Tempest in a Teacup Chapter six: Ever After Evan Andrews 2024
This is a fan fiction.
All characters depicted in it belong to and are trademarked and copyrighted by DC Comics and/or its subsidiaries. I am not related to the company and make no claim of ownership over the characters. I've given up trying to figure out where my stories fit into the DC continuity anymore.
The story depicts males in sexual situations, mostly with other males. If that offends you, if you are underage, or if reading such is illegal where you are please stop reading now. Thank you.
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Garth vanished during the fight with the HIVE, and the Titans went into overdrive trying to find where HIVE had taken him.
They found nothing. (Because there was nothing to find. HIVE didn't have him.)
It wasn't until couple of fruitless weeks later when a strong nor'easter battered the eastern seaboard from Maine to Cape Hatteras, that things got confusingly serious.
"He's in no danger," Raven assured the Titans when she came out of one of her trances.
"You're absolutely sure..." Donna started.
"But someone's been in Garth's room," Roy announced, bouncing into the room. "What about that?"
(Roy had taken to sneaking into Garth's room and jerking off while sniffing and tasting the Atlantean's cummy trunks.)
"What?!" Dick demanded.
"I said that someone got into the Tower, and they've taken everything of Garth's."
Not that there was much to take, but when they all rushed to Garth's bedroom, they found that what had been there was indeed gone.
Dick knew that Batman would go full grim in a case like this and concentrate on the security breach. While Dick wasn't Batman, he knew the security cameras would have caught something, and they needed leads.
What the cameras caught was sand. Lots of sand. Suspiciously way too much sand. And then a glimpse of a hand wearing an old Teen Titan's ring pressing in the security code at a side door.
"Okay," Dick said (and in spite of his intentions he sounded for the world like Batman in that moment), "Garth's alive, and he's free."
"With all that sand?" Donna sounded concerned. "What it he's been brainwashed, or something like that?"
"And that's why we really need to find him. This is really serious," Dick said.
"I just changed all the security codes," Cyborg said, turning away from a terminal.
"Good. Now we need to find out what the hell's happened."
"He's fine," Raven tried again to reassure them, but her words fell on deaf ears.
The Titans scrambled. Garth's quarters, both in the Titans' Tower and in Atlantis (they found out when they cornered Aquaman), had both been cleaned out.
Dick and Donna returned to the empty room Tower which echoed as if nobody had ever lived there. Disturbingly, Garth had left no note. No word of where he'd gone or why. Dick and Donna, probably his closest friends in the old core Titans weren't as surprised as the others. Garth had been getting decidedly distant, even from them.
"Perhaps,' Dick said, "He thought there was no need for a note."
"You don't think he..." Donna left that thought hanging.
"No, he wouldn't do that," Dick as sure of that.
"So?"
"So we keep looking."
"And if we don't find him?"
"If we do our jobs right, he'll at know we looked, and maybe that's what's important."
As a matter of form, they (and the JLA, though less assiduously) searched the world—for months. Places that Garth had loved, places that he'd hated, places that he'd hidden in before--and they found nothing.
Their Tempest had simply played himself out.
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A year later, Donna, vacationing with her husband Terry, walked along the beaches in Bali when she pulled up short. In the distance she was sure she saw Garth.
`Could it really be...?' she thought as she broke into a sprint.
The dark-haired young man with his back to her wore nothing more than a blue speedo—just as he always used to—and the right shape of ass filled out the brief garment.
Donna overtook the man. If it was Garth he looked in good health than he had and from the way he carried himself he was in a better humor than she remembered.
She grabbed the man by the shoulder, spun him round, and, Hera be praised, it was him!
"Garth!" Donna cried, and she hugged the surprised Atlantean tight. "Are you all right?! We were so worried!"
"Better than ever? Why?" Garth was smiling. Donna had always been one of his favorites. She, more than anyone else, really understood what he'd been going through.
"We looked everywhere for you. Even the JLA looked."
Garth snorted.
"Where have you been? What have you been doing?"
"Oddly," and Garth favored her with a smile, "I've been being truly loved for a change."
At the surprised look on Donna's face, Garth added, "Yeah, I know, who'd have thought it?"
"You found a girl?"
"A guy—or maybe it'd be more truthful to say he found me."
"Oh," Donna said, looking confused.
A guy. That was not what she'd expected. Yeah, she knew the boys used to mess around with each other when they were younger and just learning about sex, just as she suspected that Roy now had a thing going with Jason. Garth, though, she'd never pegged as anything but straight and narrow at heart.
"Anyone I know?"
"Sandman, believe it or not. But I don't think any of us really ever knew him."
"Sandman?!" Donna was flabbergasted.
"Yeah, weird isn't it? I'm a creature of the water; he's a creature of the sandy desert, and yet when we come together..." he waved a hand indicating the postcard perfect beach.
An interesting metaphor for a relationship.
"Well, it's not what any of us suspected. And not anything we ever expected..." Donna said.
`And that's putting it mildly,' she amended mentally.
"But?"
"But nothing. Garth, you're my friend. if you're happy, then I'm happy for you. Are you happy?"
"I am," Garth said with a smile, and he threw a glance at someone or something over Donna's shoulder.
"We both are," a voice from behind her corrected.
The man the Amazon saw when she turned around was not any version of the Sandman she'd ever seen before. Merciful Adonis, it was no wonder Garth had fallen for him.
The Arabian Nights prince filling out a white and gold speedo walked around Donna to Garth and slid an arm around his lover's waist. Garth smiled at the man, and then they both smiled at Donna.
"You won't tell the others, will you?" Garth said.
"No, not a one of them—not even Dick—if that's the way you want it."
"Yes, please," Garth said, "I'm glad you know, though."
The old friends hugged again.
"Just keep in touch, will you?" Donna begged.
"Of course. One way or another."
Donna watched as the pair of handsome young men then walked into the gentle waves and disappeared beneath them.
Together.