A/N: Originally, this was supposed to be a one shot but it became a much bigger beast then I was intending, hence why it's taken me so long to publish it. Due to the initial size of the story (11 pages before I stopped writing in one document), I have decided to break it up and post it in chapters.
Thx!
AMM
When I first discovered the cups with an odd gelatinous substance inside going missing within one of the shared fridges in the commissary, I thought nothing of it. I had yet to try the jiggly, colorful item and saw no appeal to it.
It had been served with lunch one day, cut into cubes that shook when nudged and shone under the bright lights of the eating quarters. I had grabbed a bowl due to mere curiosity but Shayera had immediately made her disgust for the food known.
"How can you eat that?" She had demanded as soon as I sat down beside her.
"I've never actually had it. Is it not good?"
"It is one of the most vile, tasteless-"
"Ah, don't let her scare you off, Wondy," Flash had suddenly appeared on the other side of me, clearly amused by Shay's antics.
"What's it taste like?" I had asked the speedster.
"Well, this jell-o will taste like lime because it's green." He explained. "Different colors have different flavors."
I prodded the so-called jell-o with my fork, confused and perplexed when it shook at the treatment. "And it's edible?"
"Barely," Shayera had scoffed under her breath.
"Yeah, it's more popular amongst children and hospital patients. Easy to digest and chew. My mom used to pack it in my lunches as a kid."
I speared one of the cubes onto my fork and held it closer to my face, noticing I could see the distorted tongs of my fork in the partially transparent cube. I opened my mouth to take a bite off of the corner when I felt something slick hit my tongue. I had immediately pulled the fork away, nervous that Wally had suddenly put something on my fork but found nothing out of the ordinary when I examined the cube once more.
"That's what I don't like about it." Shayera tells me, having watched the motion. "The texture. It puts me off." She shudders and looks back towards her food.
"Is it supposed to be like that?"
"Yeah. Cold jell-o is best on a hot day. Super refreshing." Wally nodded, tucking into the mountain of burgers I had just noticed he'd stacked onto his tray.
I raised the fork back to my mouth and committed to taking a bite. The texture had been odd, like Shayera had said, but I didn't mind it or the taste. It was clearly artificial flavoring but it wasn't that bad.
I had finished the bowl of jell-o that day but never got another bowl or paid any attention to the dwindling stock in the fridge beside the coffee machine, beneath the shelves filled with yogurts and different spreads for bagels and toast. On the second to last shelf was almost every flavor of jell-o, the red ones always first to vanish and the orange always left last.
Jell-o wasn't something that really affected me. It wasn't a food I avoided but it also wasn't something I went out of my way for. I rarely took notice of when the jell-o in the fridge was running low or when it had been restocked.
That is, until I'd seen Bruce toss an empty cup of it in the trash on his way out the door after leaving the monitor womb at the switching of our shifts.
He'd been in a rush to leave so I hadn't gotten to talk to him and I'd hardly realized he'd thrown something in the trash can. If it hadn't been for the small thud of the empty plastic container hitting the bottom of the recently emptied trash can, I never would've noticed.
But then I started realizing that after Bruce had been alone somewhere in the WatchTower for long periods of time, there would always be at least one empty jell-o cup in the trashcan nearest to where he had been.
A few days after coming to this realization, I had grabbed one of the red cups from the recently restocked fridge, taking a seat beside Shayera once more and delicately peeling the foil off the top.
"You got jell-o again?" Shay asked with obvious disgust.
"I wanted to try the red flavor." I shrugged.
Shay pulled a face and turned back to the sandwich she'd been eating. I carefully dug into the cup, pulling out a small bite on my spoon. I lifted the spoon towards my nose, attempting to smell the flavor but receiving no clues about what it could be. With an inward shrug, I placed the spoon in my mouth and was greeted with a refreshing cherry flavor. While the lime I had tasted weeks prior had been good, this was something worthy of eating repeatedly. I could see why Bruce ate this flavor first.
I placed my spoon down to pull the foil the rest of the way off of the small cup, moving to pick the utensil back up when Wally rushed behind me, the breeze he kicked up blowing my spoon right off of the table.
"Wally!" I had called after him in annoyance, leaning down to pick up the spoon before standing to replace it. I know the commissary is kept clean but it felt dirty to use a spoon that had touched the ground.
After dropping the dirty spoon in the dirty dishes bin, I approached the utensil cart with the intention of picking up a new spoon only to find there were none left. Glancing between the forks and the knives, I sighed and grabbed a fork, unsure of how I'd eat the jell-o in the cup with a fork. It wasn't cubed in a small bowl like the green jell-o had been.
"Ah, out of spoons?" Shay asks as I sit back beside her, glancing between the jell-o and the pronged utensil.
"Yeah." I sighed, wondering if I could eat the jell-o out of the cup without the fork. I lifted the cup towards my mouth and made a desperate attempt but ultimately failed, managing only to tire out my tongue and feel like a fool.
"You know what they say about eating jell-o without utensils, right?" Shayera asked after realizing what I'd been trying to do. Confused, I shook my head at her. Was there some kind of rule about eating jell-o without utensils? Some kind of unknown etiquette? Bruce never seemed to have utensils with him when he'd been eating jell-o. "It means they're good at certain activities in bed." She pumped her eyebrows and I felt my face ignite. Shayera had made it her personal mission to explain how certain things between couples go, private things that I never really wanted information on.
"I don't even want to know." I told her, holding up a hand to block her face from view but she ducked beneath it to grin wickedly at me.
"Certain things between your legs. With their tongue." My mind immediately flashed to Bruce, no matter how hard I tried not to. "Ooh, you're as red as a tomato! Thinking about someone? Maybe a brooding bat?" She smirked.
She had been spot on, but it wasn't just because she knew about my crush on the Caped Crusader. No, the main reason why my thoughts had turned towards Bruce was because I knew he wasn't using spoons or forks or even knives to eat jell-o. And after the strain my attempt had put on my own tongue, I could only imagine how strong a muscle I'd never thought about could be.
A/N: I didn't intend for this first chapter to be so short but figured with how the story is paced and broken up, this was the best spot to cut it. I hope you enjoyed!
Thx!
AMM
