For Koy Week over on tumblr. Day 1: First Meeting
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The first assumption most people make about Roy and Kaldur's friendship is that Kaldur and Roy met one of the two ways that most sidekicks end up meeting.
Their mentors happened to end up fighting the same villain/intervening in the same natural disaster/rescuing the same kitten from a tree.
Their mentors, in a somewhat sadistic attempt to earn some peace and quiet from their ubiquitously teenage (aka dramatic) charges, set them up on an easy mission (read: Community Service-Centric Playdate) together.
Neither of these methods are, in fact, how Roy and Kaldur met.
The second assumption most people make is that the two of them took a while to warm up to one another.
They take one look at Kaldur—calm, collected, well-mannered, and secretly considered by all the League mentors to be the least of a pain in the ass out of all the teenage superheroes—and a second look at Roy—brash, foul-mouthed, recklessly ambitious, and generally regarded to be a little shit, if certainly a competent little shit—and assume that their close friendship must have been formed over years of getting to know one another. They're just too dissimilar for it to have happened any other way.
This assumption is also wrong.
The fact of the matter is that when Kaldur and Roy met it involved neither mentors, missions, nor rescuing any cats from trees.
What it did involve, however, was the instant formation of a life-long friendship based on mutual understanding, trust, and admiration.
It also involved Ollie's yacht, which was on fire, and a very, very unfortunate tuna fish.
A few miles out from the harbor of Star City, on a cool spring night, there sat a peacefully floating yacht. A little distance off from the yacht, barely visible in the moonlight, was a small flotilla of buoys. The buoys, each laden with oil-soaked rags, were cleverly arranged so that, if one were to somehow ignite them, they would spell out "FUCK YOU OLIVER" in flaming letters.
If the red-headed teenager who stood on the yacht, currently preparing a soon-to-be-flaming arrow had calculated correctly, the letters, once lit, would be visible from his mentor's mansion, which was about three miles away. The mansion where, at that moment, said mentor—also the Oliver in question—was hosting a party in the teen's honor. And where the Oliver in question was, understandably, wondering where in the hell his sidekick got off to.
Roy had just lit the arrow and was preparing to draw it when, out of nowhere, a very large fish jumped out of the water and smacked him in the face.
"FUCK," Roy shouted as he was knocked to the deck. The arrow flew from his hands, and Roy had to quickly roll away from the fish, whose sharp, thrashing tail threatened to add another injury to the cut he could already feel bleeding sluggishly along his cheek.
Recovering, Roy scooted across the deck away from the thing. It was huge, almost as big as himself, and had some very sharp, very nasty looking teeth. Roy stared, shocked and not a little bit drunk off the whiskey he'd stolen out of Ollie's over-stocked liquor cabinet, and tried very hard to figure out what it was doing in his (Ollie's) boat.
"The fucking shi—" he started, and was interrupted when something—someone—else flew out of the water, landing beside the fish.
It was a boy—dark skinned, blond hair pale in the moonlight. He drew something from behind his back the moment he landed, crouched low next to the thrashing fish. The dark lines of tattoos on his arms flashed and then he was hold—the fuck? A knife made out of glowing water.
Before Roy had time to get a word in edge-wise the boy was on the fish, dodging its thrashing tail and snapping teeth to slit a clean, smooth line down the length of its belly. Guts spilled out onto the deck, and the boy stepped back, expressionless, to watch as the thing twitched, uselessly, before finally falling still.
The boy nudged the fish with his—eww—bare foot, humming in satisfaction when it stayed, well, dead. Roy didn't know what else it could have been, considering its intestines were now staining Ollie's deck a lovely shade of red, but weirder things had happened tonight.
Like, for instance, a beautiful boy jumping out of the water to murder a giant fish on his boat.
And he was beautiful, Roy realized, when said boy turned to face him. He had smooth dark sin and sharp cheekbones, a noble nose set above a shapely mouth. Icy green eyes regarded Roy coolly.
"Your boat is burning," the boy said in a low, soft voice, and pointed.
Roy looked towards where the arrow had landed to see, as luck would have it, that it had landed in the pile of oil-soaked rags. They had been left over from when Roy had been making the fuck-you-Oliver-buoys earlier. Said pile was currently on fire. As was, apparently, the yacht itself.
"Well, shit," Roy muttered, and sprinted into the cabin for the fire extinguisher.
He emerged to see the boy sweeping a large wave of water over the deck, extinguishing the flames. He was using the same metal tool he'd formed the knife with, whcih Roy was now able to guess were some sort of conduits for controlling water, probably through sorcery.
That, combined with the gills and webbing Roy now noticed, lead him to conclude that this kid was an Atlantean.
Who was swimming in Star Harbor, for some reason.
Finished with his task, the Atlantean turned to regard Roy, who still had the now-useless extinguisher pointed up and at the ready.
He looked at Roy, and then at the extinguisher, and then back at Roy.
"What is that?" he questioned, like Roy was the weird, confusing one in this situation.
"It's for putting out fires," Roy replied, shrugging. This wasn't the weirdest his life had gotten. "Though I see you've got that handled."
"I had not wanted to," the boy shrugged in kind. "It was rather beautiful. But when I approached it it became clear that it was very…hot."
Roy stared. "Yes," he said slowly. "I've found that fire is often, in fact, very hot." Roy blinked rapidly, trying to clear away some of the cobwebs the whiskey had left in his head. "Is this your first time…?"
The boy finished his thought for him. "On the surface? Not quite. My king has been training me to maneuver on land for a month or so now." The boy re-sheathed his…metal thingies…behind his back, considering. "Though I do think it is my first time seeing fire," he admitted thoughtfully.
Roy sat back on the deck, setting the extinguisher down with a plunk. "King?"
"Of Atlantis."
Oh.
Roy squinted up at the boy. "You wouldn't happen to be Aqualad, would you?"
The boy's eyes widened. He blushed, flustered. "Not yet."
Roy nodded sagely. Now it all made sense. Ollie had mentioned that Aquaman had gotten a sidekick. The other archer had been trying to convince Roy to take the new kid out on a playdate for a week now, under the pathetic excuse that Roy could use it as some sort of leadership opportunity.
Wait a minute. "Why aren't you at my party?" Roy accused, pointing at the-boy-not-yet-known-as-Aqualad. "Ollie said he'd invited you."
Not-Aqualad merely arched one brow. If he were older it would probably make him look imperious. As it was, it just made him look like kind of a brat.
But he had a point.
"I'm out here because I fucking hate parties," Roy grumbled in response, accusing finger falling limply back to his side.
Not-Aqualad breathed in deeply through his nose. "And, I take it, to drink?" He commented, nose wrinkling a little bit in disgust. It was cute, really.
It was Roy's turn to raise a brow. "Aquaman taught you about whiskey but didn't teach you that fire's hot?" He shot back.
"He may have been under the impression I would be attending your party," Not-Aqualad admitted, casting his eyes anywhere but at Roy's amused stare. "He saw fit to forewarn me of potential…hazards."
Roy snorted. "Aquaman considers me a hazard?" Roy leaned back against the deck, tucking his arms behind his head and looking up at the stars, one leg folded up under the other, foot swaying lazily. "Can't say I'm not a little proud of that."
Not-Aqualad chuckled, stepping over to peer down at Roy. "He considers you a delinquent."
"This from the man whose sidekick chases sharks onto other people's boats," Roy shot back, grinning.
"A tuna," Not-Aqualad corrected. "My apologies for that—I had actually been on my way to your party when it and its school overtook me. It…" the boy trailed off, flushing.
Roy propped himself up on his elbows, squinting up. He could smell an embarrassing story like blood in the water, and it never hurt to have a little bit of blackmail on your fellow sidekicks.
"It?"
The boy huffed. "It managed to swallow the gift I had brought for your celebration," the boy admitted, all somber defeat.
Roy laughed, doubling over on himself before rolling to his side, arms wrapped tight around his middle.
After about a minute of this Not-Aqualad nudged Roy's side tentatively. Roy looked up into his pained expression, and dissolved back into fits.
Sighing, the boy sat, staring dourly at the disemboweled fish still staining the deck.
Finally, Roy recovered himself. "So, let me get this straight," he wheezed, breathless, as he sat up. "You were on your way to my party, a party I wasn't at, and a tuna ate the gift you brought. I got it right so far?" He questioned. Not-Aqualad nodded. "Okay then, then," Roy continued, grin practically splitting his face, "You chased it up onto some, some random fuck's boat, where it knocks him over and sets his boat on fire, and then you disembowel it in front of him, and then watch his boat burn because you think fire's pretty before helping put it when you learned it was hot."
Not-Aqualad's mouth trembled, slightly, and for a brief second Roy was afraid he'd actually made the other boy cry. And then the tremble became a twitch, and the twitch a grin, and then the boy broke down in laughter.
"It—it sounds so foolish, when you put it like that," Not-Aqualad managed between chuckles.
"Yeah," Roy agreed, still grinning, and damn, he hasn't laughed like this with anyone in ages. "Not off to a great start there with the hero thing, fish-boy."
"Kaldur'ahm," the kid corrected, breathless. "But you may refer to me as Kaldur."
Roy looked at the yacht, its burnt deck, the still-smoldering oil cloths and the spreading stain from the, frankly, enormous fish still spilling its innards all over. The yacht smelled like oil, fish guts, and wet, burned wood.
"Nice to meet you, Kaldur," Roy said, and meant it.