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“I need to be medicated,”
He whispers to the room as a whole, cold-numb fingers gripping the blanket draped across his curled up form. It strikes him what kind of a spectacle he probably looks— not that he's unused to being one.
It's a little out of body, a little astral, the way he can see clearly what anyone else would. If he wasn't (thank god) alone.
The wide unseeing eyes, the moisture clinging in his clumped lashes, knees to chest in a fetal pose…
“Fucking…”
He huffs breathlessly, more mouths than says, heart rabbiting away like it just can't find the track.
“Go to college, Dick,” they said. “It'll be fun,” they said. “Best years of my life.”
This was the best year of no one's life.
It needed to be studied, probably, why a person could manage so much confidence in specific settings and so much anxiety in others.
He could walk out and flaunt his charms openly at a gala. Could lead with almost absolutely perfected calm while his team fretted behind him. Mask after mask of curated personality, purpose, place.
There wasn't any kind of special pizazz to walking up four flights of stairs to hide in a Harry Potter-esque single dorm.
And he had collapsed straight onto the pile of yet unfolded laundry on the rug under his loft bed. Just glad he was being still because, actually, things could get worse.
He felt ridiculous, like one of those… Roman numeral guys some of the younger titans were obsessed with reading about. Apparently they loved sleeping in laundry. Whatever.
Point being, when he first face planted into said haphazard pile, he'd flopped like a fish on a hook. A perfectly natural, not humiliating, reaction to being unable to breathe.
Was it wrong to wish he'd've had getting strangled as an excuse?
Probably perfectly healthy, sane reaction to a… mini panic attack? Anxiety attack? … a… something attack. Of some kind.
Just because a gaggle (Pod? Herd? Pack? … he'll workshop that), of fellow twenty-somethings doused in camo were hot on his heels the whole way up the stairwell.
Maybe he should go to therapy about this. Maybe.
God knows everyone else was allergic to it.
He just kind of thought that going to college for psychology, criminology, anthropology… would somehow feed him tools even bat training hadn't caught up to, or maybe that someone as stunted as Bruce had seen as unnecessary.
That he could just apply anything he learned onto himself with all that experience of doing the same to victims in the field.
But it was turning out that not only couldn't you remain impartial about yourself, the social aspect was a massive factor.
Especially when you didn't actually talk to anyone for months at a time because of (stupid) higher education.
In addition to eating away all Dick's free time and leaving him totally burnt out in what gaps were left…
He'd fallen out pretty wildly with Bruce, fairly recently, and they weren't talking. Couldn't really talk about his civvie identity with any of his real friends. Have them doubt his mental state, his decision making… Nope!
And everyone at Gotham U seemed completely unwelcome to attempts for anything beyond lukewarm acquaintance-ship.
Gods, he needed to drop out…
Maybe he could just apply for the academy! Piss Bruce off even more…
Yup. Great plan, brain, he congratulated himself sitting up so that the fuzzy green blanket, a nice heavy one he'd stolen from the manor, slipped down off his shoulders.
For the first time in months, he was looking forward to something other than cape-related. Something in the life of Dick Grayson, rather than Nightwing or, God forbid, Richie Wayne.
He sniffles and runs a hand over his face, finding a hesitant smile starting to dimple his cheek. He felt light already, the awful weight of the extra deadlines and added stakes sloughing away.
It wouldn't fix everything. He'd still secretly be an anxious little bitch under his contexts, even the high action kind he'd already learned to thrive in.
Trembling under the skin really was more tolerable when you could knock some heads together about it.
But that could be fixed too, with some planning and some time.
And, of course…
“Some fucking pills,”
He whispers vehemently to the little Robin plush he'd been gifted by the new titans that sat on his nightstand as he gets slowly up to his feet. Stretching his stiff back from laying on, basically, lightly padded hardwood.
Ready for a new night, and flying in the face of Bruce Wayne's whole ENTIRE deal.