Disclaimer – Not mine. Never were. Never will be.
A/N – I sometimes write lines I think characters would say into notebooks, to be used in future fics. Then I lose the notebooks and write something completely different. This is the result of finding one again. Set post-finale.
Character Flaws
© Scribbler, April 2008.
Usually Speedy hated meet-n'-greets. He wasn't a people person, for all his public persona characterised him as Titans East's resident Lothario. He was more of a 'Hey, how you doin'?' kind of guy, possibly with shoulder-blades and left foot against the wall and one hand cocking a sexy half-salute. He'd perfected the look, even though Aqualad said it made him look like a cheap porn star. So sayeth the guy in the skin-tight unitard, who hadn't known he was a gay icon until he made that comment and Speedy replied by leaving printouts from several prominent websites on his bed.
"And this is the communications room." Speedy backed through it, sweeping his arm out to encapsulate the beeping array of lights and flashy things. He really had to learn all their names sometime, when he'd run out of drying paint to watch. "We each have to do shifts in here, but mostly it's the place to practise playing solitaire."
"Interesting," said Argent in the tone of one who already knows this but is playing along for her own reasons. "Are these shifts conducted alone?"
Speedy grinned. He really wasn't one for meet-n'-greets, unless the person who needed meeting n' greeting was female and hot. And straight, as he'd learned after an embarrassing incident with a newspaper reporter that nobody was allowed to talk about unless he was being especially exasperating. "Mostly, although sometimes we work in pairs."
"Even more interesting."
Argent ambled into the room and ran her hand along the back of the chair. Her fingers were long and pale, the nails alternatively painted black, red and purple. They kind of reminded Speedy of that rare fish Aqualad rescued and kept in the pool for a week while they cleaned up a spilled oil tanker off the coast, which turned out to be a mutant that tried to eat Menos's head. Frowning, Speedy shook the memory away and refocused on Argent. Much more appealing. He was glad he'd volunteered to help with the interviews for the newest spot on the team. Aqualad would probably choose someone staid and serious, while Mas y Menos were too set on tempting Starfire over from Titans West, and Bumblebee was still checking out the candidates' stats against the others'.
"So how would you describe your team?" Argent asked. "Anybody I should … watch out for?"
Speedy's grin widened. "Well Aqualad's okay, but he's pretty much a stick-in-the-mud, and there's a reason we call Mas y Menos 'The Hyper Twins'. If you make it onto the team, don't ever feed them sugar. Or caffeine. Seriously, they got hold of a pot of our special morning coffee once and we had to pry them off the ceiling with a spatula."
Argent didn't laugh, but she did smirk a little. He got the feeling she didn't laugh much – heavily into the whole Goth thing, he figured, though Raven cracked a smile once in a while. Maybe it was a cross-cultural thing. Pr maybe it was just a girl thing. Girl-things were things he neither understood nor wanted to. Every time he tried he ended up confused or embedded in a wall where someone had thrown him.
"Our special coffee?"
"Mine and Bumblebee's. We each need an IV of caffeine just to get started in the mornings. It can get chaotic when both of us try to get to the pot first."
Another not-quite-laugh. "Yes, what about Bumblebee?"
"Bumblebitch?"
"She actually lets you call her that?"
Hmm. It wouldn't look good to admit she once threatened to shove a Stinger in a place that'd make it impossible for him to walk if she ever heard him use that nickname again. Speedy coughed and ignored the question. "She's the leader."
"That's informative, I'm sure. I heard you two have some sparks between you."
"Only when we're sparring and using real weapons."
Argent arched one perfectly-plucked eyebrow.
Speedy adopts a self-confident stance. "Well, let's just say Bee's a talented superheroine wrestling with what she terms a 'character flaw', but what I call a 'freaking psycho temper'."
Argent's other eyebrow arched, and suddenly Speedy noticed she wasn't actually focussed on him at all, but at a point just over his shoulder. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and he remembered, belatedly, that he never shut the door when they came in here.
"She's standing right behind me, isn't she?"
"She is," said Bumblebee in a voice that promised 'lynching follows. Start trembling.' "Having fun there, Sassafras?"
"Eheh." He turned, scrubbing the back of his head with one hand. "Hey, Bee. Finished all that paperwork? We're nearly done here-"
"Oh, you seem pretty done to me." She leaned slightly sideways, the better to speak to Argent. "He been giving you the Speedy grand Tour, girl?"
"Indeed," said Argent, all sisterhood and all-us-girls-together, which would totally have Speedy imagining them doing all sorts of non-G-rated things if he wasn't currently worried about the too-even tone in Bumblebee's voice.
"Thought so." Bumblebee shifted her gaze back to him but kept talking to Argent. "We'll call you with our decision."
"I look forward to hearing from you." Argent swept past them, but paused in the doorway. "Shall I tell Red Star there's an opening for a male on the team as well?"
Speedy gulped.
"No," Bumblebee replied. "That won't be necessary." Her eyes had shrunk to hard, glittery marbles. When Argent was gone she said softly, "A freaking psycho temper?"
"I was …" What? Embellishing the truth? Trying to make you sound windswept and interesting? I couldn't find a pen to sign my death warrant with so I went for a vocal contract? None of the above? Faced with being caught in the wrong, Speedy chose the path that many men had chosen before him: to square his shoulders and brazen it out. "Hey, don't get all bent out of shape."
"Bent out of shape?" Bumblebee was barely whispering now.
Speedy deflated. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?"
"Oh, you will be." She wasn't wearing her Stingers. It didn't mean a thing. "Thirty seconds."
"What?" Speedy was nonplussed.
"That's how much of a head start I'll give you."
"Before what?"
She narrowed her eyes at him.
"See, this is what I was talking about! You blow everything out of all proportion!"
"Didn't you tell Pantha I was 'an anal retentive fuddy-duddy'?"
"Well … yeah, but-"
"And I seem to recall you saying something about me having a 'stick so far up my ass everything I say is wooden' to Hotspot. Not to mention when you called me a 'fun-killing old fogey in an ass-heavy chick's body'. And then there was Herald, who told me you said I had a 'nice rack, but so does a coat stand'. Stop me when I get to something you haven't heard before."
Speedy opened his mouth to reply but words failed him. He didn't dislike Bumblebee. Far from it, but when people asked him what he thought of her words tumbled from his mouth like grain from a sack, unchecked and unstoppable. He felt like a little kid who pulled pigtails to make the other boys stop laughing at him for getting his first crush.
"Twenty seconds and counting, Sassafras."
Speedy thought about it for a moment longer and bolted for the exit.
Okay, so, next time there was a meet-n'-greet Aqualad was getting pulled out of the pool by his hair to do it. Speedy could deal with having a staid and serious new teammate. At least then all his limbs would remain intact and his gonads wouldn't find a new home in his neck.
Fin.