The spell isn’t an unprecedented one. A quick look around the League – a quick look at the quick looks the members of the Justice League are giving each other – resolves that fairly quickly, and with very little room for doubt. There are a few relationships revealed just a little sooner than they might have been, but for the most part, people are only concerned with Batman. Batman, who has two little marks above his head, when no one knew of more than one romantic intrigue he was involved it.
Batman, whose eyes flit to Ollie so fast he’s sure he’s the only one who caught it.
Batman, who storms out of the room.
He doesn’t storm, so much. He doesn’t saunter, either, the way Ollie would assume he might, having put two and two together. Then again, if he walked in the costume the way he walked in the streets, everyone would’ve put two and two together. Still, the mood is stormy, and the Bat leaves, and everyone is caught in awkward silence, not wanting to talk about it, not quite willing to leave the subject be.
Ollie follows him. It takes a while, because Ollie has to make his excuses before he can extricate himself, has to lay yet another false trail so no one can follow him home to his childhood secrets, but he does. He knows where Batman is going.
It puzzles him, the way a good secret often does. He knew Tommy as a child, of course, and could’ve sworn they both could read each other’s minds. Even when he returned, years and ages apart, they still had some sense of what the other felt, what the other wanted. It’s the same with Batman, except that it isn’t at all. He has no idea where Tommy would’ve gone. He knows exactly where Batman, his coworker and never his childhood friend, would go to stew.
Hard to reconcile. And not so hard. Ollie throws his past away each time he drapes the costume over his shoulders; it’s not supposed to come with him, when he has Green Arrow to be. The legacy is more than just one man, it has to be, and so the man has to stay behind. Parts of him, at least. Enough parts of him not to recognize an old friend.
One who recognized him, though, and seemingly before the spell took hold. No secret tick of the clock revealing just a little too much. It has to be some little thing, some slip of the tongue. Or else Batman really is the detective no one else is.
“Tommy,” Ollie says, when he gets to the gym, watching Batman sit with a single weight in hand, not even lifting it. “About these numbers –”
Batman’s head whips up. His eyes narrow in the cowl, and Ollie is glad no one else is here to see him flinch back. “You slept with Tommy?” Batman says.
Ollie takes a full step back at that. Blinks. More than the eerie whites of squinting eyes, his own are almost dislodging his domino. He calculated wrong. That’s not impossible, he was only picking from the shortest odds, but if not Tommy –
“Is that why he wouldn’t go with me to spring fling?” Batman asks, plaintively. Plaintively? Batman? No. That’s a voice he’s heard before, and never from a superhero. He knows that whine. He knows that overdramatic shake of the head.
He knows that whole fucking saga with the dance and the wilted boutonniere and crying into fast food in greasy tuxes. “Bruce?”
“I can’t believe you would do that!” says Bruce, because for all he’s still wearing the cape and cowl, there’s nothing of the stoic Bat in there anymore. Ollie watches him fling his hands in the air repeatedly. Their whole childhood flashes before his eyes. “You said you didn’t even like him! You said you wanted him to take me to the dance! Liar!”
And then Batman really does storm out, only instead it’s one of Bruce’s classic hissy fits. The only thing missing is a champagne fountain to knock over, and a borrowed cell phone to cry into about yet another terrible host with no clue how to throw a party. Something Bruce has definitely accused Ollie of, multiple times, although Ollie’s only managed to say it back truthfully twice. And this explains both times.
Bruce. Bruce! It doesn’t even make sense. Ollie calculated higher odds that he was somehow also Batman, without ever knowing it. Divergent timelines and future selves and clones with stolen memories make far more sense than airheaded Brucie Wayne managing to not only found, but mostly document, a group of the most mind-bogglingly busy heroes in the world. And still go to that many hockey games?
He really thought it was Tommy. Or maybe Ted. Even Lex Luthor on some sort of self-improvement quest, keeping his worst nature at bay.
Dinah would make more sense.
Aphrodite would make more sense.
It’s then that Ollie realizes it isn’t a work tiff. He can’t leave this on the shoulders of the other heroes to resolve, or let Batman work through it on his own. This is a Brucie snit, and he’s going to sulk in a corner until someone comes to get him, and it’s all Ollie’s fault. He did know Bruce liked Tommy and, like the little shit he was, he didn’t think it would matter. He could have his cake and still hand it off to his friend like he’d never licked the frosting.
Ollie drops his head into his hands. He’s too old to be reliving high school drama, especially if the guilt is going to eat him alive in the way his questionable fighting tactics never did. It’s ridiculous.
It’s ridiculous, but he never did say sorry, and it’s only now he’s realizing how many of the decorations on Brucie’s arm were there for only one party. How slow he ever was to confess his feelings. How much he trusted Ollie not to tell, and not to, well, that.
And then, of course, somehow he became Batman. Which is impossible.
