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It’s a warm Spring afternoon. Dick and Donna are sitting on the edge of Gabriel’s Horn’s roof, listening to the sound of chirping birds mix with the faint Jazz coming from below. The sun is out and the grass is green, but there’s only one thing on Dick’s mind.
“What if I’m horrible?” He breathes the question into the air and hopes the wind carries it to his friend, because he’s not looking at her.
“We’ve been managing so far,” she quips, uncharacteristically sardonic. She’s been hanging out with Speedy too much, but at least she tacks on a sweet smile at the end to let him know she’s joking.
“I’m serious,” he says, slipping into a more authoritative voice. With that comes the confidence to turn his head and look her in the eye.
She sits up, her eyebrows pinched with worry. She’s one of the prettiest girls he’s ever seen, but she’s going to get wrinkles with how much the boys she hangs out with seem to worry her. Usually Dick isn’t one of them.
“What’s wrong?”
“What if I’m secretly this… sick person, and I’ve just been fooling everyone? What if I've been fooling myself?”
He feels his pulse in his face, his cheeks heating up. He waits for her horrified expression at her leader’s guilty conscience spilling out of his mouth. He waits for her to question why he would say such things.
“Oh, gosh…” She brings her hand to her chest, concern flooding her features. “Now that you mention it— what if I grow wings and fly to the moon?”
“Donna,” he pleads.
“Hey, I’m serious.” She hits his arm lightly. “It could happen.”
He looks back to the blue sky, shaking his head. It’s not right, this unwavering faith people have in him.
Donna’s still looking at him, a pitiful smile on her face. “You’re not horrible, Dick. You’re the best of us.”
-
Lilith is sound asleep, her head resting in Donna’s lap. She over exerted herself today, leaving both her body and mind drained. They planned to watch a movie to wind down, but the guys deemed Donna and Lilith’s choice too girly and left before the opening credits.
Dick left with them, because he felt his skin crawl when Wally made a joke about him being one of the girls. He felt guilty about it and came back half an hour later, handing Donna a soda since she couldn’t get up to do it herself.
An hour later, the ending credits roll, but neither of them move. Donna is running her fingers through their friend’s red hair. The day must have really taken it out of her. She looks tense even in her sleep, her face twisted in distress, like she’s having a bad dream.
“Do you—” He pauses to swallow down the hoarseness of his unused voice and force it into a whisper. “Do you ever dream about things that you don’t want?”
Donna raises an eyebrow, and whispers back, “You mean a bad dream? A nightmare?”
“No— well, yes. It’s not— it’s not a good dream, but maybe it seems like it is until you wake up.”
Donna pauses to think about it. “Don’t tell anyone, but one time I dreamt that I was in some kind of under water wedding with Garth.” She giggles. “I was so stressed because all of the flowers in my bouquet kept dying at the bottom of the ocean. But then I woke up and I was just happy we didn’t get to the I do’s.”
“Sometimes I dream that he’s touching me.”
All the blood leaves his face as soon as he says it, leaving his lips tingly and numb. He wants to say more, to fix what he’s already done, but he may be sick if he opens his mouth. He just waits for Donna’s reaction.
Her girlish amusement at her aquatic matrimony is gone. She narrows her eyes at him like she’s trying to read little words written across his forehead. Her face twists in confusion when she seemingly finds no answers there.
“Garth…?”
The sharp laugh that falls out of his mouth shocks all three of them. Lilith stirs with a grown, sitting up. She doesn’t look happy to be in the land of the living.
“Sorry, honey,” Donna says, patting her shoulder with a soft smile.
The redhead doesn’t respond and simply stands up with languid movements. Dick thinks she’s still half asleep until she locks eyes with him.
He feels like there’s a spotlight on him for several seconds until she looks down and mumbles about a weird energy in the room. She leaves to sleep next door.
-
He’s flying a jet, just him and his copilot taking a thirty minute flight to meet the other Titans. There’s something about flying a jet that makes it easier to talk about things out of one’s control.
“What if I’m queer?”
Donna puts the map down to look at him, slowly. “Are you?”
“Do you think I am?”
“Are you attracted to women?”
“Yes.” It's a knee jerk reaction. Of course, he is.
“Are you attracted to men?”
Dick presses his lips into a thin line, focusing on the horizon.
Donna has a little giggle in her voice when she says, “That’s kind of the only deciding factor.”
“What if it’s just one man?”
Donna goes back to looking at the map, seemingly unconcerned with whatever sexuality Dick lands on. It’s a little reassuring in itself. “Then you’re attracted to women and one man. I don’t think you need to worry about labels.”
-
“Oh, man,” Donna sighs, still out of breath. She uses the back of her hand to wipe sweat off her forehead. “I’m definitely using that one in the future.”
She hands Dick her water bottle and he takes it gratefully. The gym is getting uncomfortably hot and they both should be staying hydrated. He doesn’t particularly mind it when Donna suggests they sit against the wall for a few minutes.
“You can’t even beat me in an arm wrestle,” she points out, rudely. Dick snorts.
“That’s the point of the technique. Fighting a physically bigger and stronger opponent.”
“I guess I know where you learned that.”
Dick hums in confirmation. “He taught me everything I know.”
Donna nods and then rests her head against the wall as silence falls. She’s probably tired and doesn’t want to talk. He tells himself that he’s doing her a favor when he opens his mouth the blabber.
“We used to spar a lot in the early days. Because I had so much to learn in the beginning.”
“Well, I’d call you a success story,” she says tiredly. She’s always so nice; he thinks it's going to make her explode one day.
“I remember all the techniques,” he confirms. Waits a beat. “Don’t remember all of the sparring sessions.”
Donna doesn’t seem overly concerned, just nodding along to her friend’s ramblings while her tired eyes scanned the gym.
He suddenly feels a crushing guilt on his chest, squeezing through the slots of his rib cage.
“I’m lucky to have him,” he tacks on quickly, like it was pushed out of his throat.
Now Donna turns to look at him, a skeptical eyebrow raised. “You know, if you want to say something bad about him, I won’t tell anyone.”
Dick feels his face grow hot, a burning pressure behind his eyes just at the thought of it. “It’s— it’s not. Everyone has their flaws.”
Donna nods encouragingly, like Dick is a baby deer taking his first steps.
“I mean, really, it’s not even him; I was just thinking about how I can’t seem to recall a lot from those days. Like, this one time— I have this memory of us sitting at the table while Alfred served us dinner, and I asked him if we were just going to be doing normal sparring that night.” He forces a light hearted chuckle at himself. “I don’t even know what I meant by that. Just that I shouldn’t have said it. He gave me a look so cold I felt it in my stomach. I couldn’t eat dinner and then Alfred was mad at me too.”
Donna looks at him sympathetically. “Do you think he was kind of hard on you?”
“No,” he snaps, too quickly, too harshly. He clears his throat. “That’s not— that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just talking about how I can't remember a lot of the sparring. From those days.”
“Okay…”
“This one time in the cave.” He swallows hard, forcing a bashful smile on his face. He would will a blush onto his cheeks if he could, because right now they just feel ghostly white. “I mean, I think I’ve always had maybe, you know, a little c-crush, I guess.” He’s talking too fast, he’s stuttering, he’s all over the place— get it together.
“You know, adolescence. Adolescent boys. I was in the bathroom in the locker room, and I guess we must’ve just finished sparring, because I was in my gym clothes, not my suit.” He chuckles nervously, still embarrassed by himself even though it’s been a decade since. He spits the last part out as quickly as he can. He’ll just give Donna the simple facts of what happened and then she’ll laugh with him about the embarrassing memory, because everyone knows things like that happen sometimes to young boys, and she’ll tell him it’s nothing to worry about.
“I had my shorts around my ankles and I was using toilet paper to try to, uh, clean my underwear, and I was crying, because I don’t think I even— even knew what happened. I mean, like… what I was cleaning, you know? I mean now it’s obvious, now that I know better. I just hadn’t thought about it in a while.”
Donna’s frozen with her eyebrows pinched together and a half open mouth, looking at him like he’s the one who grew wings. He knows he looks like hell, tears stinging his eyes and his chin threatening to wobble like a child.
“I think I was just embarrassed,” he clarifies. “Because I wasn’t old enough to understand, and I just felt so… ashamed.”
Fuck. He covers his mouth with his hand when his voice cracks on the last word, hiding the way his face is threatening to fold into tears.
“Sorry,” he spits out as quickly as he can manage, shaking his head, roughly wiping his cheeks. “Sorry, I don’t know why—”
Donna pulls him into a hug.
With his chin hooked over her shoulder, he squeezes his eyes shut. “You don’t think it means anything, right?”
She pauses. “What means anything?”
“That I don’t remember what happened before that.”
The gentle hand that was rubbing his back stills. He can hear her thinking for several seconds before she eventually asks, “What do you think it means?”
“Nothing,” he snaps again, pulling away from her, and immediately hates himself for it. She didn’t say anything wrong; he doesn’t know why he bites her head off sometimes.
“Okay,” she says softly. “Let’s get lunch.”
-
He knows it’s not appropriate to wander into his female teammate’s room in the middle of the night, and he would reprimand any other Titan for doing it, but he still finds himself knocking lightly on Donna’s door not long after midnight.
She sounds wide awake when she tells him to come in. He opens the door and the lamp by her bed is on as she quickly scoops up photographs that were laid across her comforter.
“It’s late,” Dick tells her, like she’s the one who showed up at his door.
“I know, I know,” she says guiltily. “I was just finishing up. Trying to make a portfolio.”
He nods. That’s good for her.
“What are you doing up?” she questions.
“Oh,” he feigns being caught off guard, as if he didn’t come here specifically to be prodded. “Bad dreams. Couldn’t sleep.”
Donna sits on the edge of the bed, leaving an open spot next to her. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
He sits. “If I do, would you promise not to think less of me?”
“Don’t be stupid.” She nudges him lightly.
He clasps his hands together, his elbows on his knees, and looks at the floor. “It’s not the first time. The last couple years I’ve been having these dreams. Um…” He tries to collect his thoughts, tries to think of a way to say it without sounding like a freak, but there really is none. “I’m sorry, actually, I shouldn’t have—”
“Grayson,” she says, threateningly, yanking him back down onto the bed.
He huffs out a laugh. “Okay, it’s just— it’s stupid. I mean it’s weird.”
“That’s okay.”
“Okay. It’s… me and him. On the cave floor and… I’m on top of him. Or he’s on top of me, and I feel him. And I always wake up, uh— aroused.” He chews at the inside of his cheek, feeling guilty for burdening Donna with his fucked up wet dreams. But she doesn’t give any kind of negative reaction, so he continues. “A lot of times, someone walks in. Like Alfred, or Babs, or… whoever, and they don’t even say anything, but it makes me feel so… I don’t know, just awful. Disgusting.”
Donna puts a hand on his shoulder, her expression earnest. “Are you upset at them for not saying anything?”
“What?” He shakes his head. “No. No, I’m upset at myself for dreaming about that. He’s— I mean, he’s not my dad, but. We're some kind of family. I grew up with him. That wouldn't be right if— if that happened. Right?”
“No. I don’t think it would be.”
His head falls into his hands, suddenly too exhausted to keep itself up. “What’s wrong with me?”
Donna tells him that there’s a lot wrong with everyone in the tower, but he needs to be nicer to himself. She pulls up the covers and lets him sleep in her bed, waving him off when he questions how her new boyfriend would feel about it.
-
His nose is buried in her silky hair a little while later when her breathing starts to even out. Just when he’s not sure if she’s asleep or not, he whispers, “I think… I think if he did do something bad… it would be okay.”
He can feel her holding her breath, her body tense under his arms. She’s not saying anything, and it scares him into explaining more.
“It— it was so long ago. What difference would it make? We’re good. We’ve always been good. It doesn’t really change anything. I mean, if even— if he— if something happened. We’ve both done bad things. You know someone for long enough, you’re gonna hurt each other at some point, right?”
Donna doesn’t give him an answer. He gives up with a sigh, and squeezes his eyes shut, feeling the burn of unspilled tears. “I love him so much.”
She hugs him tighter.