Inspired, rather belatedly, by Hugh Grant's misadventure with a young lady of the evening in LA a few years ago.
Opps
Arsenal walked into the room with as much bravado as he could muster. At the moment it wasn't too much, but he was covering it well, he really was. He knew he was about to be ripped a new one, torn to pieces, shredded and declared an idiot twelve ways to Sunday.
And with good cause.
Timing. It was just timing.
Bad timing, the hobgoblin of little minds. Or something like that.
And some serious stupidity, too, he had to concede that. He really did.
Crap.
It was just one of those things. You decide to do something, don't give it a lot of thought, plunge right in—no pun intended, and five minutes later you just go on with your life. That was the idea, anyway—if there was an idea behind what happened and he had to admit that there really hadn't been a whole lot of thought.
The opportunity was there, he took it. Done deed.
Well, almost done deed. Maybe half done.
If the cop car hadn't pulled up when it did, shining the damn light into the front seat and, bam. There you go, all over the news, the cover of every tabloid in the universe and, cripes…you'd have thought he'd killed someone, stomped on a puppy, sold his daughter into slavery.
But he could handle all that. No big deal, ignore it, move on and in a few days some other story would break and no one would even remember the thing next week. That's how these things work, right?
But, he had to face this. He was an adult, he was a man, he was a superhero and he could take whatever the music was about to hand him. It would be memorable, it would be ugly ad he was sure that it would be the kind of thing he'd remember the rest of his life, probably wincing every time the whole mess was brought home to him, yet again.
Just get it over with. Head high, accept his due, and move on. He could. He would.
Nightwing was ignoring him so far; sitting over at the computer console, pretending that whatever he was working on had his complete attention. Like hell, it did.
Arsenal strode across the room with more confidence than he felt, stopping next to his old friend and team leader, hoping Dick wouldn't realize just how much like crap he felt, how much his knees were shaking and how badly he wanted to throw up.
Finally, slowly, Dick gave him a long, slow, deadpan sideways look.
"So, did you at least get a refund for services not fully rendered?"
Which is why he loved Dick.
Bastard.
2/3/08