Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine. Le sigh.

A/N: You know those fics that start just because the first piece of dialogue pops into your head while you're in the shower…?

Brazenly Speedy/Bumblebee. Also, post-series. You have been warned.

Hush Little Baby

© Scribbler, September 2007

"It's blue."

"What?"

Bumblebee stood in the doorway. She hadn't been there a second ago. She was silhouetted against the light outside, so he couldn't see her face. "I said it's blue."

Speedy attempted to lever himself back into his chair, but this second sentence made him give up and sit on the floor. He stared at her. "What do you mean 'it's blue'?"

"Can I get more obvious?" She waved the little white stick around. "Blue. Cobalt. Azure. Cerulean. Blue!"

"Which means…?" He wasn't stupid, but the announcement had stunned him into stupidity.

Bumblebee rolled her eyes, marched into the room and cuffed him around the ear. "It means you're an idiot. But I already knew that." Her voice didn't soften. She had ways of calling him an idiot; different gradients, nuances and levels of significance. This was a new one – she sounded like she was keeping a tight lid on complete panic.

"OhmyGod…"

"Not helping." She looked at the stick. "Really not helping."

"Those things aren't always accurate-"

"Twelve of them are."

He shifted his gaze to some unfocussed point in the middle distance and turned this over in his mind. It'd been hot all Summer, and the AC was broken throughout the entire Tower. Cyborg had promised to come fix it, since Titans East nearly killed each other when they tried, but that wasn't for another week. The sullen heat made Speedy's shirt cling and his lungs feel heavy, all of which he noticed in perfect detail as his brain tried not to realise the full implications of this.

Bumblebee, on the other hand, voiced her thoughts out loud. She pressed her other hand to her head. "I can't … I can't do this. I can't afford the time off. We just got a new member, and she needs training up. Plus we need to track down the villains who broke out of STAR Labs' cryogenic unit, not to mention the general keeping the peace stuff. Steel needs us. I … I can't…"

Speedy never pretended to be the most sensitive guy. His sympathy was larger than, say, a thimble, but directing and mixing it with tact and good judgement was trickier. Give him arrows and a target and he could cope. Give him a delicate diplomatic situation and his feet and mouth exploded into massive Offending Weapons of Doom.

Nevertheless, even he realised Bumblebee's gabbled monologue indicated she was a heartbeat away from full meltdown.

He got to his feet, guided her to a chair, and was mildly surprised when she didn't fight him or mention feminism. Instead she flopped down, still holding both head and stick like either one might detonate if she let go. There weren't any tears in her eyes, but then, there never were.

"Hey," he said in what he hoped was a compassionate voice. "It's not so bad."

"Is that all you can say? I tell you this life changing piece of news, and all you can tell me is it ain't so frickin' bad?!"

Ouch. So she was okay enough to bite his head off. That was a good sign. When she was nice to him, or acted like a complete girl, he worried. "Okay. This is a good thing?"

"How is this a good thing? I'm eighteen. I'm still making a career for myself."

"That doesn't have to change."

"For you, maybe. You won't have to strap a sack of sand to your front and try to fly with it. You won't become a target for every trigger-happy criminal on the East Coast."

"No, but I can… um… I mean, if you wanted I could … uh…"

"You see? It's easy for you."

It wasn't, actually. The back of his mind was filling with pictures from ten years in the future, and his own panic lapped at the edges of his conscious mind. "Look, I'm trying my best here. If I say I'll look after you, you'll tell me you're a modern girl who doesn't need a hero to protect her. If I say I'll leave you alone, you'll say I'm neglecting my duties. If I say nothing, you'll hit me until I do."

"I won't hit you."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I don't hit. I just punch you a little. Lightly," she added, grudgingly. "Even though sometimes you really deserve a full thump for being such an arrogant, unthinking, inconsiderate and uncharitable asshole."

He ground his teeth. "I'm going to pretend that's the hormones talking."

She smiled. It was shaky, but it was real. "There's mileage in that excuse." The hand came away from her forehead. It didn't explode. "Oh God, Roy. This is … this is …"

"I know." He wished he could blame his own jitters on hormones. "This is."

"Aqualad'll have to take over for a while. I'll finish Flamebird's training, but you guys will have to make sure she doesn't kill herself in the field while I'm out of commission. And I'll ask Cyborg to fortify the Tower with some extra security measures while I'm stuck in it. I'm not going to leave Steel." She levelled a fierce look at him, as if daring him to tell her otherwise.

Speedy wasn't stupid. He especially wasn't stupid about telling Bumblebee what she could and couldn't do. "Did I say anything?" In his head, he was already laying snares around her room to keep out intruders, and fitting up a playpen with booby traps. But he really wasn't stupid enough to mention it. Ever.

She nodded, then let out the biggest sigh he'd ever heard from her. It rose up like thunder rolling across a cloudbank, and streamed through her nose and mouth. She shut her eyes and leaned back. "Shit."

"I was thinking more 'Shirley'. Or 'Lewis'."

They never said 'I love you'. It just wasn't them. But they could create an atmosphere that communicated it just as clearly.

She felt out his hand and he squeezed it back, felt their calluses rub together – old Stinger blisters and friction burns, testament to the lives they led. No life for a child to be born into, really. Their life was something you chose – or something that chose you, depending how you looked at it. Now they had to make other choices. The tiny rasps seemed to echo through three years of living and fighting side by side, making choices and decisions that had led to this moment.

They weren't the prettiest couple, or the most well-adjusted. They didn't kiss in the rain, or stare lovingly into each other's eyes when there was work to be done. They fought and screamed at each other, had blazing arguments about laundry and could send their teammates running for cover over a raised toilet seat. Ask them to write down each other's faults and they could raze a forest for paper. Yet they were solid, in their own way. He brought her coffee when she'd pulled an all-nighter and fallen asleep across her desk. She never asked about Green Arrow. Their lives were made in the brief moments and tiny gestures that followed the giant revelations.

"Or maybe Roy Jr."

Bumblebee cracked one eye open. "Pretend that I hit you." It closed again. "Lightly."

Fin.