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They ran for what felt like hours, trying to escape from the enemy, only to have their route of escape blocked by a cliff. John stopped right before the edge, turning to grab Hal before he inevitably fell over it. Hal was bleeding, he’d lost a lot of blood already and was looking paler than the other Lantern had ever seen him. John pulled him close, intending to fly them out of danger, but Hal shook his head at him.
“You know that I’m not going to make it,” he said, holding his hand over the gaping wound in his side, “I’m not
gonna
let you risk your life trying to save me.”
“Don’t be stupid!” John snapped, reaching for Hal again, even as a squad of
parademons
closed in on them, “I’m taking you home, and you’re getting fixed up. You’re
gonna
be fine.”
Hal shook his head again, but it wasn’t long before he was doubling over in pain. “Okay,” he sighed, “I don’t want you to hate me for what I’m about to do, but I’m going to do it anyway. I just... I just want you to know... I love you; I’ve loved you for years.”
John felt betrayed as Hal shoved him off the cliff, but he still reactivated his ring, flying towards him again. He was never going to leave a man behind, especially not Hal, not when they suddenly had so much that they needed to talk about. He was too late. Hal’s ring already hovered a few meters above him, then streaked across the sky in a blur of green.
The Justice League was pretty much used to time travel, so used to it in fact, that there were several things that a time traveling member of the League was expected to do the moment that they arrived in the past. The first thing a time
traveler
did, in most cases, was contact a senior member of the Justice League, describing some disaster that would probably occur before next Tuesday, and ask for their help averting the disaster. The second most common thing for them to do was generally punching another member of the League in the face. It tended to be Bruce.
They did not tend to grab another member of the League, pulling them into a tight hug, and keep them in their arms, refusing to let go, even as Superman desperately tried to ask them questions. Clark had sighed, rubbing his forehead, before asking Hal to leave the room. John had told him in no uncertain terms that Hal had been the reason that he’d come back in time in the first place.
No one knew what else he had told Clark, but the Trinity had been locked up in their secret meeting room for most of the day.
“It’s weird though, don’t you think,” Barry said to Oliver and Dinah that evening when they had been scheduled together for monitor duty. “John doesn’t normally like touching people, not even Hal, and they’re really close. Are we sure this isn’t just some kind of shapeshifting alien who wants to do the nasty with Hal?”
“Well,” Ollie threw his hands behind his head, leaning back in his chair, “it’s not like Hal particularly minds. Actually, he seems to be
reveling
in the attention, and if it is a shapeshifting alien, it’s still pretty much his only chance to get
dicked
down by Stewart, because I don’t see ‘you’re a nine out of ten and I’m the one you need’ working out with him, do you?”
It was true that Hal was
reveling
in the attention, he had practically melted into the first hug, and had spent the last ten hours alone with the future John Stewart, deep in conversation. No one seemed to know what they were talking about, not even the present version of John.
Dinah chimed in. “Honestly, our John’s the one I feel sorry for, he’s been watching them all day, I can’t even begin to imagine what he’s feeling right now. Hal’s been distant for a month, and he’s suddenly all over another version of you? That has to hurt.”
John looked up from his paperwork (which he had brought over from his office when Clark had told him that he was in charge of guarding his future self, and which he had found it incredibly difficult to concentrate on), only to see Future John, who had shaved off his hair, grown a beard, and was now rocking a dad bod, getting too close to Hal again.
The older man had one arm wrapped around Hal’s waist, and he was whispering something in the other Lantern’s ear. John resisted the urge to snap his pen in two, reminding himself that he had absolutely no reason to be angry.
Except Hal was accepting the attention a little too readily, especially considering that he had been touching his own John a lot less than he used to. Hal used to touch John, mostly in private because neither of them wanted the superhero community gossip machine to start working, but John would actually have called his partner a cuddle bug. To John’s growing worry he’d just stopped after they’d had a mission together on an alien planet and John had spent the night with a beautiful woman. But Hal had encouraged him, it didn’t make any sense for him to be upset about it afterward.
John had put a lot of thought into it, and his new theory was that something had happened to Hal at the bar afterward, but he hadn’t been able to get Hal alone long enough to ask him about it.
John narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out if he could ask to talk to his partner for a moment now, only for his future self to lean in, kissing Hal deeply. John actually did snap his pen in two at that.
It had been about the time of their last mission that Hal had started trying to get over John. It had been difficult, considering how long the feelings had been there, but he had wanted to think that setting John up with the alien princess had been the end of them.
The night before the mission, Hal had had dinner with his brothers, and, inevitably, the topic of John had come up. Jim seemed a little too invested in seeing something happen between them and never missed an opportunity to ask about Hal’s partner.
“Look, Hal,” Jack had said, despite being a newcomer to this topic of conversation. He and Hal had started talking again, although the relationship was still sometimes a little shaky. “I’m going to give you some advice, if you’re looking to date men, you can’t be too picky. Chances are, this guy you’re into is straight, and look, if you’re still single when you hit forty, you’re going to end up alone.”
Jim opened his mouth to argue, but Hal was too busy going over Jack’s words in his mind to actually listen to his rebuttal. All he could think was that his older brother was right, and he had done the right thing keeping everything hidden. If John found out about his feelings, things would just be awkward between them.
It ended up being a lot easier to avoid his feelings if he kept a certain amount of distance between himself and John.
Hal just hadn’t been expecting another version of John to arrive from the future to ask him why he hadn’t told him about his feelings.
“I don’t know,” he had said, as soon as Clark had coughed awkwardly and shuffled out of the room, “I might not feel fear, but I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to tell a straight man that I’m in love with him.”
Hot Beard John, as Hal had decided to refer to him within the confines of his head, snorted. “Wish you hadn’t just assumed I was straight. You
coulda
asked.”
“Ah yes, John, how’s your day been?
Wanna
rail me on your desk?”
Hal wasn’t able to hold back the laughter that escaped him at his own joke, but the other Lantern wasn’t laughing.
“You’re not after a quick fuck. You just said you’re in love with me. Two versions of you have said they’re in love with me.” He visibly sighed, before moving closer, lowering his voice so that he could whisper in Hal’s ear (which Hal thought was a little unnecessary, because even if his own version of John was right outside, the rooms were soundproof). “You might want to try asking him out to dinner first.”
“Huh, okay, but I can’t really pay for dinner. Unless... how do you guys feel about bathroom blowjobs.”
He got a bark of laughter in response to that. “Not on the first date, and no one is expecting you to pay for a date.”
But still, even if they joked about it, Hal still had one issue. “Actually, I’ve been thinking, maybe sometimes loving someone means recognizing that they’d be happier without you...”
Hot Beard John had their lips pressed together before he could even react, and Hal was acutely aware of the scratch of his beard against his face as their tongues were twined together. Would it be weird to ask if his John would grow a beard? It would probably be weird.
Behind them, the door slammed open as Hal’s John, ‘Present John’ he reminded himself, rushed into the room.
“What the Hell are you two doing?!”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
John knew that he had probably overreacted. Although he was used to feelings of jealousy and protectiveness when it came to Hal, who would absolutely still bring dates home when someone else was staying in his apartment, and John had laid awake many a night, unable to drown out the sounds of sex that emanated from the other room.
It was admittedly stupid to be jealous of some future version of you since all you had to do was wait ten or twenty years, and you would be the one with your tongue down your partner’s throat. But some part of John was crying out that if a future version of him really wanted to get close to Hal, he had one in his own time.
He stood between them, knowing that waiting outside had been a mistake. One that he wasn’t about to make again.
It was a surprise when Future John burst into laughter and gave him a few light-hearted slaps on the shoulder.
Bruce had been tired that morning, he’d had a long night, chasing the Riddler’s clues around Gotham, and frankly, the last thing that he wanted had been being called in to deal with a League emergency. Given the situation, it should have been clear that he did not want to deal with any Lanterns fighting among themselves.
“You didn’t just come to the past so that you could make out with Hal!”
A smart man wouldn’t touch that with a twenty-foot pole, and Bruce was nothing if not a smart man. He hastened his footsteps as he walked past that door. John could deal with this himself.
“No. I didn’t.” The man from the future stated, refusing to elaborate. It wasn’t clear if time had transformed him into a troll or if he just saw no reason to tell John the truth.
Bruce sighed, stepping into the room, he hadn’t wanted to get involved, but if the fight did get physical while all of them were on an orbital satellite, things would get very rough for Bruce very quickly.
“John.” He grunted, causing both of the men to look at him. Bruce immediately regretted everything. “He’s here trying to find a way to change the future. In his future... things don’t go well.”
Bruce relayed the story as it had been told to the Trinity, with all of the gory details. He noted but decided not to comment on, the way that John’s hand tightened its grip on Hal’s. The two of them could deal with whatever was going on between them without Bruce’s help. It was not his place to meddle in the affairs of his teammates.
He paused before he swished out of the room. “Hal. Try using your words for once.” With that advice, the door swung shut.
Hal groaned, throwing himself down on the couch in John’s quarters. They were going to talk. Bruce hadn’t been able to keep his mouth shut, and now John thought they should talk. It was just his luck.
The man himself was sitting across from him, his eyes didn’t move, he was watching Hal intently.
“Look,” Hal said finally, after his master plan to block out the stare with a cushion failed. “I know you’re probably mad about the kiss...”
“Not particularly,” John replied blandly, and seriously, how was Hal supposed to respond to that.
“Well, you seemed pretty mad about the kiss.”
Suddenly, John was right next to him on the couch, he had one hand resting on Hal’s thigh, and he was rubbing circles into the skin. Hal willed his cock not to get hard, but it had much more exciting things to pay attention to than his commands. “Yeah,” John laughed, at least Hal thought that it was a laugh, he was baffled, having no idea why John seemed so pleased, “but not at you.”
“Okay, but see, you being mad at Future You TM for kissing me doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in me about how well the rest of this conversation is going to go.”
His partner stared up at the ceiling and groaned for what felt like several minutes, but Hal didn’t think he’d done anything to deserve a response like that. When John addressed him again, he was suddenly a lot closer. “You can’t think of any other reason that I would be upset with him but not with you?”
“Favoritism?”
Warm lips pressed up against his forehead. “Let’s go with that.”
“Wait so... what you’re saying is... you want to smash?”
“You’re making a pretty good argument for me to walk out the door right now.” John breathed, but almost immediately he had slipped his tongue into Hal’s mouth so he couldn’t have minded that badly.
“Hold on,” Hal scrambled for his phone the moment that they pulled apart, “I need to make a text right now.”
John hummed, pressing up against him, trying to look like he wasn’t checking out the screen. The effort was too much for him. “Why are you telling your brother to suck it?”