jerseydevious:

not necessarily what fits the prompt, but i do believe it works for your purposes? i hope you enjoy!

Dinah popped a jelly bean in her mouth. “What are we watching?”

Oliver was laying in her lap, thumbing through a magazine. Hal had constructed a fort of pillows on the floor beside them.

“Just scoot over,” Barry said. “Look, you’ve got like a solid five inches, there’s room for me.”

“No, I made this,” Hal said, stubbornly crossing his arms. 

Diana was propped in Oliver’s black leather recliner, still wearing her slightly smoldering armor, because nothing Dinah owned could reasonably fit her. Clark was in a similar position – the Kryptonian suit was still going through the process of knitting itself together, and the motion of the bands of alien fabric was oddly soothing. 

It had been a hard battle – Hal was holding an ice pack to a blackened eye, Barry resting a few bruised ribs, Diana was still wiping blood from a wicked cut on her shoulder, Oliver favoring his right arm. Bruce himself could feel the pounding pain in his knee and the wasted mess he called his right shoulder these days, a cracked rib that was making it hard to breathe that deeply. A hard battle, but a satisfying one. The exhausted burn of his muscles was pleasant, the treat of Oliver’s whiskey even more so.

“What are we watching?” Clark asked. “I could go for a movie.”

Bruce swallowed a groan – perhaps he should have taken his chance, and headed back for Gotham. 

“Dinah, babe, what do we have on the rack here?” Oliver asked, tossing aside his magazine, which landed squarely on Hal’s lap. 

“Better Home and Garden, Ol, seriously?”

“Twelve Angry Men, Metropolis, er, It Happened One Night, and I think Mark of Zorro?” Dinah replied, speaking over Hal. “You wanted to show me the brilliance of black and white movies.”

“If you make me sit through Twelve Angry Men again I’m going to punt you into the sun,” Hal growled. 

“Black and white movies? Aren’t those a bit – well, boring?” Barry asked.

Oliver jolted up so fast he knocked Dinah in the chin. “Boring? These movies are total masterpieces, have you even seen Metropolis – “

“The naming is unfortunate,” Clark quipped, which got a general laugh from the group of them, and safely diffused whatever tirade Oliver was ready to unleash. 

Diana leaned over to peer into the magazine Hal was now flipping through with an absent expression of disgust. “That’s a wonderful flower arrangement. Is there a broader selection of film?”

“Ah, no, we just brought them here for a weekend,” Dinah explained. 

Oliver winked. “It was a fun weekend.”

“Oh, gross,” Hal moaned, slapping him on the arm. “Just turn on Mark of Zorro. That’s a damn good movie.”

It was. It had been. The thing about the sudden strike of tragedy was that it threw every mundane detail before it into sharp relief, like the long cast of shadow against marble; he remembered the Mark of Zorro in every breath, every twitch of it. He remembered that movie, and the bloodbath that came after it, better than he remembered his parents, even.

“Oh, uh,” Clark fumbled with the edge of his cape. “Actually, I was kind of curious about – “

“Mark of Zorro,” Bruce growled, tipping back his glass. The whiskey burned nicely. He probably would have left for Gotham already, if not for the pleasure of Oliver’s whiskey. 

Clark eyed him, and Bruce gave him a short nod. The look on Clark’s read I know this is going to end badly, but I can’t stop you.

“I know admitting you and Hal like the same movie had to have caused you physical pain, but you could at least try not to say it like you’re doing your vengeance and the night bit,” Oliver said. “I might have peed a little. I didn’t even think you were still here.”

Hal groaned. “Don’t say it out loud, that makes it real.”

Dinah popped in the movie, and Oliver passed out bags of chips, and Hal staged a small rebellion and made a bowl of popcorn, which Clark and Barry immediately started stealing out of. Eventually, though, the movie got started, and Bruce found himself mouthing the words – that funny thing, about tragedy.

It occurred to him that this was a movie Jason would have enjoyed, once upon a time. Jason, as a kid, had been attracted to the same things Bruce had been – action, adventure, the wilder the better. Bruce pulled his phone out of his pocket, thumbed through his text messages; his conversations with Jason were short, mostly locations and the letter ‘k’, nothing of substance. He dropped it in his lap, tugged out his wallet, and and pried out the picture of Jay he kept by his side. It was well-worn, faded. It had seen a lot of love, over the years. He held the picture, let his thumb run over it, and downed the rest of his drink.

“Why can she not fend for herself?” Diana asked. “Lolita is important to the plot only as a love interest. And Inez is as shallow as Zorro pretends to be, but she has no character outside of that.”

Clark munched on popcorn. “The joys of the 1940s.”

“See, Diana, we need to get together and – ”

Oliver was interrupted by a concussive snore from Barry, who was drooling on Hal’s shoulder. For his part, Hal hadn’t seemed to notice the small ocean building up on his shoulder. 

The normality, the domesticity of it, made Bruce’s gut writhe like a python. In the next room, he told himself, there’s someone waiting who can end all of this – in the next room, down the next hall, a hop and a skip and a jump, the alleyway down. There is always someone waiting. 

Bruce dropped his glass on the floor, and stalked out of the den – Oliver’s condo in Seattle was modest, designed more like a cabin than the designated residence of a multi-billionaire. Bruce rather liked it, usually – it was tight and walled in, plenty of places to hide. Tonight, it meant more places for men like Joe Chill to disappear – and Bruce knew he wouldn’t be able to rest if he didn’t turn over every inch of the condo. 

He felt, more than heard, Clark come up behind him. 

“Save it,” Bruce snapped.

“I was going to offer to search the bedrooms, if you wanted.”

Bruce turned, studying Clark’s face – it was an earnest face, unsettling in its honesty. “You… can.”

Clark nodded, and disappeared. He came back after a minute – slow enough to let Bruce know he’d looked, but fast enough that he’d still have used super speed. The panic – the itch just beneath his skin – wouldn’t leave, like every time he turned about, something manifested in the long shadows behind him. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

He could hear the end of the movie – the fear, the one that was always there, mounted in his chest. When he’d come back from the alley that night, he’d been splattered in the gray matter that had once been his mother’s brain. He’d picked it out of his hair. His clothes hadn’t been much better – the knees of his pants were soaked with blood, his shirt splattered. He hadn’t known what to do with the clothes, so he’d tucked them beneath his bed, and one day about a year later he’d come home to find Alfred, head bent, shoulders shaking, holding the pile of clothes in his lap – 

He was outside, Clark next to him. The bench was cold, bitterly so – that night in the alley had been blazing hot. The blood had felt like liquid fire. 

“You’re always right, aren’t you,” Bruce whispered. 

“I’d like to get a tape of you saying that, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Bruce pressed his palms into his eyes. “It’s – it’s a movie. It is a movie, and nothing else.”

Clark didn’t say anything, and Bruce cut his eyes at him. 

“What? I’m not gonna tell you that you’re wrong.”

“Well, you just did.”

“Only because you already knew I was going to disagree. Bruce, you’re not – you’re not a tank, right? You can’t try and force your way through everything, You can’t – I don’t know, put more armor on top and expect it to be fine.”

Bruce studied his hands. “Clark. Stop making sense when I’m tired and drunk.”

“I don’t know, I like hearing you admit I’m always right.”