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Therapy is supposed to help with the things in life that get someone down, even if that person brought hardship upon themself. Therapists aren’t really supposed to care what their patients have done or judge them for making shitty decisions. Most people go their whole lives and only notice their therapist is wrong for them when they do something obviously terrible. When said patient has been trained from childhood to notice even the slightest change in someone’s expression, to read the therapist’s face and body language better than they’ve ever been taught to do in school…well. It’s easy to see that they do judge. Most of them anyway. It’s something to be expected, they’re only human after all.
Roy likes to think that the therapists he’s seen over the years did help to an extent. Coping mechanisms were coping mechanisms, and it was always easier to acclimate to things when he was held accountable by someone. Life is better now, way fucking better than it’s ever been, but sometimes he still relies on the things he learned when he was seventeen and Ollie’d first found his liquor cabinet sparse. Part of healing is recognizing that’s okay too, slip-ups happen.
Drinking had never been his first choice for a good time, but for longer than he cared to admit, it’d been better than nothing. Roy came to the realization a while ago that ‘better than nothing’ meant he was still falling victim to his addiction, so he stopped that too. So now, now instead of drinking or drugs, he watches five hours of Lego Ninjago straight with Lian and Jason because they can, and thinks about how he used to cope.
The internet’s filled with quizzes like 'what new generation MLP character are you?' (He’s very proud to be Buzzfeed-assigned Izzy.) What member of the Justice League are you? (Jason’s face when he got Wonder Woman is still immortalized in his phone.) Or for the adults, things like what cocktail would you be? Roy always found that one amusing, and he’d thought about it for years. Being so intimately familiar with drinks, and people, meant it was a fun little pastime to assign all the people around him cocktails. He knew them way better than any quiz…and somehow, it helped. The urge to actually drink those cocktails evaporated when he associated them with people who’d give him that stupid, disappointed look if he ordered one.
Ollie was the first person he could ever remember assigning a drink to in his mind, and of course, it had been one of his least favorites. A Moscow Mule: vodka, spicy ginger beer, and lime juice. It could be ordered at pretty much any bar, upscale or otherwise, and the chances of it being good were about 50/50, just like the man. Ollie was also one of the only people he knew who would even think of adding any kind of beer to a cocktail. Still, there was something to be said about an old reliable order, even if it wasn’t guaranteed to be good. Just watching the bartender pull a grocery store bottle of lime juice out of the tiny fridge under the counter was comforting in a way.
Dinah, on the other hand, was a nice classic that may require explanation if the barkeep was just barkeeping for a job. Even the name was fitting for someone so confident, and who had to deal with Ollie on a daily basis— a Last Word: gin, green chartreuse, lime juice, maraschino liqueur. Sweet, refined, and straight to the point. Having the last word, the last say in a lot of things was what kept Roy around for as long as it did despite knowing his place with Ollie was long gone. Dinah was always there to solve their disputes, or at least try to. Hell, Dinah standing up for him was the only reason they were allowed to see Lian at all nowadays. She was a good woman, love must truly be blind in some cases.
Then there were the Titans. Some of theirs had come easy, some had taken a few months to really pin down. Some of them didn’t drink, so there was no baseline of what alcohol they liked to go off. After a tough mission, they’d popped the occasional bottle of champagne, but Dick limited everyone to only one flute. After they’d found out about Roy’s problem, they’d stopped the tradition altogether. It had been a nice gesture, though it still made him feel like he was ruining the fun for his friends. Oh, how he’d wished they’d just given him water, instead of having him bear the burden of ruining a happy moment. That wasn’t a fair way to think, considering how many happy moments he really did ruin, but sometimes the brain goes where it wants.
But, speaking of Dick and tradition, a lot of people may think the first Robin would be something fun and fruity (heh) like a Sex on the Beach, but at his core, Roy knows he is, and always has been, a believer in the long-standing institution of justice that inspired him. Sure he recognizes change is needed, but he always believed change could be achieved through the same optimism, the same heroism he grew up with. Those stubborn roots were easy to see at first, but it took time to realize just how far down they really ran. Once Roy realized that picking out his cocktail was easy. An Old Fashioned: whiskey, sugar, Angostura bitters, and an orange peel for garnish. Grounded, sensible, and sweet enough for everyone to enjoy, if a bit pretentious.
Wally was by far the easiest to label, though Roy’s feelings about the drink weren’t the same about his friend. Roy loved Wally, in all his over-eager glory. He didn’t like Bloody Marys, but unfortunately, the drink just fit. Vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauces, garlic, herbs, horseradish, celery, olives, salt, black pepper, lemon juice, lime juice, and celery salt, all depending on where you got the drink. Sometimes they put fucking buffalo wings in it, or chicken fingers or pizza folded over and stuck right in the sauce. It seemed like something only a Speedster would ever eat, calories and flavor all piled in to disguise the alcohol. More than just the god-awful combination of food and alcohol, it made Roy think of how childish Wally seemed sometimes, with a hidden level of maturity. It made him think of teenagers with a fake ID ordering one of the only drinks they know the name of, then throwing it all right back up with a smile on their face.
Raven’s a Manhatten: rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters, orange bitters, and brandied cherries. A cocktail shrouded in mysterious origins. Garfield was the sugariest frozen margarita from a gas station no one should be buying alcohol from, but somehow was never bad. The Titans were a huge mash of the best and worst of any bar, and when Roy felt welcome? He never wanted to be anywhere else.
Then there were the in-betweens, drinks that all came with some kind of twist. Titans, some of them, but also people he’d loved. If there’s ever a type of person to compare to a cocktail, it’s someone given a piece of someone’s heart. What is a cocktail if not a societally acceptable, sweet facade for something that could hurt or pleasure in equal amounts?
Donna, Donna was a Boulevardier: whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Campari. Refined, with a powerful swing you’d be feeling all night. Sometimes the next morning. She was the kind of cocktail he always pictured himself drinking when he was younger, but never felt self-assured enough to order at the bar. With Roy’s pallette, he would just…never have been able to appreciate it the way it deserved.
Jade was soju. Similar to Donna in that she was deceptively strong, but the deception itself was on a whole other level. Soju will knock a person flat on their ass who had been laughing at the alcohol content minutes before. Pair it with even a drop of added sugar, and having a map of the surrounding area for waking up on the street becomes necessary. Soju always seemed easy to find, and sometimes easy to get, but if not handled correctly… yikes.
And finally, Kori. Kori had been one of the easiest to pick out of the bunch, and despite all the time they spent together his opinion never changed. She was a Tequila Sunrise: tequila, orange juice, and grenadine syrup. Best served when the sun was dipping low and the next day held no responsibilities. Maybe a little generic, but he’d always been a sucker for matching color schemes. The look doesn’t suit every part of her. It doesn’t fit the warrior, the queen: ready to slaughter entire armies for her friends and loved ones. It suited the other core part of her. The part hidden under that armor that longed for the same tranquility they all did. The same beaches, the same sunsets, peace. Kori looked just as at home standing on a cliff over the ocean as she did perched elegantly on her throne.
Sweet drinks can be the softest killers of all.
He’s startled from his slightly darker train of thought by a warm hand on his shoulder and a to-go container of something delicious dropping in front of him.
“They didn’t knock this time, so it might be a little cold. I really think we should switch from Grubhub.” Jason grumbles and shimmies back to his place between Roy and Lian on the floor. He helps her get the travel fork and knife out to start hacking at her blueberry pancakes, the biggest, brightest smile on her face. Getting distracted by the past was easy sometimes, but that wasn’t his life anymore.
In the spirit of making sure he didn’t leave himself out, Roy had also assigned himself a drink at some point; a Salty Dog: Gin or vodka, fresh grapefruit juice, salt, and a grapefruit wedge. A fun drink to order at parties if one wants to stand out, but definitely an acquired taste. The citrus comes through first, most people like a good citrus note in their cocktail; followed by salty alcohol only a few can truly stomach. It was a low blow for an assignment, but it still fit. Everything in his life, personal choices or choices made for him, led to an awkward, too-sharp-in-some-places-too-soft-in-others misfit.
When Jason first entered his life, Roy tried every method he knew to quantify their relationship. If he could understand it, he would know how to handle it. How to shield himself, how to shield Jason from the worst of his habits, how to get the most out of their tentative trust. Sure…that level of control wasn’t exactly healthy either, but in the end it hadn’t mattered. Jason tore down every wall Roy even tried to build. Jason silently, diligently started bandaging wounds he hadn’t even known still bled. Every harsh word, every time either of them fell into the worst of their old habits they’d been tugged back into each other’s orbits.
No pain was too great. No fear was big enough to actually drive them away from each other. Gradually the urge to hide negative emotions behind grit teeth ebbed away, and Jason stopped running. One morning, when Roy woke to a cold bed and didn’t feel even the slightest hint of anxiety, that was when he realized.
Jason wasn’t a cocktail, Jason was the full glass of ice water a bartender slammed on the counter after a night full of bad decisions. Jason was the cut of frigid wind blasting the musk, the grime of self-doubt and despair back into the club teeming with those feelings and worse. Jason was the spark of unashamed pity in the eyes of the cab driver who went out of their way not to let a random man pass out on the side of the road. Jason was warmth, home, an acceptance that has to start bone-deep before anything outside could provide it.
Jason’s cursing right now as Lian shouts angrily at a villain on the TV and spills the little to-go container of syrup from the top of her box onto the table. He’s mopping the spill up as quickly as possible, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance under slightly frizzy curls. It’s a lazy morning, neither they nor Lian has showered and there’s definitely syrup dripping onto the shitty brown carpet they really need to vacuum.
Roy’s arms don’t itch anymore. And when bright, blue eyes with just a flash of emerald and awe meet his, Roy basks in the glow of his sun.