Chapter Text
Roy, your roommate, is farming.
Not literally farming.
Not with a shovel and a watering can. His pants aren't stained with dirt and covered in flecks of grass but he's in-game farming, with a controller he borrowed from you perched between his hands.
This all began when you were scrolling down a website a few weeks ago and found the game on sale. You had a few extra cash to spend after your tutorial session with the seventh grade kid who lives on the floor above yours, a part time job of sorts when you had the time to do it.
It wasn't difficult or exhausting.
It was high-school level math, english, and history, and it paid well enough.
As a present for helping your charge ace his midterms, you decided to check out a few games from an online store. This specific game caught your eye with its bright graphics, soothing soundtrack, and well, who doesn't love farming in game?
It looked relaxing.
Something that could take away your worries, only for a little while.
Why not? There's a unused monitor in the living room.
Your roommates, Jason and Roy, don’t use the dying room often. Named after the murderous heats and the broken blinds none of you are motivated enough to fix, the living room has become your makeshift relaxation space.
A monitor turned on, connected to your laptop and the farming game. Your favorite carbonated drink sitting on a coaster on the small, slanting desk. Cool air blown by the fan connected through the extension cables plugged in your room.
The apartment isn’t perfect.
Jason’s room was built with the word unfair in mind: almost more than half of the total electrical plugs in the apartment belongs in his room alone. Roy has the best ventilation and the biggest space.
Yours is the smallest, which was seemingly built for guests who visit and unfortunately have to stay due to a hailstorm outside. But it’s large. There aren’t any other three bedroom apartments in the area at your price range, and there's hot water. Most of the time.
It seems like that they must feel sorry for you getting the short end because they don’t complain about how you hog the room to yourself.
You exchange hellos, good evenings. Simple questions like did you happen to see any mail for me? and requests like could you close the door? but never how are you's that actually meanhow are you.
They’re pleasantries.
Things roommates say to keep tensions low and fake comradery high.
Besides, Jason and Roy have always been close.
There's always going to be a gap between those who just recently enter your life and those who have been there for a while.
You have always known that trying to breach the gap would leave you hurt and you would rather not experience the whole forced oh, join us! shebang when you accidentally overhear them planning something and they'd feel bad for leaving you out.
So you stick to the good mornings and shallow how are you's and keep to your room and the dying room’s monitor and shaky desk.
That is, until you find Roy one evening with your controller in his hands.
The first time is awkward.
Hey, at least he’s pleasant about the whole oh, fuck, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to use your things without permission first but you always looked so absorbed while playing and I thought, hey, why not try it out thing.
Actually, as you come to find out, you don’t mind Roy’s company.
He’s funny.
He makes you feel included, like you’re actually there instead of a travelling circus that visits twice a month. And what’s the use of the game having a multiplayer mode if you don’t have another player with you?
So you end up farming with Roy twice a week.
He’s talkative when he wants to be (which is all the time) and you like listening to his voice pitch up when he tells you about all the shit he and Jason get up to (which is also all the time). He speaks about how you’re quiet when they’re around and how you laugh more when you think they’re off doing whatever they do on Saturdays.
Today, though, Roy’s on his own.
He’s harvesting the strawberries you planted during your last hours of play through. Your head hurts from playing too much - your eyes are closed, head resting on the couch while your feet are on his lap. You’re just starting to get used to all the friendly touches - the hair ruffles, the side pinches, the half-hugs he usually initiates.
Roy doesn’t seem to mind when your skin meets his. When you seldom use his shoulders as pillows and your head finds his lap when you’re too exhausted to venture into your room for a short nap.
He actually enjoys the touches.
So when you forget yourself and kick his thigh for accidentally killing the fruit tree you spent half your money on, he grins so widely and shifts your feet over his lap.
Even with your eyes closed, you’re sure he’s squinting in concentration, attempting yet again to catch fish.
He sucks at it.
Yet all the colorful words that leave his lips whenever he tries is enjoyable to hear.
And maybe this isn’t the right time to ask, but you do, anyway.
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
He pauses, fingers quiet on the controller. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean exactly how I mean it. Do you think I’m pretty?”
“You’re sure changing the emphasis for someone who means exactly what they mean.”
You lift one eye open. “Roy.”
He grins, offering your name in exchange. “Yes?”
“Answer the question.”
“What question?”
“I’m serious!” Your heel slams onto his thigh, and he groans. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
“I have no idea what brought this up. Did your favorite npc reject your proposal again and you’re on some low self-esteem trip that impulsively buying hats won’t fix?”
“No,” you scowl. “Weren’t you the one who ran out of hats to buy because you’re salty about losing the egg festival again?”
He returns your scowl. “No. Admit it. The egg festival is rigged.”
“It is not rigged. Your face is rigged. Admit you just suck.”
“If that’s true, then why do I have this?”
Roy unpauses the screen and your jaw drops.
There’s no fucking way he uncovered a prismatic shard while fishing. The low drop rate of the rarest gem in the game. From a fishing treasure chest. No, not from mining, from a fucking fishing treasure chest.
“No fucking way, Roy.”
“Yes fucking way.” He grins.
It’s an eat-shit grin.
One you want to wipe off his face with another slam to the thigh, but you’re afraid he might retaliate by giving it to an npc.
Which is totally a stupid way of using the rarest gem in the game.
The proper way, you recall, is by venturing into the desert and holding it under a rock circle so that you magically receive the galaxy sword. Roy can stay at home, cultivating the greenhouse, and you can go slash everything into pieces in the mines.
“You know what I’m going to do with it?”
You don’t like the tone in his voice. “Roy, if you give it to Abigail I will ruin you.”
“I’m going to go on one knee and propose.”
“I swear to god Roy. I will ruin you.”
The fingers on his right hand play with your sweatpants. It’s soothing, the way the heat of his hand lays there. Your body, in need of more, brings your leg forward, pressing your knee to his middle.
“You know what I could do?”
Now that gets you thinking. “If you’re going to give it to the museum, I will make sure you don’t have milk in the fridge for a month.”
“Nope.” His eyes widen ever so slightly, which should have told you to get the fuck out of there lest be dragged into the whole Roy shenanigans scheme. But you have to admit, you’re intrigued. “I’ll propose to you.”
You blink. “Roy, we’re practically married in game.”
“There isn’t a ring on your finger.”
“We share a farm. We have thirty kids,” well, cows and chickens and goats, but he understands, “together. That’s marriage. You don’t need to put a ring on it.”
“Wouldn’t a ring made out of, I don’t know, prismatic shard, look good? On your pixelated finger?”
“You’re not ruining this for me!”
When you see where he’s going on the map, you frantically get up. Fingers clutching the controller, which he keeps away from you.
“Looks like the bells will be ringing, my dear wife—“ he punctuates with a purchase and you shriek, your dream of reaching the skull cavern being destroyed right in front of you.
“Roy, I will fucking kill you!”
“You’re just salty you won’t be able to marry your dear Shane anymore. Which by the way, would be stupid, ’cause based on the game guide his room looks like shit.”
“Don’t fucking talk about clean rooms because I’ve seen yours!”
Before you can slam your heel onto his thigh yet again, he catches your calf. You lose your balance over the sofa and your back hits the ground with a thud. You raise yourself up into a siting position as Roy runs around in game, clutching what you likely can tell is a prismatic gem ring.
“I will divorce you,” you glare daggers at him, massaging the twinge of ache on your back. “I will divorce you and take the kids.”
“The kids love their daddy more. Isn’t that right, Chippy?”
While Roy pets the chickens in the coop, you can’t stop the grin forming on your lips. It’s like trying to stop the waves from hitting the shore — the smile is there, wavering and lifting, and Roy’s there, with the crinkle in the corner of his eye.
“Says the daddy who forgot to feed them yesterday.”
“Oh, all’s forgiven, baby.”
You think the interrogation is over. Him, forgetting what prompted the whole in-game wedding fight, but Roy isn’t playing the game. The rectangle situated at the upper right of the screen is blinking. The in game clock is moving, but he isn’t doing anything but looking at his inventory.
He’s fiddling with his controller.
Is he waiting for you to continue?
Just thinking about it has your neck heating up.
“But if you really want to know,” he murmurs, “you look… good. Not good like good. Just good.” Roy frowns, thinking about what actually left his mouth. “Did that make sense? Of course it doesn’t—”
“No. No! That’s really nice. I get it, you know. I just…”
As if Roy understands what’s hindering you, he continues playing. 8-bit music fills your ears as Roy’s virtual self runs around the pixelated town.
You don’t want to bother him with your worries.
But it feels like they’re going to spill out of you like paint in a hole riddled aluminum can and the best way to solve it is to meet in middle: with him, thinking it’s just one small grievance, and you, making it sound like one.
Simply, Roy showing he’s actively listening to you is too… intimate.
You're grateful that he understands.
“I went to meet someone,” you hasten to rephrase that when his eyebrows furrow, “not like that. A job interview. You know the convenience store at the corner, the one who sells those rainbow candy pieces Jason likes?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“That one,” you nod. “I go inside. He seemed so interested on the phone, talking about how he's always looking for someone to go on nightshift. But the moment I actually come in, looks at me once. Once. And it was like he was letting me down slowly by asking me the usual questions. Experience. The how often do you plan on working... yadda, yadda. Like I had a chance.”
“Like you’re a plump pig on the way to the slaughterhouse passing by PETA,” he offers.
“That’s very specific.”
“But yes. Like that.” A sigh leaves your lips. “It wasn’t my resume because I'm sure I'm overqualified. See, I have these accounting credits from university. So I was thinking… maybe I’m not - uh, pretty enough? Because he was fine on the phone but seemed disappointed when I walked in there.”
He huffs. “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah,” you shrug. “Sucks. I’m a little upset about it and don’t take this the wrong way but I’m not… fishing for a compliment right now. I just—”
“Don’t explain. An asshole staining the street with his assholery. That’s valid. You can feel upset. Hell, him not hiring you on the spot just shows how fucking stupid he is,” Roy ruffles your hair, and it takes you a few seconds to calm your heart down. So you tuck your face to the side of the sofa, hoping you don’t look as red as you feel you are.
“You’re good,” he offers, “Okay?”
“Yeah,” you bite your lip, smothering down a big smile, “you’ve said that thrice.”
“Good.”
“Roy?”
“Yeah?”
“I think your character’s about to collapse on the side of the mountain.”
“Oh, fuck!”
Unlike your game afternoons with Roy, you don’t spend a lot of time with Jason.
Yet it isn’t like you don’t know anything about him at all.
Jason has a few brothers. Based on the sheer amount of times Roy talks about some brother of Jason (usually getting into something difficult), you have to assume there’s more than two. There’s no way only one person could get into that much trouble.
He’s not the oldest.
He doesn’t like it when someone doesn’t knock before entering his room.
He hates hot afternoons because they end up frizzing up his hair.
The tuft of white hair on his head isn’t a stylistic choice.
The motorcycle in the parking lot is his.
He has nightmares, sometimes.
Based on your handful of meaningful interactions with Jason, you can easily tell he’s much more reserved than Roy in his on way.
He smiles at you. Says hello when you end up at the apartment door at the same time.
Picks up your mail when he gets his.
Hell, he once fixed your phone after it accidentally took a swim down the toilet. Small scratches here and there, but he looked so proud of himself.
When you walk into the kitchen, looking for a glass of water to quell your ongoing headache, you see him perched on the counter chair.
He lifts his head as you pass by.
“Hope you’re eating something healthy, this time,” you joke, slightly wondering if maybe you shouldn’t have said it. God, if you’ve accidentally trampled over some trauma like an asshole, you’re not going to hear the end of it.
Fortunately, he grins. It’s a small one. A tired one, but a grin, nonetheless. “Pizza is healthy. Look at all the vegetables—olives. Pepper.” He scrunches his nose. “Pickles.”
You try not to gag. “Who adds pickles on a pizza?”
“Must be Damian’s way of evading his nutritional duties,” he shrugs before continuing his dissection. Lifting off the slices of pickles and placing them on the pizza’s cardboard cover with a grimace. “Birthday boy, you know. I’ll let it slide. But next time there’s going to be onions in his cake.”
Gasping, a hand pressed to your chest, “blasphemy. Don’t forget to coincidentally have a phone recording the whole thing before all hell breaks loose on your family’s table.”
His green eyes shine so quickly you think you’ve imagined it.
You turn around, looking for a glass.
The smell of birthday pizza does get your appetite running circles around you. Maybe you are hungry, by the way your headache strikes you more as missing a meal than a lack of water.
Maybe you should order some pizza while you’re at it.
Jason must think the same thing, because he slides the box a little over the counter. Towards you.
“Hungry?”
You pause.
Then, your mind whirls - you haven’t spent this much time alone with Jason. It is their apartment, after all, and you’ve only spent a few months living with them.
You’re not sure what the boundaries are. Whether its too much to ask them about their days or whether you’re acting too distant by living on basically what is the edge — ensure that your bathroom schedules don’t align, that you label the food in your fridge as yours lest you accidentally consume theirs.
To remain quiet when you need to. As if you can try hard enough and they’ll forget there’s one more person living in the same apartment as them.
“Is there a catch?” You hope you don’t seem too meek when your eyes don’t meet his. “I think I’ve sold my first unborn child to Roy, so I could give you an… orange?”
He blinks. “Orange.”
“You don’t like oranges?”
His hand cups his chin, covering his mouth. That might be your signal to leave because really, who talks about unborn children and hints of witchcraft to a roommate you talk to once a day?
But you lift your head, really trying to look at him. He’s not disgusted or weirded out or anything like that - it looks like he’s trying not to laugh.
“What?” You blurt. “Unless you’re allergic and I just asked you if you’d like to die.”
“You can have a slice,” he says. Your stomach almost grumbles in excitement. “Or two. Or all of them, if you want. No unborn child or orange needed.”
“No catch?” You joke.
“No catch. Unless you’re offering a second unborn child. In that case, you only get pickles because children are fucking exhausting and I’d rather not have another devil’s spawn.”
Is he joking with you? And when you catch the lift of the corner of his lips, he sure is.
You take the seat beside his. The wood creaks as you drag it out and take your place. “So, Damian is your… brother?”
He nods.
Jason’s palm slips under his chin, watching you eat. The whole him being there makes you feel self-conscious.
Is there something stuck between your teeth? Do you have drool on you? Maybe you should have wiped your face or took a quick glance at the mirror or done… you don’t know, at least something.
But it’s not like you expected to talk to Jason nor seemingly steal his brother’s birthday pizza for dinner.
“Yeah. He’s this kid who you just can’t leave alone for long. He once tried to drive Bru— his dad’s car, and called someone when it was too difficult to start up.”
“Does he also bite your ankles?” You joke, nibbling on the chewy cheese.
“No. He judges you. Then he tramples over your toes.”
“Seems like a fun kid.”
“He’s a good kid. When he wants to be.”
All this talk about his brother’s childhood leaves you chasing after details of Jason’s own past. You know it’s impolite and by the way you know him at the moment, you’re sure Jason won’t appreciate questions.
But that leaves you wondering: how would he escape them? Would he chuckle at your tenacity before switching the topic into something else like Roy would?
Or are you going to find out one more thing about him?
“How about you? Were you a good kid?”
“Were you?”
“Touché.”
The silence that follows after is surprisingly comfortable. With you, eating one more slice of birthday pizza and him, seemingly alright with it all.
There’s a lack of something in your head telling you to say something or fill it up in order for Jason to like you.
And it surprises you.
How you actually want Jason to enjoy your company.
“You off somewhere tonight?”
You hum. “Tomorrow night.”
“What’s up with you and Wednesdays?” asks Jason, and you struggle not to blurt something stupid out to cover up what you’re really feeling at the question - scared. Stunned that he actually cares enough to know a part of your schedule. Confused because were your nighttime activities that obvious?
“What’s up with you and Saturdays?”
He laughs tensely. “Looks like we have a smart mouth over here.”
“It’s just work,” and it is work. Not really work, but work to do. “And you?”
“Just work,” he tersely replies with there’s a glint in his eye.
Looks like Jason isn’t as different as Roy is, somehow.
“When you leave,” he suggests, “don’t close the lights to your bedroom.”
You raise an eyebrow, beckoning him to explain further.
“There’s a correlation between having your lights on and deterring nighttime theft. Not that simply keeping your lights on serves as a theft alarm on its own, but,” he shrugs, “why not.”
“Is that advice from the great Jason Todd?” He doesn’t seem like he’s the type to read research papers on his spare time.
“No,” he says, “just something a brother said in passing.”
For a while, you’d like to think Jason thinks of you as a friend to care for. That he’d care if something would happen to you - that his earlier words hidden behind the warnings of someone else’s is his way of showing just that.
And for a second, you’d like to think you are friends.
The phone in your pocket vibrates.
But as you take it out and stare at the name who sent it to you, your worry wipes the smile off your face completely.
> Guess who’s back.
Tying your trusty bike to the steel pole in front of Nicky’s, you try to tell yourself this is the last time you’re doing this.
You’re through. That she isn’t your responsibility to save, no matter how many times your mother reminds you about the sanctity of forgiveness nor your father’s withering looks of disappointment in your lack of it.
This is the last time your feet enter the diner, scouring the place for the face you’ve grown up with.
There aren’t a lot of customers at this time. Just a family stopping through, a few teenagers handling their early hangovers with a plate of bacon.
“Look who’s finally here!”
Your eyes jolt up from empty tables to meet your sister’s welcoming smile.
“Sul,” you nod, noticing the dark circles under her eyes and the paleness of her skin that reminds you of the time she fell ill from malaria. “Hello.”
“Hello?” She echoes, rolling her eyes. “Five months and all you say is hello?”
“What else am I supposed to say?” Irritation sneaks into your voice before you can pull it away.
Instead of resting for tomorrow’s workday at the library, you’re here. Miles away from your shared apartment with Roy and Jason and your bed, running beck and call to a sister who only makes her presence clear when she needs you to pick up her shit.
Something inside you wants to applaud her for her audacity.
She fully believes she has your sisterly duties wrapped around her index finger. That you’ll always be there, knowing when she needs you, where she needs you to go, what you’ll have to do.
God forbid that she send a text. No lils is fine and we’re on our way to new z. for summer break hope you aren’t dying in someone’s attic at gotham nor no hint of a hey, sis me and lils aren’t dead yet.
That if Nicky wasn’t the one who sent you a text on her whereabouts, you’d think she’d be on another train, or a bus, or loading her car to another airport you can’t pronounce very well.
Taking a deep breath, you level out your tone. There’s no use arguing with someone like her. “Besides, it’s not five months. It’s been almost two years.”
Sully shrugs. “Five months. Two years. Same thing.”
Leave it to Sul to worry more about the summer heat than contacting her family. “Okay. What do you need me to do here?”
“You don’t need to do anything.” She pats the seat beside her, an empty booth seat on the outer side. It’s good as a compromise can get. Sully’s giving you a way out. A choice. Even if it doesn’t look like one.
In front of her lies another girl you know fairly well and the thought of seeing her cute face after nearly two years lightens up your mood. Only a little bit. “Since when did family reunions go out of style? Can’t we just drink milkshakes, like the old times?”
“We both have different ideas of what those times are,” you mutter.
You choose to sit beside your niece.
Knowing fully well that you wouldn’t be able to control how you’ll react if this goes exactly how the other Sully emergencies went.
“Hello there, Lils,” you greet, an arm wrapping around your niece’s small shoulders.
She beams at you. Well, it’s a timid smile. You’ll take what you can get with shy Lils. “Hello, auntie.”
Lily is bigger than you saw her last. Her hair is tied in a regular pony-tail, her glasses slipping off the bridge of her nose. Before it can continue its slow decent, you push it back up, locking it behind her ears.
“Still into science?”
She nods, and you can’t figure out how Sully popped out Lily — they have the same nose and the same eyes, but that’s where the recognition ends. Where Sully is loud and abrasive like sunshine sandpaper, Lily is calm and observant.
“I won first place with my solar system model made from pasta.”
She’s smart.
For a girl whose mother’s idea of spending time together is absence makes the heart grow fonder, smart is a great trait to have.
“Creative and resourceful. And pasta? Did I inspire your little project?”
Lily grins. “Maybe. Am I still your favorite niece?”
“You’re my only niece, so yes, you’re my favorite.”
Lily blinks, but you catch her eyes furrowing. She must figure out something’s amiss because her gaze meet her mother’s in a silent question.
You straighten up.
There’s something Sully hasn’t told you yet.
“Why am I here?” Your eyes narrow at the sheepish grin on your sister’s face. “Sully.”
“Lils. Well. Lils is your only niece. But you do have one that isn’t a niece.”
One that isn’t a niece.
She pauses, letting the words slowly settle into your raging brain.
Two years.
Absence.
Not a niece.
A nephew.
And when it does, you’re struggling very hard to stay in your seat. To not to stand up, reach over the cold to the touch table, and throttle her relentlessly.
It seems like Nicky has noticed you’re on the verge of sororicide because you hear his feet thud through the static, a reserved smile on the side of his face.
“Hey, Lils. Why don’t you help me out with the pancakes for tomorrow, huh?”
You take it as a small victory when Lily looks to you for permission, not her mom. Whether Sully takes this as an insult, she doesn’t show it.
You nod, and Lily climbs over your lap to leave the booth.
“Listen,” you hiss, crossing your arms. “The only reason I’m here is for Lily. Only her. I’m only here to make sure you’re feeding her properly. That she has money for school and lunch. And now,” a harsh chuckle leaves your lips, “you tell me, oops, looks like I dropped another baby in the barrel. Where is he, by the way?”
“Calm down. We don’t want your blood pressure too high, sis. And Lucky is fine. He’s with my roommate.”
“You left a baby—“ you say, slowly, so that Sully knows you’re trying to tell her how stupid and careless she is being, “—in fucking Gotham. Fucking Gotham of all places.”
You blink. “He is in Gotham, right?”
She rolls her eyes. As if you’re overreacting. “Of course he is. Where else would he be? With mom and dad?”
“Do they even know they have two grandchildren now?”
It wouldn’t matter at all.
You know how your mother is going to say that Lucky is an amazing gift of life, courtesy of her extreme Christian upbringing. That father won’t be so disappointed in his life now that he has a boy to raise as his own instead of two girls.
“They will. Eventually.”
“Fucking hell, Sully.” A sharp breath escapes you. “So is this what this is? You need me to set up another babysitting service while you go to—where? Chicago. Wales. Maybe Japan this time and you’ll return when you need another baby drop on my doorstep?”
Tears brim at the corner of her eyes. A tinge of guilt fills your veins but you persevere. “You only call me when you need me, Sul. I know you think this is love, but it isn’t.”
“But you love Lily,” she counters. As if the whole point of it all is the lack of love for your new nephew.
“I have my own life to think about. My life.”
Speaking of your life — it must be, what? Close to midnight? That leaves you half an hour to get back to the main city with your bike and early mornings aren’t a good time to be out by yourself in a city like Gotham.
You stand up, the table rattling.
Sully mumbles your name. “At least think about it, will you?”
“I’ll try,” is what you say but it’s over. Sully is stained on you like white paint on a black dress. Like you’re some cardigan she can unravel and knit back together whenever she feels like it.
Making your way outside the diner, you catch Nicky and Lily preparing pancake batter, with blueberries newly washed on her right side.
Through the see through window, Nicky gives you a nod. The side of your lips tip up. Lily must see you leave because she pouts, but waves you goodbye.
Go home.
There’s a lot to think about.
Your brain is filled up with so much noise that you don’t notice the front wheel of your bike is lower than what it should be.