Fic: Change My World 5/8 (Batman)
Feb. 25th, 2008 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Change My World 5/8
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Dinah Lance, Roy Harper
Word Count: 4,266
Series: Change My World
Summary: The part in every romantic movie where the leading couple chats with their best friends. Also, gay innuendo!
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Dick waited until Helena finally came out of the Dell room. She gave him a look, said “You have no idea how lucky you are, Grayson,” and continued on. Dick had a pretty good idea what she was talking about. He walked in on Barbara, carrying two sets of clothes over his arm. Barbara was still working at her computer. Dick felt like taking an ax to it. Didn’t she ever come up for air?
“Hey,” he greeted nonchalantly.
She didn’t turn around. “Hey.”
“You are okay with me being with Kara, right?”
“Sure, college freshmen date high school seniors all the time. It’s life.”
“I’m not talking about that,” he said, walking through the shadows of the darkened room. “You know that.”
Barbara called up holograms of Kara that took up the whole room, lighting it up. The files included headshots, vulnerability diagrams, histories, voiceprint analyses, and testimonials from muted talking heads. Dick read the lips of Batman’s disembodied head.
“And I’m not talking about her either. I’m talking about you.” Dick walked through a hologram, advancing on Barbara. “Us.” Lethargically, he set himself down on the floor. “How long did we break up before I lost my memories?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“A day? A decade? Makes a pretty big difference.”
“Months.”
“Months?” He threw his head back, laughing. “This isn’t a break-up, this is a spat.”
“We weren’t dating before then. We made on-again, off-again look like riding an electric bull.”
“I did think about it, though,” he admitted. “Going the distance with Kara. Maybe she’s not the girl for me, but she is a great girl. I thought about wearing a cunning disguise. That’s what I did when I went out for dates with… with…” Her name was on the tip of his tongue.
Barbara helpfully supplied it, halfway before stopping herself. “Kor… e… Feldman.”
“I dated Corey Feldman?”
“It was while you were sexually experimenting in college.”
Dick shook himself. “Eww! Don’t tell me that stuff.”
***
Barbara had a laminated sheet with color coding marking where all the different food items in her kitchen were supposed to go. It was posted on the door to the kitchen. Dick couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Okay, so does Campbell’s soup go with canned food or with the bagged soup… well, if the to-go soup is with the bagged soup… wait, isn’t that more of a soft drink?” Dick turned the sheet upside-down. It didn’t help.
The intercom buzzed. Dick had learned from experience that it was capable of some real sci-fi stuff… holograms and video and interfacing with the main computer… but most of the time it maintained the fiction of being a simple Home Depot intercom system. He flicked the switch.
“Hey, Barbara, where does the Campbell’s soup go, cans or soup?”
“It’s soup; it’s on the sheet. Do you have the sheet?”
“I have the sheet, but it’s soup in a can. Is this all really necessary?”
“Yes. Anyway, you have a visitor. Roy Harper.”
“Roy!”
“Think you two can play nice?”
Dick tapped on the intercom with his knuckles. “We’ll stay out of that sweet-smelling hair of yours.”
He could feel her blush right over the radio waves. “Don’t let him rope you in to any weird schemes.”
Dick crossed his fingers. “Promise.”
A few minutes later Roy burst into the kitchen, where Dick was already heating bagel bites in the microwave. He caught a bottle of Coke thrown by Dick.
“Glass bottle?”
“Cheers,” Dick said, and drank.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking about your little time-displacement problem and I brought in a buddy to help.”
A man materialized in the kitchen, accompanied by a floating robot helper.
“Green Lantern?” Dick gasped.
“No! Booster Gold! How do people not know me? I was more popular than that Where’s The Beef? lady until I died.”
“He fixes holes in time or something. He will get you back to your own time if he has to carry you like a horse to do it,” Roy said happily. “Eh? Eh?”
“Sorry. Turns out I’m not lost in time, I just have amnesia.”
Roy’s face fell.
“You know, I was promised a sandwich,” Booster said.
“I’ll ask Alfred to make us some,” Dick said, reaching for the intercom. “I mean, I’ll ask Barbara…” His finger approached the intercom button. “On second though, better not. Settle for pizza bites?”
Booster consulted with Skeets. Then said “That sounds reasonable.”
Only a short time later, they were eating pizza bites, drinking Coke, and watching Cartoon Network.
“Hey, Boost, can you go back in time and stop Freakazoid from being cancelled?”
“Sorry, Dick, there are these areas of solidified time…”
“Whatever.”
Booster looked a tad offended to have his exposition cut off. He ate his next pizza bite in a huff.
“Barbara told me I used to date Corey Feldman.” Dick said casually to Roy, staring very intently at his own hands as he wiped them off with a paper towel. “Is that true?”
“Ick! No!”
Dick laughed with relief. “I know, right? Gross.”
“Yeah. Corey Feldman?”
“I mean, come on.”
Booster piped in. “Patently ridiculous. If you were to go out with any guy, it would have to be…”
“Elvis,” Dick said. “If I had to fuck a guy... I mean had to, if my life depended on it... I'd fuck Elvis.”
“That’s a good choice,” Roy said, nodding at his friend’s wisdom.
“You?”
“You.”
“Me?”
Roy nodded.
“Gay,” Dick proclaimed.
“From a purely pleasurable standpoint. You’d probably be good at sucking cock.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t… except to my therapist.” Dick put his feet up on the table, then looked around to see if one of the Birds was around to scold him. They weren’t. Dick rubbed his chin. “Start talking, Roy. Barbara’s got me on a news blackout. What happened to all the Titans?”
“There’s a lot to tell. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Dick shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that. But with the Titans, I kinda remember all of us getting the wig-wams from watching the Flips play live…”
Roy held up a hand. “Okay, that’s a start. Short version, since the long version has just about all of us dying and coming back to life at least once. Wally became the Flash and got married. Donna got married and had kids, but they died--”
“Jesus,” Dick interrupted.
“It gets worse as it goes on.” Booster had been dragged down into the conversation. “It always does.”
“It’s not all bad,” Roy argued. “I have a great kid. Garth and Wally have families…”
“And me?” Dick interrupted. “No one seems to want to talk about what became of me.”
“You’re still my best friend.”
“Roy, you’d forgive me for cutting off your right hand.” Dick laid his hands flat on the table. “I’ve always admired that about you. You never hold anything against anyone.”
Roy’s body language had changed. He cut himself off with arms crossed over his chest, looked at Booster who looked back blankly, then he sharply focused on Dick.
“You know, there are some things you’re better off not remembering.”
“Things I did? Things other people did?” Dick stood. “For God’s sake, Roy, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“Whew, look at the time,” Booster said. “Sure does fly, doesn’t it? Skeets, get us out of here.”
The azure glow of their exit played over Roy and Dick. Dick didn’t pay it any mind. The light faded, leaving him in the washed-out fluorescence of the kitchen. He stomped down the length of the kitchen, turned around. Roy stood with none of Dick’s manic energy. He swayed a little when he straightened up.
“How could you go forward if what you wanted was in your past?”
“Barbara?” Roy asked softly.
“Maybe. I don’t know. She’s keeping things from me.”
“Ya love her?”
“Not sure it matters. Whatever I feel is just an echo. It’s gonna be buried by the man I am. I remember more, and more, and the slate gets filled up. Right now, it’s all I can do to reach out.”
“Look, maybe you don’t wanna believe me. There are things I wish I could wipe out and things I couldn’t imagine letting go of. I suppose it’d be the same for you. It wasn’t all bad, but lately… you weren’t at your best. But whatever you remember, whatever people tell you, I have faith that you were always trying to do the right thing.”
“Trying?”
“Don’t ask me to pass judgment on you. I haven’t been a saint either.”
“Good to know some things don’t change.”
Dick grinned so brightly that Roy just had to join in, and soon they were laughing and slapping their knees like they were kids again.
“Can I ask a favor?” Dick said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.
“Yeah, sure, anything.”
“Could you drive me to Gotham City?”
Roy put his keys on the table. “Like, road trip?”
“Yeah.”
Roy laughed. “Hard-traveling heroes; damn, it’s good to have you back, Dick!” He sobered, a little. “Any reason why you can’t ask Barbara for a ride?”
Dick perked his eyebrows at the innuendo. “I kinda wanna… get away from her for a while. Not be dependent on her or pressuring her or whatever it is we have. Just… take some time off.”
“Yeah, cool.” Roy nodded, covering for something. “You sure it has to be Gotham? It could be Star City, Opal City, Santa Cruz… surfing there is fantastic.”
“No, it needs to be Gotham. I need to know it’s okay. I need to know everyone’s okay.”
“If they’re not…” Roy slung a hand onto Dick’s shoulder. “It wasn’t because you didn’t… anything.”
“How would I know?”
***
Dick said he was leaving slowly, in ebbs and flows that finally built up to an out-loud confession, but Barbara knew from the first word of the first sentence. The wanderlust was in his voice, but something else, too. Something greater.
Dick packed what little he had, apologizing for commandeering her suitcases. “I just need to see Gotham again. You understand, don’t you?”
She did. “It’s your home.”
“Yeah. I mean, intellectually I know it’s fine and that No Man’s Land was resolved years ago, but I just need to check it out. See how everything’s doing.” He grinned again, shyer and smaller than before. “Gives me hope, you know. If we came back from that, we can come back from anything.”
As he told it, remembering NML was like an island in an ocean of forgetfulness. He didn’t have any context, and it was scrambled like cable porn (his metaphor), but it all made sense.
“I seem to remember us getting chased by corrupt cops,” Barbara said acidly.
“Yeah. Fun, right?”
Her cheeks went rose-red. From his perked eyebrows, he would be thinking of the kiss. Their first since he’d been Robin and she’d been Batgirl. Since the night before he’d given her an invitation to his wedding. She darkened at the memory. Eidetic recall sucked.
Dick checked out a Members Only jacket, blanched, and put it aside rather than in his suitcase. “You going to miss me?”
“No, course not.”
“Cause I could stay.”
“No, go. Be a tourist.” She steepled her fingers.
“Barbara, I will…”
“Don’t,” she said, the word volleyed at him like an attack. “I’ve been over this scene a thousand times. I can’t forget a single detail of it. Hearing you say goodbye once is enough for a lifetime.”
“Do you,” his voice was strong, “want me,” his words forceful, “to stay?”
She couldn’t look at him. Not letting him know how much it hurt, being the strong one, not wanting to find out from him what it looked like, being the weak one.
“Go. Don’t make a promise. Don’t make a proposal. Just go.” Finally, she looked at him. She was drawn to that, forced into one last look. He was kneeling by her. It hurt her like a knife, like a bullet in the spine, and she wished there was some numbness in her future instead of the ache. “If you want to come back, then come back.”
“I…”
She put a finger to his lips. “Actions, Dick. You always spoke more eloquently with actions.” She let her fingertip run down his chin until it had dropped off his face. “If you don’t come back, I’ll understand. And I’ll move on. Don’t let me be an obligation.”
“You could never be,” he told her, and hurried off.
***
As JLA chairwoman, Dinah had unlimited access to the JLA’s teleportation system. It came in handy for more than just picking up Lian from school when Roy was running late. Out of respect for Barbara’s secrecy/anonymity/paranoia triple threat, Dinah beamed in to an alleyway across the street from Dalton Tower. She crossed the street, looking vaguely respectable in faded jeans and an untucked buttondown shirt. A bit celebrityish for her, she was counting on the baseball cap and lack of fishnets to deter anyone from recognizing her. Thankfully, most people just didn’t parse superheroes as superheroes if they weren’t dressed in bright primary colors or skintight spandex.
She took the express elevator up to Barbara’s floor. Technically, it was far more secure than the old Clocktower, having been half-finished when Barbara found it and then reconstructed to her specifications. Still, she preferred the Clocktower. There were just so many good memories there, while Dalton Tower was like a tomb. Only its corpse was still going through the motions. Poor Barbara, stuck with only Helena for company. Giving the Birds a rotating roster had been a good idea, and Dinah had whole-heartedly approved of it, but it did have the side effect of keeping anyone from getting too close to Barbara. After the thing with Dick, couldn’t Dinah’s departure have been the last straw for Barbara’s meager sociability?
Dinah shook off the thought, walking into the control room to find Barbara with an individual monitor devoted to each of the missing hackers’ fields of expertise. As she’d done a thousand times before, Dinah pulled up a chair, twisted it around so it was back to back with Barbara’s, then straddled it and put her chin on Barbara’s shoulder.
“Hey, girlfriend,” she said, giving her closest friend an affectionate cuddle.
Barbara sighed. She didn’t have Dick’s fetish for warm bodies, but being touched by the right person could still make her feel complete. And Dinah was one of those people who always unlocked her. Barbara was usually careful to surround herself with people who didn’t. Ironically enough, Helena’s past relationship with Dick and a thousand other miniaturized conflicts between them had ensured that the partnership between the two of them would always be primarily a matter of business.
Not Dinah. Dinah was too insightful, too friendly, too attuned to Barbara to allow those years of alliance turned friendship turned family to be scrapped. It was as good a reason as any to keep her at arm’s length. Even knowing that Dinah would volunteer for a mission in a heartbeat, Barbara had never called upon her. It was easier to reach out to Power Girl, her first and now permanently estranged agent, then it was for her to contact her best friend.
Barbara embraced Dinah, or pretty close to it for her. Her arm she draped over Dinah’s neck so that she was holding the blonde close.
“Thank God you’re here, Dinah. I need to talk to someone who won’t think I’m crazy.”
“Will someone who knows you’re only mildly crazy do?”
“Dinah, I think I made a really big mistake,” Barbara said, without anymore preamble. Then she forced a nicety. “How are things with Ollie?”
”We’re thinking of getting an annulment.”
As tough as it was to admit that, Dinah did like the way Barbara’s body automatically hitched… both with the desire to help and the long-suffering, very Bat-like sigh that she would have to put up with someone else’s problems before they could get down to business.
“But that can wait until you’re feeding me. I can expect that you’ve discovered a good seafood restaurant in Metropolis by now?”
“The delivery boy’s on his way as we speak. You mind getting it? I’m busy with…”
“Babs, what do we always say about using work to escape personal problems?”
Reluctantly, Barbara put the system on standby and cued the lights. The room lit up.
“Whoa,” Dinah exclaimed, standing and pulling her chair out of Barbara’s way. “Someone dusted in here. And do I detect the lemony scent of Pine-Sol?” She thudded Barbara on the shoulder. “What happened in here? Finally found a way to clone Alfred? Because I want one. Preferably with the body of Brad Pitt.”
“First, I am both disgusted and aroused by that thought. And second, Dick happened.” Barbara took off her glasses. “He did it his first night here, while I slept. Before making me breakfast.”
“And you didn’t marry him why?” Dinah teased.
“Don’t make me go into that, please. I could’ve used you around when Dick was planning our honeymoon and you were off playing Lady Shiva.”
Dinah laughed helplessly. Barbara gave her an offended glare.
“Sorry, sorry. I just had the thought of you asking Shiva for relationship advice.”
Barbara laughed as well. It felt good, the tension breaking with simple laughter. No layers of hegemony between them, no secrets or lies or old hurts, just a friend who loved and respected her. She could use more of those. She feared what having more of them would do to her.
“Let’s go into the dining room. There’s some gloriously unhealthy dessert I’ve been saving for just such an occasion.”
In a few minutes, Barbara was set up with a laptop nearby her place at the table and a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream cracked open between them. Dinah ladled a generous helping into Barbara’s bowl.
“Shouldn’t we wait for dinner to get here before eating this?”
“You still wait until Christmas morning to open your presents?”
Dinah spooned a big chunk into her mouth and moaned orgasmically at the taste. Barbara couldn’t resist after that and dug in. Her only compunction serviced when she remembered it would have to have been Dick who’d bought the ice cream, as she was well-stocked with soy yogurt (and simply asked room service to bring up rocky road when soy yogurt didn’t cut it).
“Not a lot of self-awareness in the old Clocktower,” Dinah said in a faraway voice, her pondering-koan voice.
Barbara hated the pondering-koan voice. It made Dinah sound wiser, which was a bitch because Barbara was smarter. It was like a dumb pitch for a buddy show. One’s smart, one’s wise. Barbara thought that was just a way to make people feel better about not being smart.
“This isn’t the Clocktower,” Barbara said. “The heating’s better in the winter.”
“I think we both know each other better than we know ourselves,” Dinah pressed on, a bullet train on a track. “You were right when you said I shouldn’t marry Ollie. And I’m paying for not listening to you. So do you accept you should listen to me now?”
Barbara steeled herself and nodded. “I’m listening.”
“Okay.” Dinah took her hands. “You’re being careful. And it’s good that you’re being careful, it’s real good that you’re not rushing into anything. But there’s such a thing as being too cautious.” Barbara frowned at the familiar criticism and Dinah squeezed her hands to assuage her, a gesture asking for trust. Barbara erased the frown from her face. “All the planning in the world doesn’t help you if you never commit to something. Take it from me. I’ve seen you. I’ve seen how miserable you are alone. You don’t always show it… sometimes you’re downright content. But when you’re happy, you’re with Dick. That’s a fact. He’s good for you. He’s not perfect, you’re not perfect, but you have something special.”
Barbara’s eyes had drifted shut; her breathing filled the dining room. Dinah rubbed her thumbs over the backs of Barbara’s hands. Please, let it be that simple.
It wasn’t quite that simple.
“Am I good for him?” Barbara asked when she opened her eyes.
Dinah laughed and scooped some more ice cream into her mouth. “If you’re asking that question, yes, you are. And speaking as someone who has dated her fair share of men…”
Barbara actually guffawed, which went and made Dinah’s cheeks redden.
“He doesn’t smoke, drink--”
“He does sometimes.”
“--fear commitment, forget anniversaries, cheat—“
“He does. Did.”
Dinah stopped, in plain shock.
Barbara took another bite of ice cream and Dinah pushed the pint away.
“Talk.”
“I found out that… a while ago, I found out that he’s been seeing Kory. Never while we were dating, but they had this casual sex thing.“
“Oh, well…” Dinah put her hand to her head and leaned on it, planting her elbow on the tabletop. “It’s not like you haven’t dated other people.”
Similarly down, Barbara pillowed her arms under her chin and sunk her head into them. “You’re going to think I’m an idiot.”
“You’re a genius, Babs,” Dinah said matter-of-factly.
Barbara felt her face grow warm. As embarrassed as she was, some aspects of her relationship with Dick were irrational… downright girlish, really. And that was where she was the most vulnerable, in the part of her that hoped. “All the times when he came into my life or some emergency forced us together or I nursed him back to health and things between us rekindled, even just for a little bit… I thought that was special. Like, our couple-y thing.” She forced her head up and dug another spoonful from the pint of ice cream. “But no, he’s been doing the exact same fucking thing with Kory.”
Dinah kneaded her temples with the fingers of one hand. “Uh-huh. Okay, that sucks. But has he given you any reason to think he won’t make a commitment once you make a commitment? Were you expecting him to wait around forever?”
And here comes the me-being-a-stupid-little-girl-with-unrealistic-expectations part. “That’s what people are supposed to do, aren’t they? When they’re in love?
“When they’re in love, people are supposed to be together. As I recall, you told him off because you didn’t want him nipping at your heels for the tiniest bit of affection. Then when he goes out and does what you wanted him to do, you turn that into a demerit.”
An anger, directed at Dick but singeing Dinah on the way out, sprung from Barbara. “I told him to go and fuck someone without even knowing her name?”
“I don’t know what you told him and I don’t know what message he got. But have you ever thought about just telling him how you feel?”
Again, Barbara crossed her arms on the table and lowered her head until her forehead was resting against the walls of her forearms. “That’s how my nightmares start.”
“The all-knowing Oracle… afraid of a tiny little conversation.”
Barbara felt a sudden, overwhelming urge for a drink. She steered herself toward the liquor cabinet. “Like you and Ollie were ever easy.”
“Actually, we were.”
Dinah dug into the glassware cupboard, finding two Collins glasses. She carried them to the liquor cabinet, where she set them down on top, then grabbed the bottle of Malibu rum Barbara was trying to open, as well as a few other bottles. She popped them all with ease and began mixing drinks for the two of them.
“It was easy to give into Ollie. Because every time he said he’d changed or that he was sorry… he meant it. He just never followed through.”
She shoved her drink under Barbara’s nose.
“What is this?”
“Fishnet Stocking.”
“Huh.”
“I invented it. Drink up, it’s practically a girlie drink.”
Barbara did. Then she winced, grimaced as if she had never tasted alcohol before, and looked at the glass to make sure it was the same mixture she was sure had been poured into the glass.
“Has a bit of a kick,” Barbara said hoarsely.
“I did invent it.” Dinah sent her own drink down the hatch. “The thing is, with Ollie, when things got hard, we never fixed them. We just went away for a while, forgot about the bad times, romanticized the good, and then we got back together. And the same old problems cropped back up. And now I’m just sick of it, sick of him, because he’s never going to learn.” She polished off her cup. “He’s never going to stop treating me like a sidekick.”
“Dick and I have problems,” Barbara said, before taking another sip of her Fishnet Stocking.
“Yeah, who doesn’t? Even you and I have problems, and we’re practically an old married couple.”
“Eh?”
“Like Batman and Superman.”
”Eh?”
“Never mind. The point is, you’re smart enough to work through your problems. I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But is Dick worth it? That’s what you have to decide. Dick’s a fruit.”
“Is this about him or Roy?”
“It’s a metaphor.” Dinah burst out laughing.
Barbara looked at her Fishnet Stocking again. “These things do have a kick.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Dick’s a fruit—so you have to decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze.”
Barbara pondered it for a moment. Then she pounded her glass back on top of the liquor cabinet.
“I’m gonna need more beer.”
“Why?”
“Because he is. He is worth it. God help me.”
Chapter 6
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Dinah Lance, Roy Harper
Word Count: 4,266
Series: Change My World
Summary: The part in every romantic movie where the leading couple chats with their best friends. Also, gay innuendo!
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Dick waited until Helena finally came out of the Dell room. She gave him a look, said “You have no idea how lucky you are, Grayson,” and continued on. Dick had a pretty good idea what she was talking about. He walked in on Barbara, carrying two sets of clothes over his arm. Barbara was still working at her computer. Dick felt like taking an ax to it. Didn’t she ever come up for air?
“Hey,” he greeted nonchalantly.
She didn’t turn around. “Hey.”
“You are okay with me being with Kara, right?”
“Sure, college freshmen date high school seniors all the time. It’s life.”
“I’m not talking about that,” he said, walking through the shadows of the darkened room. “You know that.”
Barbara called up holograms of Kara that took up the whole room, lighting it up. The files included headshots, vulnerability diagrams, histories, voiceprint analyses, and testimonials from muted talking heads. Dick read the lips of Batman’s disembodied head.
“And I’m not talking about her either. I’m talking about you.” Dick walked through a hologram, advancing on Barbara. “Us.” Lethargically, he set himself down on the floor. “How long did we break up before I lost my memories?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“A day? A decade? Makes a pretty big difference.”
“Months.”
“Months?” He threw his head back, laughing. “This isn’t a break-up, this is a spat.”
“We weren’t dating before then. We made on-again, off-again look like riding an electric bull.”
“I did think about it, though,” he admitted. “Going the distance with Kara. Maybe she’s not the girl for me, but she is a great girl. I thought about wearing a cunning disguise. That’s what I did when I went out for dates with… with…” Her name was on the tip of his tongue.
Barbara helpfully supplied it, halfway before stopping herself. “Kor… e… Feldman.”
“I dated Corey Feldman?”
“It was while you were sexually experimenting in college.”
Dick shook himself. “Eww! Don’t tell me that stuff.”
***
Barbara had a laminated sheet with color coding marking where all the different food items in her kitchen were supposed to go. It was posted on the door to the kitchen. Dick couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Okay, so does Campbell’s soup go with canned food or with the bagged soup… well, if the to-go soup is with the bagged soup… wait, isn’t that more of a soft drink?” Dick turned the sheet upside-down. It didn’t help.
The intercom buzzed. Dick had learned from experience that it was capable of some real sci-fi stuff… holograms and video and interfacing with the main computer… but most of the time it maintained the fiction of being a simple Home Depot intercom system. He flicked the switch.
“Hey, Barbara, where does the Campbell’s soup go, cans or soup?”
“It’s soup; it’s on the sheet. Do you have the sheet?”
“I have the sheet, but it’s soup in a can. Is this all really necessary?”
“Yes. Anyway, you have a visitor. Roy Harper.”
“Roy!”
“Think you two can play nice?”
Dick tapped on the intercom with his knuckles. “We’ll stay out of that sweet-smelling hair of yours.”
He could feel her blush right over the radio waves. “Don’t let him rope you in to any weird schemes.”
Dick crossed his fingers. “Promise.”
A few minutes later Roy burst into the kitchen, where Dick was already heating bagel bites in the microwave. He caught a bottle of Coke thrown by Dick.
“Glass bottle?”
“Cheers,” Dick said, and drank.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking about your little time-displacement problem and I brought in a buddy to help.”
A man materialized in the kitchen, accompanied by a floating robot helper.
“Green Lantern?” Dick gasped.
“No! Booster Gold! How do people not know me? I was more popular than that Where’s The Beef? lady until I died.”
“He fixes holes in time or something. He will get you back to your own time if he has to carry you like a horse to do it,” Roy said happily. “Eh? Eh?”
“Sorry. Turns out I’m not lost in time, I just have amnesia.”
Roy’s face fell.
“You know, I was promised a sandwich,” Booster said.
“I’ll ask Alfred to make us some,” Dick said, reaching for the intercom. “I mean, I’ll ask Barbara…” His finger approached the intercom button. “On second though, better not. Settle for pizza bites?”
Booster consulted with Skeets. Then said “That sounds reasonable.”
Only a short time later, they were eating pizza bites, drinking Coke, and watching Cartoon Network.
“Hey, Boost, can you go back in time and stop Freakazoid from being cancelled?”
“Sorry, Dick, there are these areas of solidified time…”
“Whatever.”
Booster looked a tad offended to have his exposition cut off. He ate his next pizza bite in a huff.
“Barbara told me I used to date Corey Feldman.” Dick said casually to Roy, staring very intently at his own hands as he wiped them off with a paper towel. “Is that true?”
“Ick! No!”
Dick laughed with relief. “I know, right? Gross.”
“Yeah. Corey Feldman?”
“I mean, come on.”
Booster piped in. “Patently ridiculous. If you were to go out with any guy, it would have to be…”
“Elvis,” Dick said. “If I had to fuck a guy... I mean had to, if my life depended on it... I'd fuck Elvis.”
“That’s a good choice,” Roy said, nodding at his friend’s wisdom.
“You?”
“You.”
“Me?”
Roy nodded.
“Gay,” Dick proclaimed.
“From a purely pleasurable standpoint. You’d probably be good at sucking cock.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t… except to my therapist.” Dick put his feet up on the table, then looked around to see if one of the Birds was around to scold him. They weren’t. Dick rubbed his chin. “Start talking, Roy. Barbara’s got me on a news blackout. What happened to all the Titans?”
“There’s a lot to tell. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Dick shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that. But with the Titans, I kinda remember all of us getting the wig-wams from watching the Flips play live…”
Roy held up a hand. “Okay, that’s a start. Short version, since the long version has just about all of us dying and coming back to life at least once. Wally became the Flash and got married. Donna got married and had kids, but they died--”
“Jesus,” Dick interrupted.
“It gets worse as it goes on.” Booster had been dragged down into the conversation. “It always does.”
“It’s not all bad,” Roy argued. “I have a great kid. Garth and Wally have families…”
“And me?” Dick interrupted. “No one seems to want to talk about what became of me.”
“You’re still my best friend.”
“Roy, you’d forgive me for cutting off your right hand.” Dick laid his hands flat on the table. “I’ve always admired that about you. You never hold anything against anyone.”
Roy’s body language had changed. He cut himself off with arms crossed over his chest, looked at Booster who looked back blankly, then he sharply focused on Dick.
“You know, there are some things you’re better off not remembering.”
“Things I did? Things other people did?” Dick stood. “For God’s sake, Roy, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“Whew, look at the time,” Booster said. “Sure does fly, doesn’t it? Skeets, get us out of here.”
The azure glow of their exit played over Roy and Dick. Dick didn’t pay it any mind. The light faded, leaving him in the washed-out fluorescence of the kitchen. He stomped down the length of the kitchen, turned around. Roy stood with none of Dick’s manic energy. He swayed a little when he straightened up.
“How could you go forward if what you wanted was in your past?”
“Barbara?” Roy asked softly.
“Maybe. I don’t know. She’s keeping things from me.”
“Ya love her?”
“Not sure it matters. Whatever I feel is just an echo. It’s gonna be buried by the man I am. I remember more, and more, and the slate gets filled up. Right now, it’s all I can do to reach out.”
“Look, maybe you don’t wanna believe me. There are things I wish I could wipe out and things I couldn’t imagine letting go of. I suppose it’d be the same for you. It wasn’t all bad, but lately… you weren’t at your best. But whatever you remember, whatever people tell you, I have faith that you were always trying to do the right thing.”
“Trying?”
“Don’t ask me to pass judgment on you. I haven’t been a saint either.”
“Good to know some things don’t change.”
Dick grinned so brightly that Roy just had to join in, and soon they were laughing and slapping their knees like they were kids again.
“Can I ask a favor?” Dick said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.
“Yeah, sure, anything.”
“Could you drive me to Gotham City?”
Roy put his keys on the table. “Like, road trip?”
“Yeah.”
Roy laughed. “Hard-traveling heroes; damn, it’s good to have you back, Dick!” He sobered, a little. “Any reason why you can’t ask Barbara for a ride?”
Dick perked his eyebrows at the innuendo. “I kinda wanna… get away from her for a while. Not be dependent on her or pressuring her or whatever it is we have. Just… take some time off.”
“Yeah, cool.” Roy nodded, covering for something. “You sure it has to be Gotham? It could be Star City, Opal City, Santa Cruz… surfing there is fantastic.”
“No, it needs to be Gotham. I need to know it’s okay. I need to know everyone’s okay.”
“If they’re not…” Roy slung a hand onto Dick’s shoulder. “It wasn’t because you didn’t… anything.”
“How would I know?”
***
Dick said he was leaving slowly, in ebbs and flows that finally built up to an out-loud confession, but Barbara knew from the first word of the first sentence. The wanderlust was in his voice, but something else, too. Something greater.
Dick packed what little he had, apologizing for commandeering her suitcases. “I just need to see Gotham again. You understand, don’t you?”
She did. “It’s your home.”
“Yeah. I mean, intellectually I know it’s fine and that No Man’s Land was resolved years ago, but I just need to check it out. See how everything’s doing.” He grinned again, shyer and smaller than before. “Gives me hope, you know. If we came back from that, we can come back from anything.”
As he told it, remembering NML was like an island in an ocean of forgetfulness. He didn’t have any context, and it was scrambled like cable porn (his metaphor), but it all made sense.
“I seem to remember us getting chased by corrupt cops,” Barbara said acidly.
“Yeah. Fun, right?”
Her cheeks went rose-red. From his perked eyebrows, he would be thinking of the kiss. Their first since he’d been Robin and she’d been Batgirl. Since the night before he’d given her an invitation to his wedding. She darkened at the memory. Eidetic recall sucked.
Dick checked out a Members Only jacket, blanched, and put it aside rather than in his suitcase. “You going to miss me?”
“No, course not.”
“Cause I could stay.”
“No, go. Be a tourist.” She steepled her fingers.
“Barbara, I will…”
“Don’t,” she said, the word volleyed at him like an attack. “I’ve been over this scene a thousand times. I can’t forget a single detail of it. Hearing you say goodbye once is enough for a lifetime.”
“Do you,” his voice was strong, “want me,” his words forceful, “to stay?”
She couldn’t look at him. Not letting him know how much it hurt, being the strong one, not wanting to find out from him what it looked like, being the weak one.
“Go. Don’t make a promise. Don’t make a proposal. Just go.” Finally, she looked at him. She was drawn to that, forced into one last look. He was kneeling by her. It hurt her like a knife, like a bullet in the spine, and she wished there was some numbness in her future instead of the ache. “If you want to come back, then come back.”
“I…”
She put a finger to his lips. “Actions, Dick. You always spoke more eloquently with actions.” She let her fingertip run down his chin until it had dropped off his face. “If you don’t come back, I’ll understand. And I’ll move on. Don’t let me be an obligation.”
“You could never be,” he told her, and hurried off.
***
As JLA chairwoman, Dinah had unlimited access to the JLA’s teleportation system. It came in handy for more than just picking up Lian from school when Roy was running late. Out of respect for Barbara’s secrecy/anonymity/paranoia triple threat, Dinah beamed in to an alleyway across the street from Dalton Tower. She crossed the street, looking vaguely respectable in faded jeans and an untucked buttondown shirt. A bit celebrityish for her, she was counting on the baseball cap and lack of fishnets to deter anyone from recognizing her. Thankfully, most people just didn’t parse superheroes as superheroes if they weren’t dressed in bright primary colors or skintight spandex.
She took the express elevator up to Barbara’s floor. Technically, it was far more secure than the old Clocktower, having been half-finished when Barbara found it and then reconstructed to her specifications. Still, she preferred the Clocktower. There were just so many good memories there, while Dalton Tower was like a tomb. Only its corpse was still going through the motions. Poor Barbara, stuck with only Helena for company. Giving the Birds a rotating roster had been a good idea, and Dinah had whole-heartedly approved of it, but it did have the side effect of keeping anyone from getting too close to Barbara. After the thing with Dick, couldn’t Dinah’s departure have been the last straw for Barbara’s meager sociability?
Dinah shook off the thought, walking into the control room to find Barbara with an individual monitor devoted to each of the missing hackers’ fields of expertise. As she’d done a thousand times before, Dinah pulled up a chair, twisted it around so it was back to back with Barbara’s, then straddled it and put her chin on Barbara’s shoulder.
“Hey, girlfriend,” she said, giving her closest friend an affectionate cuddle.
Barbara sighed. She didn’t have Dick’s fetish for warm bodies, but being touched by the right person could still make her feel complete. And Dinah was one of those people who always unlocked her. Barbara was usually careful to surround herself with people who didn’t. Ironically enough, Helena’s past relationship with Dick and a thousand other miniaturized conflicts between them had ensured that the partnership between the two of them would always be primarily a matter of business.
Not Dinah. Dinah was too insightful, too friendly, too attuned to Barbara to allow those years of alliance turned friendship turned family to be scrapped. It was as good a reason as any to keep her at arm’s length. Even knowing that Dinah would volunteer for a mission in a heartbeat, Barbara had never called upon her. It was easier to reach out to Power Girl, her first and now permanently estranged agent, then it was for her to contact her best friend.
Barbara embraced Dinah, or pretty close to it for her. Her arm she draped over Dinah’s neck so that she was holding the blonde close.
“Thank God you’re here, Dinah. I need to talk to someone who won’t think I’m crazy.”
“Will someone who knows you’re only mildly crazy do?”
“Dinah, I think I made a really big mistake,” Barbara said, without anymore preamble. Then she forced a nicety. “How are things with Ollie?”
”We’re thinking of getting an annulment.”
As tough as it was to admit that, Dinah did like the way Barbara’s body automatically hitched… both with the desire to help and the long-suffering, very Bat-like sigh that she would have to put up with someone else’s problems before they could get down to business.
“But that can wait until you’re feeding me. I can expect that you’ve discovered a good seafood restaurant in Metropolis by now?”
“The delivery boy’s on his way as we speak. You mind getting it? I’m busy with…”
“Babs, what do we always say about using work to escape personal problems?”
Reluctantly, Barbara put the system on standby and cued the lights. The room lit up.
“Whoa,” Dinah exclaimed, standing and pulling her chair out of Barbara’s way. “Someone dusted in here. And do I detect the lemony scent of Pine-Sol?” She thudded Barbara on the shoulder. “What happened in here? Finally found a way to clone Alfred? Because I want one. Preferably with the body of Brad Pitt.”
“First, I am both disgusted and aroused by that thought. And second, Dick happened.” Barbara took off her glasses. “He did it his first night here, while I slept. Before making me breakfast.”
“And you didn’t marry him why?” Dinah teased.
“Don’t make me go into that, please. I could’ve used you around when Dick was planning our honeymoon and you were off playing Lady Shiva.”
Dinah laughed helplessly. Barbara gave her an offended glare.
“Sorry, sorry. I just had the thought of you asking Shiva for relationship advice.”
Barbara laughed as well. It felt good, the tension breaking with simple laughter. No layers of hegemony between them, no secrets or lies or old hurts, just a friend who loved and respected her. She could use more of those. She feared what having more of them would do to her.
“Let’s go into the dining room. There’s some gloriously unhealthy dessert I’ve been saving for just such an occasion.”
In a few minutes, Barbara was set up with a laptop nearby her place at the table and a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream cracked open between them. Dinah ladled a generous helping into Barbara’s bowl.
“Shouldn’t we wait for dinner to get here before eating this?”
“You still wait until Christmas morning to open your presents?”
Dinah spooned a big chunk into her mouth and moaned orgasmically at the taste. Barbara couldn’t resist after that and dug in. Her only compunction serviced when she remembered it would have to have been Dick who’d bought the ice cream, as she was well-stocked with soy yogurt (and simply asked room service to bring up rocky road when soy yogurt didn’t cut it).
“Not a lot of self-awareness in the old Clocktower,” Dinah said in a faraway voice, her pondering-koan voice.
Barbara hated the pondering-koan voice. It made Dinah sound wiser, which was a bitch because Barbara was smarter. It was like a dumb pitch for a buddy show. One’s smart, one’s wise. Barbara thought that was just a way to make people feel better about not being smart.
“This isn’t the Clocktower,” Barbara said. “The heating’s better in the winter.”
“I think we both know each other better than we know ourselves,” Dinah pressed on, a bullet train on a track. “You were right when you said I shouldn’t marry Ollie. And I’m paying for not listening to you. So do you accept you should listen to me now?”
Barbara steeled herself and nodded. “I’m listening.”
“Okay.” Dinah took her hands. “You’re being careful. And it’s good that you’re being careful, it’s real good that you’re not rushing into anything. But there’s such a thing as being too cautious.” Barbara frowned at the familiar criticism and Dinah squeezed her hands to assuage her, a gesture asking for trust. Barbara erased the frown from her face. “All the planning in the world doesn’t help you if you never commit to something. Take it from me. I’ve seen you. I’ve seen how miserable you are alone. You don’t always show it… sometimes you’re downright content. But when you’re happy, you’re with Dick. That’s a fact. He’s good for you. He’s not perfect, you’re not perfect, but you have something special.”
Barbara’s eyes had drifted shut; her breathing filled the dining room. Dinah rubbed her thumbs over the backs of Barbara’s hands. Please, let it be that simple.
It wasn’t quite that simple.
“Am I good for him?” Barbara asked when she opened her eyes.
Dinah laughed and scooped some more ice cream into her mouth. “If you’re asking that question, yes, you are. And speaking as someone who has dated her fair share of men…”
Barbara actually guffawed, which went and made Dinah’s cheeks redden.
“He doesn’t smoke, drink--”
“He does sometimes.”
“--fear commitment, forget anniversaries, cheat—“
“He does. Did.”
Dinah stopped, in plain shock.
Barbara took another bite of ice cream and Dinah pushed the pint away.
“Talk.”
“I found out that… a while ago, I found out that he’s been seeing Kory. Never while we were dating, but they had this casual sex thing.“
“Oh, well…” Dinah put her hand to her head and leaned on it, planting her elbow on the tabletop. “It’s not like you haven’t dated other people.”
Similarly down, Barbara pillowed her arms under her chin and sunk her head into them. “You’re going to think I’m an idiot.”
“You’re a genius, Babs,” Dinah said matter-of-factly.
Barbara felt her face grow warm. As embarrassed as she was, some aspects of her relationship with Dick were irrational… downright girlish, really. And that was where she was the most vulnerable, in the part of her that hoped. “All the times when he came into my life or some emergency forced us together or I nursed him back to health and things between us rekindled, even just for a little bit… I thought that was special. Like, our couple-y thing.” She forced her head up and dug another spoonful from the pint of ice cream. “But no, he’s been doing the exact same fucking thing with Kory.”
Dinah kneaded her temples with the fingers of one hand. “Uh-huh. Okay, that sucks. But has he given you any reason to think he won’t make a commitment once you make a commitment? Were you expecting him to wait around forever?”
And here comes the me-being-a-stupid-little-girl-with-unrealistic-expectations part. “That’s what people are supposed to do, aren’t they? When they’re in love?
“When they’re in love, people are supposed to be together. As I recall, you told him off because you didn’t want him nipping at your heels for the tiniest bit of affection. Then when he goes out and does what you wanted him to do, you turn that into a demerit.”
An anger, directed at Dick but singeing Dinah on the way out, sprung from Barbara. “I told him to go and fuck someone without even knowing her name?”
“I don’t know what you told him and I don’t know what message he got. But have you ever thought about just telling him how you feel?”
Again, Barbara crossed her arms on the table and lowered her head until her forehead was resting against the walls of her forearms. “That’s how my nightmares start.”
“The all-knowing Oracle… afraid of a tiny little conversation.”
Barbara felt a sudden, overwhelming urge for a drink. She steered herself toward the liquor cabinet. “Like you and Ollie were ever easy.”
“Actually, we were.”
Dinah dug into the glassware cupboard, finding two Collins glasses. She carried them to the liquor cabinet, where she set them down on top, then grabbed the bottle of Malibu rum Barbara was trying to open, as well as a few other bottles. She popped them all with ease and began mixing drinks for the two of them.
“It was easy to give into Ollie. Because every time he said he’d changed or that he was sorry… he meant it. He just never followed through.”
She shoved her drink under Barbara’s nose.
“What is this?”
“Fishnet Stocking.”
“Huh.”
“I invented it. Drink up, it’s practically a girlie drink.”
Barbara did. Then she winced, grimaced as if she had never tasted alcohol before, and looked at the glass to make sure it was the same mixture she was sure had been poured into the glass.
“Has a bit of a kick,” Barbara said hoarsely.
“I did invent it.” Dinah sent her own drink down the hatch. “The thing is, with Ollie, when things got hard, we never fixed them. We just went away for a while, forgot about the bad times, romanticized the good, and then we got back together. And the same old problems cropped back up. And now I’m just sick of it, sick of him, because he’s never going to learn.” She polished off her cup. “He’s never going to stop treating me like a sidekick.”
“Dick and I have problems,” Barbara said, before taking another sip of her Fishnet Stocking.
“Yeah, who doesn’t? Even you and I have problems, and we’re practically an old married couple.”
“Eh?”
“Like Batman and Superman.”
”Eh?”
“Never mind. The point is, you’re smart enough to work through your problems. I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But is Dick worth it? That’s what you have to decide. Dick’s a fruit.”
“Is this about him or Roy?”
“It’s a metaphor.” Dinah burst out laughing.
Barbara looked at her Fishnet Stocking again. “These things do have a kick.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Dick’s a fruit—so you have to decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze.”
Barbara pondered it for a moment. Then she pounded her glass back on top of the liquor cabinet.
“I’m gonna need more beer.”
“Why?”
“Because he is. He is worth it. God help me.”
Chapter 6
