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It starts like this.
It starts with being a teenager and all of those expectations.
It’s not that he doesn’t understand, it’s just that, well, he doesn’t quite get it.
He’s 16 and he loves people, he loves making people smile and laugh, making them happy, it’s a fact. And when his first girlfriend smiles at him and asks to go further, well, even though he doesn’t quite get it how could he say ‘no’? Why would he say ‘no’ when it would make her upset, make her face crumble into that disappointed expression and hurt her feelings?
So he doesn’t really get it and something twists up inside him afterwards and doesn’t untwist, but she’s happy and really, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
It starts like this, and it doesn’t really ever stop.
He’s grown up good looking, so really what does he expect when suddenly he’s an adult in the eyes of the law and everyone is looking at him as if they want to eat him up.
He thinks he hates galas now. They’re boring and dull and everyone is always brushing up against him or letting their hands wander, speaking to him while swallowing him up with their eyes and he doesn’t know why but he wants to hide away somewhere where eyes and hands can’t find him and it’s horrible because he likes talking to people, likes being around others just not like this.
But he goes to galas and he stays quiet and he doesn’t mention it.
It’ll cause too much trouble to make a big deal of it and, if there’s one thing he’s tried to do in his life, it’s to try his best to make others happy.
There’s something in him that’s all twisted up and jagged and it gets bigger every time he clenches his jaw and ignores the looks and someday he thinks it might burst and leave him bleeding out in the aftermath.
Barbara is—Barbara is wonderful and beautiful and fierce and so, so amazing. She’s wicked smart and confident and she’s like a star that burns so bright and leaves Dick staring in awe.
And dating her is wonderful and leaves him breathless sometimes in awe and joy and it's amazing. Hugging her and kissing and just being close to her, listening to her speak with that sparkle in her eyes and the passion and joy in her voice makes him feel like he’s the luckiest person in the world.
There’s just one thing—it’s—it’s not a problem really, just that. Barbara is amazing and doesn’t push, lets him be but—well—they’re still young and she wants to, he knows, can tell by the way she gets not really irritated but slightly disappointed and he feels awful.
He hates how every time he doesn’t initiate any steps beyond the normal innocent little things she accepts it even as she withdraws that little bit and it’s not her fault, it’s his.
So when she initiates it, hesitant in a way she never is, he lets her. Because how could he tell her no when she looked so afraid of his response? And if his smiles and encouragement are a little distant and he doesn’t really know what the feeling in his chest is, isn’t quite sure he wanted it. And some of the feelings in his empty heart and empty smiles and dull eyes are all mixed up and contradicting. And sweet, brilliant, whip-smart Barbara doesn’t deserve him thinking that, when someone’s hands are on him, everything just merges into the same feelings that leave him unsure and half drained.
But he will never, ever, tell her ‘no’, not when all she wants is for him to be close with her.
Dick needs love, he needs it like the lungs in his useless numb body needs oxygen to survive, like a newborn needs warmth and food and care. He needs it in his relationships. Needs to love, love, love and be loved and have that care and warmth to keep him stable and partway at comfort in his own skin.
But he also needs that love so badly because sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps him from breaking apart at the hands that dance across his skin, leaving invisible burns in their wake that never seem to heal, that makes him half sure he doesn’t have a body anymore. It’s terrifying and so he needs love like it's an addiction he can’t shake. Because it makes the way he feels so, so fucking empty after it’s all done not feel as bad. Not when he’s giving them love and knows he is loved in turn.
Maybe that’s what makes his thing with Liam hurt so much. The other is like a hurricane and it leaves Dick confused and lost and unsure of what they are. Liam treats him like their dating, says they are, but then disappears for a while, or withdraws and acts like they’re nothing to each other and it makes it so hard to drift away from his mind and just perform when the feeling of hands and mouth on his skin aren’t soothed by the balm of love.
He’s confused and half sure the thing in his chest is consuming him from the inside out.
Or maybe it’s the naseuapainpleasurehatredlovedesiredisgust that swirls around his head and his stupid giving heart.
All he knows for sure is that loving Liam is giving and giving and giving and losing more and more to the hands and lips and words and eyes that never seem to go away.
But he loves so much and so great that it’s okay.
It’s okay
He’s fine.
Kori is something beautiful and strong in a way only someone who has survived hell and kept on living can be. She is wonderful and kind and so very gentle.
Sex with her is something she came to him, trembling, and asked to do. Wanted to learn how to love without hurting. And Dick says yes because this is Kori and how could he say no?
But all he wants to do is cry and scream and explain he doesn’t know what love without hurt is, that he doesn’t know how he can teach her love when the touches on his body won’t ever go away and the word yes is his only response to anything no matter how fiercely that two lettered word rips his throat into pieces trying to claw it’s way out.
But he doesn’t because he loves her and she needs this, needs to know good warmth and love from sex. And he knows that if he told her no she would listen, would leave it alone, she of all people would understand.
So he doesn’t because he is not worth her tears and silent suffering, her uncertainty.
Maybe it’s what makes Dick’s inability to tell Mirage and Kori apart worse.
He has no excuse, so what Mirage could make herself into Kori easily and flawlessly, Kori was someone who had learned the way he moved and all he could give her was his empty heart and broken love and tainted body.
Mirage’s laughter joins the constant hands in his mind and it leaves him nauseous and in a constant state of drifting. And the words “Slut” and “Who was better?” echo in his head over and over as he tries to wash away the feeling of his own wretchedness and fails. Is he a slut if he never says no? And how can they ask him who was better when he’s barely able to be present when he has love to try and ground him? How can they ask that of him when he feels like he's not all there, not real.
The feeling in his chest is expanding, consuming his entire body and Dick thinks that maybe everything falls apart for him because he needs love so much that he doesn’t deserve it.
Jake is a wild hope, a fever dream that he needs with every atom of his being because he’s drowning in everything he is and fails to be.
And Dick can almost relax, almost sink back into his own body.
Except when Jake falls asleep and Dick is floating and half-hysterical after sex because he’s so lost and so upset and so happy and so pissed and too needy and too wanting and too hating and always drowning. And he can’t handle this anymore, can’t take any more of this. And he wants nothing more than to itch away his skin until he’s bloody so he can feel something other than handslipseyestouchinglaughterpainpleasure and he’s close to ripping his hair out and screaming until his throat goes bloody and torn and he isn’t a pathetic little creature who’s sobbing because he doesn’t know if he wants sex or hates it but it doesn’t really matter because he’s never able to say no.
And he isn’t crying, he’s not, he just doesn’t know what to feel or do and it’s eating him up and he can’t do this anymore.
He can’t handle it all, is breaking apart at the seams, except he isn’t because he can't, can’t say no because they don’t mean to make him this way he just isn’t right and it’s his fault, not theirs and so he’ll keep going on like this until he dies and withers away into nothing but ash because they deserve better from him than this horrible truth of his fake little heart and lying eyes.
They all whisper whore and slut as if they aren’t screaming it at him with their looks and actions and he isn’t, he really isn’t. He’s 23 and had sex with 6 people in his life, (only 5 knowingly and that is another thing that burns and aches and echos in his mind at night) and it’s not a lot. He knows that, but it doesn’t change what they say or get rid of the sick feeling in his stomach or the sour taste in his mouth or the handslipstonguehandswarmthstickinesstearssweat that seems to constantly remind him of everything they call him.
And he’s barely keeping himself adrift nowadays even as he laughs off the words and the names and insinuations and the comments and touches at galas, and on the streets, and out on patrol, and when surrounded by people, while screaming and maybe crying a little bit and feeling that twisting aching feeling in his chest and stomach ache and clench in all the emotions he can’t name or decipher.
And he wonders if it isn’t love people want from him but the broken wretched thing they can claim as theirs.
He’s stumbling and the bang goes off in his head over and over and there’s blood on his hands now, tainting him just as much as the hands and the sticky sickening feelings and the ache in his chest where his heart might be if he hadn’t given it all away.
He can’t breathe and he can’t really feel anything other than the rain pouring down on him and the shaking of his limbs, but he smells the iron of blood and the petrichor and the gunpowder. And he’s a failure, he knows it, it’s always been there, etched in his bones but this proves it and oh god Bruce will hate him, will realize how much of a mistake it was to ever take him in and he’s killed someone, someone is dead because of him and all he can do is apologize again and again as he feels himself being pressed down.
He’s confused and he can barely think straight and he’s still apologizing and trying to explain himself but all that comes out is, “I’m poison.” and it’s true but it hurts like acid in his veins and hands leaving fire and burn in their wake and a laugh in his ear as he’s taunted.
Except the hands and laugh aren’t in his head this time. And the laugh is different than the cackle that’s been haunting his dreams since he was 17, more soft and breathy but still as sickening.
And she’s pushing him down and on top of him and he can’t move and maybe this is really what dying is like because if he isn’t dying inside yet he will be every minute of every day after this is over. And the feeling in his stomach and chest is back, aching and ever-present, and the guilt and denial and the numbness are making themselves known in his fake heart and twisted head. And he realizes, somewhere far away and removed from what’s happening right now, that he’s going into or already in shock, and that even if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be able to stop her but he tries anyways because just this once he’ll try and say no, because he never said it before but maybe if he does he can stop her before it happens.
And it crawls out of his throat, slurred and stuttered but he says it, he says it more than once and she doesn’t stop. Just shushes him and whispers in his ear about how she’ll make him feel good, feel how much she loves him and he can feel himself give up and he thinks he might be trembling but he can’t really tell anymore and he isn’t quite in touch with his own body so what does he know really.
And maybe it isn’t really all that bad, even though she ignored his no he’s still getting it up, he’s hard so he must want it and at least he’s making her feel good so maybe he’s been lying to himself all these years and it just took him accepting it to know. But he feels like he’s shaking apart at the seams with the knowledge that no wouldn’t change anything and that a man is dead and blood is staining his hands and that he can never face Bruce after this because it will settle between them like rot and decay and ruin everything Dick hasn’t managed to destroy already and he should’ve known. Because he destroys everything he touches and he’s poison so why would he ever expect something different?
She’s murmuring sweet nothings in his ear that sound like Belladonna in his head and Death on his skin and the rain is pouring down around him but that isn’t the water that slips down his face from dead eyes. She’s moving on top of him and it might be her pants and moans he hears or the 6 other people who have given him something close to love and got sex in return but he’s too far gone in the drifting feeling to know for sure but he knows that the people calling him a slut and a whore were probably right and he was stupid to think even for a second that he was anything else.
He loses time, and he doesn’t know when she finishes, just that she does and that at some point his mask was taken off his face and his suit was pooled at his knees and she was gone and he was left to pull himself together just like always except this time he can’t.
And so he curls up and stares, blank and not all there and maybe that will make almost a decade of sex and uncertain consent and no consent disappear but it doesn’t and it doesn’t wash away his sins either so really all he has is the emptiness in his chest that covers the bomb that's just waiting for the right moment to rip him apart.
He tries not to think of that little two-letter word, the word he never said before that should’ve saved him now and he drags himself up and to his feet, pulls his suit back on and places his mask back over his eyes.
He leaves the rooftop.
(Except he never does, not really, the rooftop and the rain and the words “Stop” and “Poison” and “No” join the chorus of laughter and hands and everything else that haunts him.)
And he never tells.
That doesn’t stop him from remembering though. And the hands just seem to keep multiplying. And he thinks that if he doesn’t just die soon then he won’t be able to keep himself sane for much longer either.