More Young Justice Trash

Friendship

-Requested by Booknerd on AO3, Conner-centric, focusing on how Conner made his first friend-

Mal and Conner didn't get along, that had made itself clear on the first day of school, though they had a lot in common: both were cagey, determined, and were very protective of their friends. This quickly became problematic for Conner, because Mal had a lot of friends, and most of them didn't like Conner; he made them uncomfortable, he was rude and acted standoffish. So Mal felt justified in butting heads with the 11th grader, he was older and he'd been there longer, so he almost felt like it was his job to try and cut this aggressive, know-it-all junior back to size. 

What made it awkward was that Karen and Megan were good friends, and both boys regularly hung around the cheerleaders at their suggestion, as was the case on this particular day: It was a sunny afternoon in mid-spring, and the Bumblebees were running the new routine during lunch.

Conner and Mal sat on the bleachers, on opposite ends.

"Babe!" Karen skipped over. "I thought you had drills today?"

"Coach let us have lunch today." Mal replied, greeting her. He shot a suspicious glance at Conner, who was sat stone-still, staring out at the field.

"Can you please stop beefing with him?" Karen whispered.

"I'm not beefing with him, he's beefing with me."

"He's Megan's friend, and yeah he's kinda creepy, but be nice."

Mal gave Conner another look. "Him first."

"This is ridiculous," Karen replied. "We're seniors, we're supposed to lead our underclassmen or whatever." She laughed.

"Karen! We're gonna run it again!" One of the girls shouted.

She stood on her toes and pecked him on the cheek. "Try for me?" 

Malcom watched as she sprinted back to the other cheerleaders, sinking back down to the bench. Karen had him in a chokehold sometimes; she was beautiful.

He glanced at Conner again, jaw tight, shoulders hunched, staring intently at Megan.

With a sigh, he stood, crossing the bleachers.

Conner looked up as he approached. "What do you want?"

Mal didn't humor this obvious aggression, sitting behind the younger boy instead. "How long have you been here?"

"Start of lunch." Conner replied, and Mal noticed the discarded protein bar and water bottle beside him.

"Is that you're lunch?" Mal raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, why?" Conner growled.

"Hey, chill out, I'm trying to be nice to you." Mal said sharply. 

"I didn't ask you to be nice to me."

Mal had half a mind to just stand up and leave, but he caught sight of his girlfriend and conceded. "I don't need permission to be nice to you." He replied. "Is that seriously all you're going to eat?"

"Why?" Conner asked.

Mal slung his backpack off and began rummaging through it, setting miscellaneous crumpled pages on the bench beside him. He removed a sandwich. It was tuna, not his favorite, so he didn't feel to averse to holding it gingerly towards the shorter student. "Here."

"What?"

"Take it." Mal said. "At our size you gotta be eating more."

Conner watched the boy cautiously, but he took the sandwich. He peeled back the plastic wrap and took a bite. Almost instantly he was devouring the sandwich ravenously.