#kyle rayner

Green Lantern #33 - "I Love L.A." (2026)

JayKyle swap!AU. All the Bats are Lanterns, all the Lanterns are Bats.

Kyle: I think the dent is the least of our problems.

Claude looked up from the chart he had been reviewing, one hand still resting against the edge of the tablet. The voice had come from the infirmary doorway, casual enough that it might have been announcing a delivery rather than another member of the Justice League arriving battered enough to require medical attention. His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Which Lantern?” he asked, already pushing himself out of the chair. The answer mattered less than the condition attached to it. Concussion. Multiple other injuries. Recently returned to the Watchtower. That was enough to have Claude abandoning what he had been doing before the explanation was finished.

He caught his hair in one hand as he walked, gathering the long copper curls away from his face and twisting them into something resembling a serviceable tie at the back of his head. By the time he reached the medical bay, his attention had already narrowed into the clean, ordered rhythm that took over whenever there was a patient waiting for him. Penlight. Gloves. Stethoscope. The diagnostic scanner remained within reach, though Claude still preferred putting his own hands and eyes on someone before allowing a machine to tell him what he had supposedly missed. A concussion meant neurological observations at minimum—pupils, orientation, memory, balance, worsening headache, nausea, visual disturbances—and whatever had earned the phrase various other injuries needed to be assessed properly rather than dismissed because a Green Lantern had managed to remain upright through them.

Claude rounded the partition toward the indicated bed. It was empty. For several seconds he simply stood there.

The examination light remained switched on above a perfectly unoccupied mattress. Supplies had been readied nearby. There was even the particular disarray that told him somebody had, at some point very recently, occupied the area before deciding that the physician responsible for their care was apparently an optional component of the treatment process.

Claude had spent more than two centuries watching medicine improve by increments bought in blood, infection, failure, and innumerable preventable deaths. He had endured medical school more than once in one form or another, residency, modern credentialing, continuing education, and the particular indignity of electronic medical records. He had not survived the French Revolution and several generations of medical bureaucracy merely to be stood up by a concussed superhero.

His nostrils flared once. There.

Antiseptic. Sweat. The faint metallic trace of blood beneath it. Not enough to alarm him by itself, but enough for senses far sharper than a human physician’s to separate it from the sterile smells of the infirmary. Claude stepped back into the corridor, following the lingering trail with mounting irritation. It was hardly dignified, tracking a patient through the Watchtower like a hound after an injured fox, but dignity had already ceased to be a concern the moment his patient had apparently decided to wander off with an injured brain.

The trail carried him farther than Claude had hoped. Then another smell intruded. Butter.Sugar. Something beginning to burn. Claude stopped dead in the corridor. His face went very still. “Oh, you must be joking.”

@jl-facep-medic

Kyle felt...like hell on earth if anything. He's used to getting beat into the ground, that one's easy, what he's more confused about is why everyone in the league had come to his aid so quickly. Or why they were so insistent. Why did they have to come and get him and take so much time out of their, obviously busy, lives to come deal with his dumbass.

He should have never texted them, it was a dumb idea, he just got distracted while trying to find Hal (he forgot about the fact he could just call Hal using his ring, another extremely dumbass move) and then ended up texting all of the league some stupid crap and making them come and get him. How pathetic is that, actually?

Kyle had been urged to go see the Watchtower medic, he barely even knows this guy, some french dude that was recently hired. But the man knows Kyle's name and his medical history, he knows just about everything about Kyle that he wished he didn't. Not even the other league members know some of this stuff. He likes it that way, he has to like it that way. He knows they wouldn't be...rude about it, He doubts Superman and Wonder Woman would ever be so bigoted, but he still can't deal with them knowing. He can't deal with the change in treatment.

He sat there for a while, let himself be checked out a little bit by Batman, watched them take Hal and go talk to him about something else outside. Probably making sure he isn't hiding any injuries. Kyle's pretty certain he is, that's the type of guy he can be.

Then he was alone, in that suffocating medbay, told to sit while the doctor comes to help. He hates that, he hates it. He needed to clear his head and the anxiety in his bones just screamed flight and he ended up here, in the kitchen area within the Watchtower cafeteria. He found the ingredients and baking book somewhere, and that's what lead to him figuring out how to bake peanut butter cookies. He was still bruised and bleeding a bit, so he used his ring for most of it.

Everyone went out of their way to come to his aid, this is the least he could do but it's something, and it's something that isn't being watched over by some mystery doctor who knows everything about Kyle that he hates. The testosterone injections, top surgery, the burns on his back, the scar across his neck from his imprisonment. There are some things not mentioned, he got Hal and the others to ignore the fainting and nosebleeds and weird lantern shit happening with his ring, so thats not on anything.

Instead, he bakes. Then, he fucks up the baking. First he accidentally jumps at some sound and slams some of the freshly baked cookies up into one of the metal oven racks, making a few split in half, and the discarded pieces fall to the floor of the oven. Then, he moves to try and clean it but forgets how hot the oven is right now and burns himself.

When the doctor walks in, Kyle is on his hands and knees, looking into an open oven with a cold wet paper towel wrapped around one of his hands. He's got some bandages on and is still suited up, except for the green glowing construct of an apron around himself. His suit is ripped in a few places and there's some blood on his face from the head injury, his mask cracked. He jumps at Dr. Moreau-Downs's words.

"Oh! Um..uh- sorry, I er... I f...fucked the cookies up."