soft shhh against his skin.
“Just me, kid.” Hal whispers, voice gruff.
“Go back to sleep.”
John’s eyes flicker open, because Hal’s rubbing off on him and he’s starting to like being a little shit. They crinkle in a small smile before he heaves a long breath.
“Where’d you go? S’cold.” He murmurs into his pillow.
A broad hand reaches out into the space between them, curling over itself on the cool white sheets, trim nails absently scratching against the fabric. Like he’s asking Hal closer. Like the hand wants a friend.
He’s a dream in the moonlight. Didn’t draw the curtains fully, probably to keep an eye on the street once he realized Hal wasn’t going to be back for a while. Hal hadn’t noticed until now, and he isn’t about to get his creaky ass up to fix it when the bed is so warm and he has the ring on.
A mix of the parking lot floodlights and a bright full moon shine out through the gossamer sheers, blurring around John’s face and shoulders. The soft dip of his waist under the covers. He looks like something out of a magazine.
No, like a memory. Something rose-tinted and simple. Nice. Something a guy like Hal would kill to have to hold onto, on the bad days.
Everything a guy like Hal can’t have.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s late. Lets just sleep, okay?”
John looks at him for a long moment, eyes lidded and soft. Not even a flicker of doubt, no fear or suspicion. It’s been a long time since anyone looked at Hal like that.
“You’ll tell me.” He said. “When you need to.”
He sounds so sure, like he’s seen into the future and is only reporting the facts. Hal swallows around nothing. How could Sinestro have even considered killing this kid? What dark, vicious part of Hal makes it so believable that he’d be alright taking this man’s faith and crushing soundly beneath his boot? That he’d enjoy it, even?
He closes his eyes.
“Yeah, right.”
Then, inexplicably, “I’m sorry about your bird.”
John makes a derisive noise, in the back of his throat. It tears through the quiet room like a jagged streak of lightning. His hand clenches around the empty sheets, once, before releasing back into carefully controlled calm.
“Don’t be. Was just a bird. I told you.”
Hal ignores him, flipping over to stare up at the ceiling.
“It was good. Real fine work, you know. Took me a couple years before I could make stuff like that.”
John stays quiet. He continues to scratch at the sheets, soft, rhythmic movements that would irritate Hal if he wasn’t so tired.
You look good when you smile.
Hal doesn’t say.
I wish you had your own ring. I wish I was half as good as you. I wish I could make you a bird like that. I wish we wanted the same things.
Then, after a while, John’s hand twitches towards Hal’s side of the bed. Through the corner of his eye Hal watches his lip curl at the edge, just barely, eyes cast somewhere at the juncture between Hal’s neck and shoulder.
“Well, I don’t know. I’m just starting out. Maybe…”
He heaves a sharp, stuttering breath, his index finger reaches out towards Hal’s heat, like a flower seeking the sun.
“Maybe a lesson would be good. You’ve got all the experience.”
Hal frowns up at the ceiling. There’s a crack near the base of the overhead light, and the shadow of a bug inside of the cloudy ceramic.
He knows what Junior’s really asking for. Knows what he thinks he needs. Hal should have never let it happen in the first place but what did he expect from himself, really?
First Mrs. Macon and now his ‘trainer’. Two people he knows he can never really keep.
Kid doesn’t know what’s good for him.
He’s probably used to hurting. Probably wants the emptiness at the end of it all, if only because he knows it’ll make him a good lantern. Because Hal had told him it would make him a good lantern.
Hell, he probably has a thirteen-step plan for breaking his own heart, making himself fearless, because if even love can’t touch him, nothing can.
What a terrifying, lonely thought.
Hal can’t do that to him. Well, rather, Hal can’t help him do that to himself. By all rights he’s a bastard and an asshole, but he’s not that much of a bastard and an asshole.
“Sorry kid,” he says. “Not tonight.”
John doesn’t fight it. He never fights about small things. Just nods and closes his eyes, drawing his hand back to his side of the bed as if he had never reached out in the first place.
Hal stares at the ceiling until the sky starts to light, heavy with age and the weight of this mission. John sleeps in fits, jolting and turning, but never once crossing the imaginary line between them.
He was right, Hal thinks, ruefully. It’s cold.