The Other Wife 11/12: The Ides of March
Apr. 22nd, 2008 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: The Ides of March
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Donna/Kory, Dick/Kory
Word Count: 3,992
Series: The Other Wife
Summary: Barbara finds out.
Month 7
Month 8 – March - The Ides of March
For the first time in her life, Kory felt like she was the problem. Everyone else was happy except her. And if they weren’t happy, they were doing a good job lying about it. If there was one thing she hated about Earth, it was people lying about their feelings.
I still love Dick Grayson. I wish it had been me he married. I wish Barbara was the third party in threesomes with us.
Of course, it wasn’t like the truth was doing her much good. Donna was curled between her legs, head on her thigh, kissing the underside of Kory’s belly. Kory had gone past being pretty-pregnant and into Berthian-space-whale pregnant. Everything she ate seemed to come back up in a few hours, make-up was ill-suited to conceal the deep lines pregnancy had drawn on her face, and at times her very vision seemed dim. No matter how it might shatter their precocious equilibrium, she wanted Dick’s daughter out of her. And her daughter, and Barbara’s daughter…
Donna stirred, hugging herself to Kory’s leg. “Can’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Wanna…?” Donna raised an eyebrow lasciviously.
“You met me at a bad time. This month, I wouldn’t even want to fuck X’Hal herself.”
“Yeah, I met her, giant golden lady. I think not wanting to fuck her is normal.”
“She shrinks, finds a mortal, and has her way with them every hundred years or so… resulting in a child. It’s given the Tamaranians some saviors.”
“A goddess given form,” Donna mused, her hair sweeping over Kory’s pelvis. “I think I know what that looks like.”
“I’m not feeling very god-like at the moment.” To demonstrate, Kory held up a hand and tried to burn a starbolt. A nimbus glowed around her fingers, but didn’t coalesce into proper energy. It was just like she was holding a dying lightbulb.
“Trust me. I’ve met the gods. You’re more god-like.”
Kory reached down to pet her face, which Donna offered up. “Having my way with beautiful little mortals?”
“Mmm.”
On hands and knees, Donna crawled over Kory until they were face to face. Kory reached up to undo the fibula in Donna’s hair and the black silk tumbled out like a wave. Kory grabbed it and jerked Donna down to kiss her.
And I still love Donna. I’ll never be happy with just one or the other. And they’ll never consent to ‘sharing’ me; as if that resulted in less love to go around instead of more. This would be so much more simpler on Tamaran.
“Donna?”
”Yes, Kor?”
“You were happy back in Titans Tower, weren’t you? When Dick and I were lovers too? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Of course not, Kory. It was your way.”
“And if an… an arrangement like that came around again, you wouldn’t be unhappy?”
Donna frowned. “But you don’t want an arrangement like that, because you’re happy with me, right?”
“Of course, my love. I’m just… confused.” Kory smiled. “You didn’t seem to mind on Christmas.”
“No, but that was different. I thought that was just a fling.”
“X’Hal, what is it with Earth women? You’re all quite alright with sex so long as it’s cheap and meaningless, but as soon as there’s any emotion attributed to it…”
“Hey, hey, hey…” Donna petted Kory’s hair. “I want you to be happy. If that meant… Dick… I’d be all for it!”
“He’d make you a very happy woman,” Kory said seriously.
“But I don’t like it when you get so caught up in what could be that you don’t value what you have: Me.”
“I could never not value you,” Kory said. “But I… so want for the joy of what we once had to return.”
“I felt the same way about Terry, even after the divorce.”
Kory put a shocked hand to her mouth.
“But you can’t bring back the past. You have to keep moving forward. Like a shark, you know? If a shark stops moving, it dies. You have to live life in the present.”
Kory nodded glumly. “I just wish the present wouldn’t swell my ankles up like the feet of a Durlan slime-beast.”
Donna giggled and embraced Kory again, satisfied that the issue was dealt with.
She slept soundly that night. Kory didn’t.
***
By a feat of blind-eye-turning, it was agreed that the baby shower would be held in the Clocktower. Barbara cleared out a ballroom on one of the lower floors and, with some help from Alfred and his team of ninja waiting staff, turned the place into party central. Like ghosts, everyone involved wandered that floor, waiting for the party to coalesce. Donna and Barbara bonded a little over arranging everything just right. Dick was stringing up a streamer. He hopped down to admire it and Kory linked her arm with his.
“Babs, mind if I borrow your husband for a moment?”
A look went between the three women that could’ve shrunk Dick Grayson.
“Just be sure to bring him back,” Barbara replied icily, Donna squeezing her shoulder.
They walked by the carts of balloons waiting to be strung up and to the bandstand, where a local nightclub singer would be doing an act later. Dick sat down between the halogen lamps set into the stage; Kory leaned against the stage.
“I was hoping we could talk more privately,” was Kory’s first statement.
Dick opened his mouth to reply, thought about it, and then just shook his head.
“When were you going to tell me?” About dumping the kid on me.
“Donna wanted to tell you the good news herself,” Dick said, folding his hands in his lap. Even he knew how lame that sounded.
“You’re such an asshole.”
Dick nearly jumped down from the stage, but instead locked his hands together and kept himself as perfectly still as a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car. “This is what’s best for all of us,” he said, calmly, like he was reading from a cue card. “Me and Barbara get to… go back to the way things were, you and Donna get to raise your kid, everyone’s happy.”
“That’s what you say. You made this decision knowing that I wanted you to be my child’s father…”
He shook his head stiffly. “You don’t want me to be a dad, you want me to be your lover. But I don’t love you.”
“Look me in the eye when you tell me that.”
Dick leaped down and spun so that he was in front of her, his eyes burning into hers. “I don’t love you.”
“I don’t believe you.“
Dick slapped the stage next to her. “Believe what you want. You’ll be happy with Donna. That’s good enough.”
He went back to Barbara, kneeling on one knee and putting an arm around her as soon as he reached her and not caring who saw. She kissed the side of his neck.
“Men aren’t supposed to be at the baby shower, right?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
***
Dinah and Roy crowded into the elevator, Roy holding a gift-wrapped baby carrier that was Wonder Woman-approved to hold your baby even when flying or jumping from rooftops. That would explain the week Diana had spent with a Cabbage Patch doll strapped to her chest.
“Worried?” Dinah asked.
Roy felt like he would be sick. “I can manage.” The elevator went up a few floors. Roy sighed so hard he imagined his teeth cracking. “This is so fucked up.”
“I know.”
“I mean, it should be him giving this talk to me.”
“Why? You get a blowjob from some other woman?”
“Dinah, there’s only one other girl I love and she’s just starting preschool.”
Dinah brushed at his back. “You can do this. He has to hear it from someone. I’m sure he’d prefer it be you.”
“Thanks.” He shifted the present onto one arm and gave her hand a squeeze. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The elevator chimed and opened.
***
It seemed like every woman on the planet who’d ever had superpowers decided all at once to invade a baby shower. They ate, drank, and made merry with the kind of exuberance one would expect from people who were very happy someone was having a baby, so long as it wasn’t them.
Kory didn’t so much partake as approve, sitting within Donna’s parted legs on a beanbag in the back. Her friends sat down by her when they weren’t dancing, talking and complimenting her and bringing her food from the buffet. She scarfed it down, what she didn’t insist on Donna sampling, and soon they were all seated, standing, or cross-legged in a rough circle to open presents.
“Behold!” Big Barda said, presenting a cylindrical shape gift-wrapped and with a bow on top.
Donna’s eyes went wide as she wondered just what the gift’s intended use was. Kory opened it excitedly.
“The Mini-Rod!” Barda proclaimed.
Kory shook it. It rattled.
“Thank you very much, Biggest of Bardas,” Kory said gratefully. She shook it near her belly, letting the baby hear the sound.
After Kory had opened their presents, Barbara went to grab some more punch. Dinah followed her, leaving Kory to open presents from the others.
“How’re you feeling?”
“A bit like someone dropped a brick wall on me.” Barbara took her drink. “But things are finally getting back to normal. Kory’s moved out, she wants to raise the kid herself…” she patted Dinah on the stomach with the back of her hand. “Dick’s being quite affectionate. He can’t seem to get enough of me.”
Dinah smiled half-heartedly. “Me and Ollie were like that, once. The sex was so fantastic, we didn’t really think about the relationship we were building on it… or were building on, or whatever. It was complicated.”
“No offense, but Dick’s not Ollie.” Barbara guzzled her drink. “He’s really done right by me, these past few weeks. It reminds me of our honeymoon, only without the murder investigation.” She poured another ladle of punch into her Dixie cup and handed it to Dinah, who drank. “I’m happy for you and Roy, by the way. We should double date.”
That was it. Dinah couldn’t take it anymore without a thousand arguments she’d made about trust and keeping secrets and honesty echoing inside her skull. “Babs, there’s something you should know.”
***
Dick punished himself with exercise. Looking at Kory the way he had, thinking about her the way he did… pain always drove her out of his head. He’d push himself to his limits, then pass them. Times like this, the Clocktower had shortages on punching bags. His knuckles were just starting to bleed when Roy came in. With a Bruce Lee scream and a roundhouse kick, Dick ruptured the punching bag. It bled sand.
Roy applauded softly. “That’s one punching bag that will never again menace the good people of Gotham.”
Dick sucked down water. A drop of blood ran over his fingers to tint the outside of the bottle. “Something I can do for you, Roy?”
“You got another hit of that? I’m parched.”
Dick pointed to a mini-fridge in the back. Inside were icepacks and sports drinks. Roy grabbed a cherry Gatorade and drank from it. Dick watched him curiously, noting how Roy kept drinking as a delaying action to more conversation.
“Spot me?” Dick said, nodding toward the weightlifting bench.
“Sure.”
With a quick kiss, Dick sucked the blood from his knuckles, then sat down on the bench. Roy stood next to him for a moment. Then Dick laid back and Roy circled around to the head of the bench to take hold of the dumbbell. He picked it up, nearly ripping his arms out of their sockets, and eased the bar into Dick’s grip. Painstakingly, Dick began the awkward first reps.
“Dick, you remember how we swore always to be straight with each other?”
“Yeah.” Dick benched his weights again, slowly getting into a rhythm. “Kinda has a dual meaning nowadays, considering what the gossip columns are saying about us.”
“What do the gossip columns… oh, screw it, as long as they’re not saying we’re dating Lindsey Lohan. I gotta talk to you about Barbara.”
Dick grunted with another rep. “If you’re going to tell me the marriage was a mistake too, I don’t have time for you.”
Roy wrapped a hand around the barbell, as if ready to catch it. Dick stopped with the next lift and held it up, not bringing it back down.
“It’s not that. Dick, I know you cheated on her.”
“Jesus, what did Kory do, post it on Youtube? No. I didn’t cheat on Barbara.” Dick wrenched the barbell out of Roy’s hand and did another rep. “I made a mistake. Cheating implies some sort of choice, a willful decision to have sex with someone other than your wife. I never made that choice.”
“So, what, Kory raped you?”
Dick went rapid-fire through a half-dozen reps. “No, I just… wasn’t consulted.”
“She just got the wrong impression from you standing next to her with your cock out, huh?”
“Yes! One thing led to another. Mistakes were made. But that’s not adultery! Adultery is meeting your secretary in a seedy hotel room, buying your mistress flowers and hiding it from your wife. Having a sex act performed on you in the heat of the moment isn’t that!”
“Then you won’t mind if I tell Barbara?”
With a growl, Dick racked the barbell. “Don’t get stupid, Roy.”
Dick tried to stand up from the bench and Roy sat him back down, a strong hand at his shoulder.
“You cannot keep ignoring this. You have to settle it. Before…”
There was a squeak of tires and the dull sound of a door banging against the doorjamb. Both men turned to see Barbara entering the room. Her arms pistoned, rowing the wheels with steady, disturbing motion.
“Babs,” Dick said.
“Shut up. I know. Roy, leave.”
Dick looked to Roy for a moment. “Babs, I think you may be…”
“I said shut up!” Roy backed off. Left. “Let’s go get Kory.”
***
The baby shower cleared out at a single word from Barbara. Soon, it was just Dick, Barbara, Kory, and Donna. Barbara looked at Donna.
“You don’t want to be here for this,” she said.
Donna put a hand on Kory’s shoulder. “I love her. You wanna say something to her, I’ll hear it.”
“Fine. I—“ Barbara paused. She chuckled, a hysterical noise that almost trailed off into a sob. “I don’t really have anything to say. Well, not much.”
She pulled off her wedding ring. It took a moment to get loose. Dick watched her, his heart taking an hour for each beat. After the longest moment in his life, the ring came free. She threw it against his chest. It bounced, landed on the floor, spun and fell flat.
“Never thought I’d take that off… not for real.” She bit her lip. There were tears in her eyes. Automatically, Dick moved to comfort her. She slapped his hand away. “Don’t! All this time… all this time… I thought my life had finally gone right. But there was something wrong with it, all along. You.”
“Don’t say that,” Kory said strongly.
“Oh, shut up, you whore.”
From Donna: “Don’t call her a…”
“No.” Kory stood, pushing Donna’s hand off her. “Whatever you want to call me, I am. I did a horrible thing, to you and him.” She indicated Dick, who stood there, frozen. “I never meant to hurt anyone. I only wanted to love…”
“Oh, you pulled that one off in spades.”
“If you want to be angry with someone, be angry with me. Not Dick.”
“How noble,” Barbara said, bitterness filling her veins with toxin. “You two really do make a great couple. ‘I think we should have an open relationship’… God, how could I be so stupid?”
Dick knelt down, one hand scooping up the wedding ring, the other taking Barbara by the wrist. “Barbara, I cannot tell you how sorry I am.”
“You’re right. You can’t.”
“Things just got out of hand. If I could do things over again… if there was one decision in my life I could take back… that would be the one. I’ve tried to make it up to you in so many ways.”
“Yeah, you took me to the opera. That really makes up for sleeping around on me.” Barbara wiped the tears from her eyes. “So the past few months, that was all making up for fucking Kory? Not because you loved me, but because you felt guilty! Why’d you ask to marry me in the first place, huh, you felt bad about fingering Helena?”
“Because I love you. I wanted you to be happy, and I knew you would be miserable if you found out. Weren’t we happy? Weren’t you happy, not knowing?”
He kissed her hand. Again, and again, and another time. Barbara sighed, her breath rattling in her chest before she started crying. Tears streamed down either cheeks; no matter how hard she tried to stop, they just kept defying her. Donna looked at Kory, whose head was down with abject shame.
Dick felt the end closing in and knew he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t even slow it down, but he would sell his soul for just a chance, one chance… “We can go back. We can forget about this, about this one mistake, and we’ll be so happy, baby, I’ll make you so happy. This will never happen again, I swear, I swear to you…”
“I can’t be happy with a lie.” Barbara pulled her hand away. “And it never should’ve happened in the first place.”
His head was on her lap, his hands slightly opening her thighs as he kissed her stomach, kissed right above her belt.
“Get off me!” she cried, shoving him back. Donna caught him.
“I hope you’re happy. I really do. I hope you’re both really happy with each other. Because I won’t be. I’m done. I’m not doing this anymore.” Barbara wiped at her forehead, feeling feverish.
She turned to go.
Dick grabbed the back of her wheelchair. “Can’t we try to fix this? Please?” He lowered his hands to her shoulders and massaged gently. “We always at least try. That was what we promised each other when we started, that we would always try.”
“You know what else we promised, Dick? Forsake all others. I’ve had enough.”
She nearly jammed her hands right through the wheels as she rolled away. Dick watched her go, barely even noticing as Kory knelt down and wrapped her arms around him. He was holding his hand out to Barbara, palm up, wedding ring flat on it, when Kory plucked the ring and held it in her closed hand against his heart.
“Dick. Dick, you don’t have to be sad. You have me.” She kissed his cheek, over and over again, until she found his lips. “Dick, I love you. I’ve always loved you and I still love you and I’ll never stop loving you.”
“Get your hands off me,” Dick said weakly.
“I’ll do anything you want, but not that. Please, let me kiss you, let me love you, it’s all I want for myself. Donna, come here, Donna…”
Donna stepped forward, face stricken as Kory took her hand and tugged her down next to Dick.
“We both love you.” She buried her face in Dick’s neck. “I know how special Barbara is, but the two of us, yes, we must make up for one of her.” Her hand rubbed his abs, rubbing higher and lower, and lower, and lower. “I love you so much, Dick, if you only knew…”
“I don’t wanna know.” He staggered to his feet, stopped as Kory grabbed him around the waist and nuzzled her face in his crotch.
“She does, you know.” Donna was looking up at him with her luminous eyes calmly dead. “She loves you. And if she loves you, I’ll love you. I’m sorry, Dick, she made me.”
Dick looked down to see a golden thread wrapped around his wrist.
“Do you love Princess Koriand’r?” Donna asked.
Dick gritted his teeth, his features washed out in a sudden sweat, eyes nearly rolling back in his head as the truth surged within him, grew, twitched at his extremities, and finally spilled over. After all that, it was such a small word that came out of his mouth: “Yes.”
“I knew it!” Kory kissed his groin, the bone of his hip, the head of his rising cock. “And I love you too!”
Dick shook the lasso. “Ask me if I love Barbara.”
“Don’t,” Kory said, reaching over to grab Donna’s hand.
“Do you?”
“With all my heart. I’d die for her. I’d kill for her.” He pulled free of the lasso, parting with a few layers of skin, and looked at Kory. She took his bleeding hand and kissed it harder, licking up the blood. It left her lips red. Very red. “I’d give up a woman… I love… for her.”
Without another word, Dick ran.
“No, no!” Kory tried to follow after him and Donna wrestled her to the ground, holding her close until Kory gave in and sobbed. For herself, for her daughter, for all the lives that had collapsed around her. “I could’ve made it better. I could’ve made him better.”
Donna resolved to hold her lover until things got better.
***
Outside, it wasn’t pouring rain. The skies were simply overcast, shot through with dark streaks of the blackest cloud imaginable, making the sun a distant memory. Roy sat in the driver’s seat of his car, mumbling obscenities to himself, as Dinah helped Barbara into the backseat. Barbara was openly crying now, clinging to Dinah as much for comfort as support.
Dick ran out of the Clocktower, confused and lost, spun around before he saw Barbara through the crowd of milling people. He ran to her, bumping into pedestrians, knocked around by the human bulk until at last he was there for her, beside her, and Dinah was standing in his way.
“Don’t give me an excuse,” Dinah growled. She was all the anger at him that Barbara loved him too much to express. “You seem like a nice guy when you’re not breaking my best friend’s heart.”
Dick scowled and looked to Roy. “Call her off, Roy.”
“Doesn’t work like that,” he said.
“Yeah,” Dinah spat caustically, “we have what’s called a healthy relationship. I realize that you might not recognize that…”
“Lady, you’re fucking the adopted son of your old boy-toy. What are you, Woody Allen with ovaries?”
Dinah went into a fighting stance as Barbara got into the car, pulling her wheelchair in after her. Roy stepped in-between Dinah and Dick, hands flat at his waist.
“Dick, back down. Okay? Trust me.”
Dick watched, biting his lower lip, as Roy and Dinah got into the car and drove off. He staggered out into the street to watch them drive away. Cars rushed by him. He didn’t really care. He wouldn’t have cared if one hit him.
***
Eventually, Kory stopped crying. She became aware of Donna still holding her, rocking her gently.
“Dick left,” Donna said. “He packed his things and he left. He didn’t even look at us.”
Kory rubbed her nose against Donna, somehow seeming very regal despite her bloodshot eyes and tear-stained cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
“No.’ Kory ran her fingers through Donna’s hair lovingly. “You know how I get around Dick. I lose control. I think you’re the same way for me and I take advantage of that when I should value it. I let my great love for Dick blind me to you.”
Donna sniffled, looking away.
“I’ve taken you for granted and for that, I can never apologize enough. But I must ask one more favor.”
“Anything.”
“I need your help to make everything right.”
Month 9
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Donna/Kory, Dick/Kory
Word Count: 3,992
Series: The Other Wife
Summary: Barbara finds out.
Month 7
Month 8 – March - The Ides of March
For the first time in her life, Kory felt like she was the problem. Everyone else was happy except her. And if they weren’t happy, they were doing a good job lying about it. If there was one thing she hated about Earth, it was people lying about their feelings.
I still love Dick Grayson. I wish it had been me he married. I wish Barbara was the third party in threesomes with us.
Of course, it wasn’t like the truth was doing her much good. Donna was curled between her legs, head on her thigh, kissing the underside of Kory’s belly. Kory had gone past being pretty-pregnant and into Berthian-space-whale pregnant. Everything she ate seemed to come back up in a few hours, make-up was ill-suited to conceal the deep lines pregnancy had drawn on her face, and at times her very vision seemed dim. No matter how it might shatter their precocious equilibrium, she wanted Dick’s daughter out of her. And her daughter, and Barbara’s daughter…
Donna stirred, hugging herself to Kory’s leg. “Can’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Wanna…?” Donna raised an eyebrow lasciviously.
“You met me at a bad time. This month, I wouldn’t even want to fuck X’Hal herself.”
“Yeah, I met her, giant golden lady. I think not wanting to fuck her is normal.”
“She shrinks, finds a mortal, and has her way with them every hundred years or so… resulting in a child. It’s given the Tamaranians some saviors.”
“A goddess given form,” Donna mused, her hair sweeping over Kory’s pelvis. “I think I know what that looks like.”
“I’m not feeling very god-like at the moment.” To demonstrate, Kory held up a hand and tried to burn a starbolt. A nimbus glowed around her fingers, but didn’t coalesce into proper energy. It was just like she was holding a dying lightbulb.
“Trust me. I’ve met the gods. You’re more god-like.”
Kory reached down to pet her face, which Donna offered up. “Having my way with beautiful little mortals?”
“Mmm.”
On hands and knees, Donna crawled over Kory until they were face to face. Kory reached up to undo the fibula in Donna’s hair and the black silk tumbled out like a wave. Kory grabbed it and jerked Donna down to kiss her.
And I still love Donna. I’ll never be happy with just one or the other. And they’ll never consent to ‘sharing’ me; as if that resulted in less love to go around instead of more. This would be so much more simpler on Tamaran.
“Donna?”
”Yes, Kor?”
“You were happy back in Titans Tower, weren’t you? When Dick and I were lovers too? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Of course not, Kory. It was your way.”
“And if an… an arrangement like that came around again, you wouldn’t be unhappy?”
Donna frowned. “But you don’t want an arrangement like that, because you’re happy with me, right?”
“Of course, my love. I’m just… confused.” Kory smiled. “You didn’t seem to mind on Christmas.”
“No, but that was different. I thought that was just a fling.”
“X’Hal, what is it with Earth women? You’re all quite alright with sex so long as it’s cheap and meaningless, but as soon as there’s any emotion attributed to it…”
“Hey, hey, hey…” Donna petted Kory’s hair. “I want you to be happy. If that meant… Dick… I’d be all for it!”
“He’d make you a very happy woman,” Kory said seriously.
“But I don’t like it when you get so caught up in what could be that you don’t value what you have: Me.”
“I could never not value you,” Kory said. “But I… so want for the joy of what we once had to return.”
“I felt the same way about Terry, even after the divorce.”
Kory put a shocked hand to her mouth.
“But you can’t bring back the past. You have to keep moving forward. Like a shark, you know? If a shark stops moving, it dies. You have to live life in the present.”
Kory nodded glumly. “I just wish the present wouldn’t swell my ankles up like the feet of a Durlan slime-beast.”
Donna giggled and embraced Kory again, satisfied that the issue was dealt with.
She slept soundly that night. Kory didn’t.
***
By a feat of blind-eye-turning, it was agreed that the baby shower would be held in the Clocktower. Barbara cleared out a ballroom on one of the lower floors and, with some help from Alfred and his team of ninja waiting staff, turned the place into party central. Like ghosts, everyone involved wandered that floor, waiting for the party to coalesce. Donna and Barbara bonded a little over arranging everything just right. Dick was stringing up a streamer. He hopped down to admire it and Kory linked her arm with his.
“Babs, mind if I borrow your husband for a moment?”
A look went between the three women that could’ve shrunk Dick Grayson.
“Just be sure to bring him back,” Barbara replied icily, Donna squeezing her shoulder.
They walked by the carts of balloons waiting to be strung up and to the bandstand, where a local nightclub singer would be doing an act later. Dick sat down between the halogen lamps set into the stage; Kory leaned against the stage.
“I was hoping we could talk more privately,” was Kory’s first statement.
Dick opened his mouth to reply, thought about it, and then just shook his head.
“When were you going to tell me?” About dumping the kid on me.
“Donna wanted to tell you the good news herself,” Dick said, folding his hands in his lap. Even he knew how lame that sounded.
“You’re such an asshole.”
Dick nearly jumped down from the stage, but instead locked his hands together and kept himself as perfectly still as a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car. “This is what’s best for all of us,” he said, calmly, like he was reading from a cue card. “Me and Barbara get to… go back to the way things were, you and Donna get to raise your kid, everyone’s happy.”
“That’s what you say. You made this decision knowing that I wanted you to be my child’s father…”
He shook his head stiffly. “You don’t want me to be a dad, you want me to be your lover. But I don’t love you.”
“Look me in the eye when you tell me that.”
Dick leaped down and spun so that he was in front of her, his eyes burning into hers. “I don’t love you.”
“I don’t believe you.“
Dick slapped the stage next to her. “Believe what you want. You’ll be happy with Donna. That’s good enough.”
He went back to Barbara, kneeling on one knee and putting an arm around her as soon as he reached her and not caring who saw. She kissed the side of his neck.
“Men aren’t supposed to be at the baby shower, right?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
***
Dinah and Roy crowded into the elevator, Roy holding a gift-wrapped baby carrier that was Wonder Woman-approved to hold your baby even when flying or jumping from rooftops. That would explain the week Diana had spent with a Cabbage Patch doll strapped to her chest.
“Worried?” Dinah asked.
Roy felt like he would be sick. “I can manage.” The elevator went up a few floors. Roy sighed so hard he imagined his teeth cracking. “This is so fucked up.”
“I know.”
“I mean, it should be him giving this talk to me.”
“Why? You get a blowjob from some other woman?”
“Dinah, there’s only one other girl I love and she’s just starting preschool.”
Dinah brushed at his back. “You can do this. He has to hear it from someone. I’m sure he’d prefer it be you.”
“Thanks.” He shifted the present onto one arm and gave her hand a squeeze. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The elevator chimed and opened.
***
It seemed like every woman on the planet who’d ever had superpowers decided all at once to invade a baby shower. They ate, drank, and made merry with the kind of exuberance one would expect from people who were very happy someone was having a baby, so long as it wasn’t them.
Kory didn’t so much partake as approve, sitting within Donna’s parted legs on a beanbag in the back. Her friends sat down by her when they weren’t dancing, talking and complimenting her and bringing her food from the buffet. She scarfed it down, what she didn’t insist on Donna sampling, and soon they were all seated, standing, or cross-legged in a rough circle to open presents.
“Behold!” Big Barda said, presenting a cylindrical shape gift-wrapped and with a bow on top.
Donna’s eyes went wide as she wondered just what the gift’s intended use was. Kory opened it excitedly.
“The Mini-Rod!” Barda proclaimed.
Kory shook it. It rattled.
“Thank you very much, Biggest of Bardas,” Kory said gratefully. She shook it near her belly, letting the baby hear the sound.
After Kory had opened their presents, Barbara went to grab some more punch. Dinah followed her, leaving Kory to open presents from the others.
“How’re you feeling?”
“A bit like someone dropped a brick wall on me.” Barbara took her drink. “But things are finally getting back to normal. Kory’s moved out, she wants to raise the kid herself…” she patted Dinah on the stomach with the back of her hand. “Dick’s being quite affectionate. He can’t seem to get enough of me.”
Dinah smiled half-heartedly. “Me and Ollie were like that, once. The sex was so fantastic, we didn’t really think about the relationship we were building on it… or were building on, or whatever. It was complicated.”
“No offense, but Dick’s not Ollie.” Barbara guzzled her drink. “He’s really done right by me, these past few weeks. It reminds me of our honeymoon, only without the murder investigation.” She poured another ladle of punch into her Dixie cup and handed it to Dinah, who drank. “I’m happy for you and Roy, by the way. We should double date.”
That was it. Dinah couldn’t take it anymore without a thousand arguments she’d made about trust and keeping secrets and honesty echoing inside her skull. “Babs, there’s something you should know.”
***
Dick punished himself with exercise. Looking at Kory the way he had, thinking about her the way he did… pain always drove her out of his head. He’d push himself to his limits, then pass them. Times like this, the Clocktower had shortages on punching bags. His knuckles were just starting to bleed when Roy came in. With a Bruce Lee scream and a roundhouse kick, Dick ruptured the punching bag. It bled sand.
Roy applauded softly. “That’s one punching bag that will never again menace the good people of Gotham.”
Dick sucked down water. A drop of blood ran over his fingers to tint the outside of the bottle. “Something I can do for you, Roy?”
“You got another hit of that? I’m parched.”
Dick pointed to a mini-fridge in the back. Inside were icepacks and sports drinks. Roy grabbed a cherry Gatorade and drank from it. Dick watched him curiously, noting how Roy kept drinking as a delaying action to more conversation.
“Spot me?” Dick said, nodding toward the weightlifting bench.
“Sure.”
With a quick kiss, Dick sucked the blood from his knuckles, then sat down on the bench. Roy stood next to him for a moment. Then Dick laid back and Roy circled around to the head of the bench to take hold of the dumbbell. He picked it up, nearly ripping his arms out of their sockets, and eased the bar into Dick’s grip. Painstakingly, Dick began the awkward first reps.
“Dick, you remember how we swore always to be straight with each other?”
“Yeah.” Dick benched his weights again, slowly getting into a rhythm. “Kinda has a dual meaning nowadays, considering what the gossip columns are saying about us.”
“What do the gossip columns… oh, screw it, as long as they’re not saying we’re dating Lindsey Lohan. I gotta talk to you about Barbara.”
Dick grunted with another rep. “If you’re going to tell me the marriage was a mistake too, I don’t have time for you.”
Roy wrapped a hand around the barbell, as if ready to catch it. Dick stopped with the next lift and held it up, not bringing it back down.
“It’s not that. Dick, I know you cheated on her.”
“Jesus, what did Kory do, post it on Youtube? No. I didn’t cheat on Barbara.” Dick wrenched the barbell out of Roy’s hand and did another rep. “I made a mistake. Cheating implies some sort of choice, a willful decision to have sex with someone other than your wife. I never made that choice.”
“So, what, Kory raped you?”
Dick went rapid-fire through a half-dozen reps. “No, I just… wasn’t consulted.”
“She just got the wrong impression from you standing next to her with your cock out, huh?”
“Yes! One thing led to another. Mistakes were made. But that’s not adultery! Adultery is meeting your secretary in a seedy hotel room, buying your mistress flowers and hiding it from your wife. Having a sex act performed on you in the heat of the moment isn’t that!”
“Then you won’t mind if I tell Barbara?”
With a growl, Dick racked the barbell. “Don’t get stupid, Roy.”
Dick tried to stand up from the bench and Roy sat him back down, a strong hand at his shoulder.
“You cannot keep ignoring this. You have to settle it. Before…”
There was a squeak of tires and the dull sound of a door banging against the doorjamb. Both men turned to see Barbara entering the room. Her arms pistoned, rowing the wheels with steady, disturbing motion.
“Babs,” Dick said.
“Shut up. I know. Roy, leave.”
Dick looked to Roy for a moment. “Babs, I think you may be…”
“I said shut up!” Roy backed off. Left. “Let’s go get Kory.”
***
The baby shower cleared out at a single word from Barbara. Soon, it was just Dick, Barbara, Kory, and Donna. Barbara looked at Donna.
“You don’t want to be here for this,” she said.
Donna put a hand on Kory’s shoulder. “I love her. You wanna say something to her, I’ll hear it.”
“Fine. I—“ Barbara paused. She chuckled, a hysterical noise that almost trailed off into a sob. “I don’t really have anything to say. Well, not much.”
She pulled off her wedding ring. It took a moment to get loose. Dick watched her, his heart taking an hour for each beat. After the longest moment in his life, the ring came free. She threw it against his chest. It bounced, landed on the floor, spun and fell flat.
“Never thought I’d take that off… not for real.” She bit her lip. There were tears in her eyes. Automatically, Dick moved to comfort her. She slapped his hand away. “Don’t! All this time… all this time… I thought my life had finally gone right. But there was something wrong with it, all along. You.”
“Don’t say that,” Kory said strongly.
“Oh, shut up, you whore.”
From Donna: “Don’t call her a…”
“No.” Kory stood, pushing Donna’s hand off her. “Whatever you want to call me, I am. I did a horrible thing, to you and him.” She indicated Dick, who stood there, frozen. “I never meant to hurt anyone. I only wanted to love…”
“Oh, you pulled that one off in spades.”
“If you want to be angry with someone, be angry with me. Not Dick.”
“How noble,” Barbara said, bitterness filling her veins with toxin. “You two really do make a great couple. ‘I think we should have an open relationship’… God, how could I be so stupid?”
Dick knelt down, one hand scooping up the wedding ring, the other taking Barbara by the wrist. “Barbara, I cannot tell you how sorry I am.”
“You’re right. You can’t.”
“Things just got out of hand. If I could do things over again… if there was one decision in my life I could take back… that would be the one. I’ve tried to make it up to you in so many ways.”
“Yeah, you took me to the opera. That really makes up for sleeping around on me.” Barbara wiped the tears from her eyes. “So the past few months, that was all making up for fucking Kory? Not because you loved me, but because you felt guilty! Why’d you ask to marry me in the first place, huh, you felt bad about fingering Helena?”
“Because I love you. I wanted you to be happy, and I knew you would be miserable if you found out. Weren’t we happy? Weren’t you happy, not knowing?”
He kissed her hand. Again, and again, and another time. Barbara sighed, her breath rattling in her chest before she started crying. Tears streamed down either cheeks; no matter how hard she tried to stop, they just kept defying her. Donna looked at Kory, whose head was down with abject shame.
Dick felt the end closing in and knew he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t even slow it down, but he would sell his soul for just a chance, one chance… “We can go back. We can forget about this, about this one mistake, and we’ll be so happy, baby, I’ll make you so happy. This will never happen again, I swear, I swear to you…”
“I can’t be happy with a lie.” Barbara pulled her hand away. “And it never should’ve happened in the first place.”
His head was on her lap, his hands slightly opening her thighs as he kissed her stomach, kissed right above her belt.
“Get off me!” she cried, shoving him back. Donna caught him.
“I hope you’re happy. I really do. I hope you’re both really happy with each other. Because I won’t be. I’m done. I’m not doing this anymore.” Barbara wiped at her forehead, feeling feverish.
She turned to go.
Dick grabbed the back of her wheelchair. “Can’t we try to fix this? Please?” He lowered his hands to her shoulders and massaged gently. “We always at least try. That was what we promised each other when we started, that we would always try.”
“You know what else we promised, Dick? Forsake all others. I’ve had enough.”
She nearly jammed her hands right through the wheels as she rolled away. Dick watched her go, barely even noticing as Kory knelt down and wrapped her arms around him. He was holding his hand out to Barbara, palm up, wedding ring flat on it, when Kory plucked the ring and held it in her closed hand against his heart.
“Dick. Dick, you don’t have to be sad. You have me.” She kissed his cheek, over and over again, until she found his lips. “Dick, I love you. I’ve always loved you and I still love you and I’ll never stop loving you.”
“Get your hands off me,” Dick said weakly.
“I’ll do anything you want, but not that. Please, let me kiss you, let me love you, it’s all I want for myself. Donna, come here, Donna…”
Donna stepped forward, face stricken as Kory took her hand and tugged her down next to Dick.
“We both love you.” She buried her face in Dick’s neck. “I know how special Barbara is, but the two of us, yes, we must make up for one of her.” Her hand rubbed his abs, rubbing higher and lower, and lower, and lower. “I love you so much, Dick, if you only knew…”
“I don’t wanna know.” He staggered to his feet, stopped as Kory grabbed him around the waist and nuzzled her face in his crotch.
“She does, you know.” Donna was looking up at him with her luminous eyes calmly dead. “She loves you. And if she loves you, I’ll love you. I’m sorry, Dick, she made me.”
Dick looked down to see a golden thread wrapped around his wrist.
“Do you love Princess Koriand’r?” Donna asked.
Dick gritted his teeth, his features washed out in a sudden sweat, eyes nearly rolling back in his head as the truth surged within him, grew, twitched at his extremities, and finally spilled over. After all that, it was such a small word that came out of his mouth: “Yes.”
“I knew it!” Kory kissed his groin, the bone of his hip, the head of his rising cock. “And I love you too!”
Dick shook the lasso. “Ask me if I love Barbara.”
“Don’t,” Kory said, reaching over to grab Donna’s hand.
“Do you?”
“With all my heart. I’d die for her. I’d kill for her.” He pulled free of the lasso, parting with a few layers of skin, and looked at Kory. She took his bleeding hand and kissed it harder, licking up the blood. It left her lips red. Very red. “I’d give up a woman… I love… for her.”
Without another word, Dick ran.
“No, no!” Kory tried to follow after him and Donna wrestled her to the ground, holding her close until Kory gave in and sobbed. For herself, for her daughter, for all the lives that had collapsed around her. “I could’ve made it better. I could’ve made him better.”
Donna resolved to hold her lover until things got better.
***
Outside, it wasn’t pouring rain. The skies were simply overcast, shot through with dark streaks of the blackest cloud imaginable, making the sun a distant memory. Roy sat in the driver’s seat of his car, mumbling obscenities to himself, as Dinah helped Barbara into the backseat. Barbara was openly crying now, clinging to Dinah as much for comfort as support.
Dick ran out of the Clocktower, confused and lost, spun around before he saw Barbara through the crowd of milling people. He ran to her, bumping into pedestrians, knocked around by the human bulk until at last he was there for her, beside her, and Dinah was standing in his way.
“Don’t give me an excuse,” Dinah growled. She was all the anger at him that Barbara loved him too much to express. “You seem like a nice guy when you’re not breaking my best friend’s heart.”
Dick scowled and looked to Roy. “Call her off, Roy.”
“Doesn’t work like that,” he said.
“Yeah,” Dinah spat caustically, “we have what’s called a healthy relationship. I realize that you might not recognize that…”
“Lady, you’re fucking the adopted son of your old boy-toy. What are you, Woody Allen with ovaries?”
Dinah went into a fighting stance as Barbara got into the car, pulling her wheelchair in after her. Roy stepped in-between Dinah and Dick, hands flat at his waist.
“Dick, back down. Okay? Trust me.”
Dick watched, biting his lower lip, as Roy and Dinah got into the car and drove off. He staggered out into the street to watch them drive away. Cars rushed by him. He didn’t really care. He wouldn’t have cared if one hit him.
***
Eventually, Kory stopped crying. She became aware of Donna still holding her, rocking her gently.
“Dick left,” Donna said. “He packed his things and he left. He didn’t even look at us.”
Kory rubbed her nose against Donna, somehow seeming very regal despite her bloodshot eyes and tear-stained cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
“No.’ Kory ran her fingers through Donna’s hair lovingly. “You know how I get around Dick. I lose control. I think you’re the same way for me and I take advantage of that when I should value it. I let my great love for Dick blind me to you.”
Donna sniffled, looking away.
“I’ve taken you for granted and for that, I can never apologize enough. But I must ask one more favor.”
“Anything.”
“I need your help to make everything right.”
Month 9
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 03:45 pm (UTC)Donna’s eyes went wide as she wondered just what the gift’s intended use was. Kory opened it excitedly.
“The Mini-Rod!” Barda proclaimed.
Kory shook it. It rattled.
That was made of win. Srsly.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-27 05:39 pm (UTC)