Chapter Text
The bathroom is too small for the number of people packed into it, all noise and elbows and bad lighting. The air is damp with sweat and cheap cologne and the metallic bite of spilt beer, layered so thick it clings to the back of Roy’s throat when he breathes in. The floor sticks faintly under his boots, every step making that soft, ugly sound of rubber peeling away from something it doesn’t want to leave. Someone’s bassline bleeds through the walls, a steady pulse that rattles the mirror just enough to blur Roy’s reflection if he doesn’t focus on it.
He doesn’t try to focus.
The mirror is optional tonight. Everything that matters is happening in his body instead.
He’s still riding the high from the set — not his set, although he wishes it was, but close enough to matter. Adrenaline hasn’t burned off yet; it hasn’t even started to. It sits hot and bright in his veins, buzzing under his skin like he’s been plugged directly into the sound system. His ears ring pleasantly, a soft, constant whine beneath the chaos, like the echo after a gunshot that hasn’t decided whether to fade. His hands feel loose and light, like they don’t quite belong to him anymore, like they’re still moving on muscle memory alone — tapping time against his thigh, drumming absently against the counter. His shoulder aches dully beneath it all, the familiar throb muted just enough to be ignorable.
Applause keeps echoing in his chest anyway, a phantom sound swelling and receding every time someone laughs too loud or shouts down the hall. It’s ridiculous, maybe, how long it sticks with him — but he doesn’t fight it. Why would he? It feels too good to question.
Someone shoves a beer into his hand, the glass slick with condensation. No pause. No double-take. No one asks how old he is, or if he’s supposed to have it.
Cold beads of water run down his fingers, soaking into the calluses he hasn’t managed to lose yet, no matter how many gloves he wears. Someone else claps him on the shoulder hard enough to jostle the drink, laughter spilling out like liquid over the rim.
“Holy shit,” a voice says, close and breathless. “That was insane.”
Roy grins, wide and easy, the expression coming to him without effort. It stretches his face in a way that feels natural, practised — something he’s always been good at.
“Yeah?” he says, leaning in, loud enough to cut through the noise. “They were good.”
The guy laughs, shoves him again, says something else Roy barely catches over the music. It doesn’t matter. The details blur together, unimportant compared to the overall shape of the moment: warmth, attention, and never-ending momentum.
Roy takes a long pull from the beer, the bitterness sharp on his tongue before dissolving into something easier. He exhales, loose, and for a split second it feels like there’s nothing left in the world but this room and the people in it and the electric hum tying them all together.
He catches his reflection in the mirror by accident when someone shifts out of the way. The glass is smeared with fingerprints and something that might be lipstick, the overhead light turning everything harsh and unreal, bleaching colour from faces and exaggerating shadows. He looks wrecked in the best way: sweat-dark hair plastered to his forehead, skin flushed and glowing, pupils blown wide so the green of his eyes is almost gone.
He looks like someone who belongs here.
Old enough. Loud enough. He looks close enough to the typical guy you would find at gigs that no one bothers checking— he looks close enough to pass as an adult, and no one is interested in proving otherwise.
And for once, that doesn’t mean anything else.
He isn’t someone’s sidekick. Someone’s responsibility. Someone with a schedule taped to the inside of his head and a voice counting his reps, his hours, his mistakes. There are no callsigns snapping in his ear, no clipped commands, no mental checklist running in the background about exits and sightlines and who’s covering which angle. No invisible ledger tracking how late he stays out or how fast he sobers up or whether he’ll still be sharp enough to be trusted tomorrow.
No one here is measuring him.
He’s just another kid riding the aftershock of something loud and good, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with other kids doing the same thing, exactly where he’s supposed to be.
That thought settles into his chest and stays there, warm and reassuring.
Someone leans in beside him, sets a hand flat on the counter like they’re steadying themselves. A stranger, Roy thinks, though it’s hard to tell. Everyone looks like a stranger and a friend at the same time right now, faces blurred at the edges by motion and heat and shared momentum. The lines between people feel thin here, easy to cross without anyone getting weird about it.
“Hey,” the guy says, already smiling. He’s got sharp cheekbones and a smear of eyeliner that’s half sweat, half intentional. “You want one?”
He opens his palm. A couple of pills sit there, unremarkable. White. Scored. No logos, no drama. They look small and harmless against the lines of his skin, like something you’d find rattling around at the bottom of a backpack.
Roy’s eyes flick to them, then back to the guy’s face.
There’s no hush. No glance over the shoulder. No warning tone dropped into the moment, no shift in the room’s energy to mark this as something secret or dangerous. It’s offered the same way the beer was, casually and easily, like it’s obvious Roy would say yes, like no one’s keeping track of what’s appropriate for him to have.
Like it’s normal.
No one here is watching him the way heroes watch each other: counting breaths, cataloguing tells, waiting for the moment something goes wrong so they can intervene. No one’s eyes narrow with concern. No one reaches out to gently stop his hand and ask if he’s thought this through.
No one cares where he patrols. No one asks how he’s holding up.
It’s not secrecy. It’s privacy.
Roy looks at the pills.
This isn’t the reason he’s here. Not really.
He came for the music, for the noise, the heat, the way the bass climbs up his spine and rattles everything loose. He came because it’s easier to breathe in rooms like this, where no one expects him to be careful or composed or anything other than present. That’s all. That’s enough.
But.
The pills sit there anyway, offered without ceremony, as ordinary as the beer sweating in his hand. And the longer he looks at them, the more it feels like maybe this was part of it too. Not the point — just a possibility. A bonus. Something the night might hand him if he stayed long enough.
Maybe he’d known that when he decided to come out.
Maybe he’d been waiting for this all night.
The thought doesn’t scare him. It settles in easily, slots neatly into place alongside everything else he’s already feeling. This is familiar. This fits.
There’s no secrecy here. No tension snapping tight around the moment. The room stays loud and crowded and forgiving, the music still bleeding through the walls, the mirror still rattling with bass. No one’s watching him closely. No one’s counting.
It’s not a crossroads. It’s a continuation.
It's not like he doesn't already pop painkillers like they're candy.
Roy doesn’t frame it as a decision. He frames it as logistics: pacing, maintenance, stretching the night so it doesn’t end all at once. He’s good at that kind of thinking. He’s been trained for it.
He glances up, meets the guy’s expectant grin, and shrugs like this was always the plan. “Sure.”
The word leaves his mouth easily, unburdened.
This is the kind of thing people his age are supposed to do anyway. Go out. Stay out too late. Try things. Make dumb choices in loud rooms and laugh about them later, when the details have softened into something harmless and nostalgic. It’s practically a rite of passage, or at least that’s what every movie and song seems to promise.
Roy has spent years being careful in ways no one ever thanked him for. Years being watched, managed, and and evaluated. Years where every mistake carried consequences that stuck, where recklessness was a luxury he couldn’t afford because someone else always paid the price.
Tonight, he gets to be reckless in a way that feels almost… earned.
The guy grins wider, pleased, and tips one of the pills into Roy’s hand. It’s chalky and light against his palm, leaving a faint white residue behind. Roy doesn’t stare at it. He doesn’t roll it between his fingers or weigh it like a decision. He just lifts it to his mouth and dry-swallows it without thinking, barely tasting it past the lingering bitterness of beer on his tongue.
“Cheers,” someone says from behind him.
“Fuck yeah,” someone else adds, raising their drink.
Roy laughs, sharp and genuine, the sound cutting clean through the noise. He leans back against the counter, the cool edge pressing pleasantly into his spine, grounding him. The room feels warm and friendly and close, like it’s holding him up rather than crowding him in.
The pill doesn’t hit right away. He doesn’t expect it to. That’s fine. This is just going to stretch the feeling out a little longer, smooth the edges so the crash doesn’t come so fast. He’s practical about it, even now, thinking in terms of pacing. Management.
Someone’s talking about the next venue. Someone else keeps trying to light a cigarette that won’t catch, laughing every time the flame gutters out and dies. The mirror vibrates again as the bass kicks harder, rattling the sink, the lights, Roy’s bones.
He listens, smiling, nodding along, chiming in when it feels right. He feels perfectly at ease, like he’s slotted into a groove he didn’t even know he was missing.
This is fun, he thinks.
This is normal.
The thought settles deep and comfortably, like it’s been waiting for him.
If anyone from the Tower could see him right now, they’d make it weird. He can picture it easily: the careful tone, the concern dressed up as casual questions, the way they’d try to slow it all down and turn it into something serious.
Roy lets his gaze drift over the room instead — the noise, the motion, the easy way everyone fits together without effort — and feels a small, satisfied certainty settle in his chest.
They wouldn’t get it.
They’d ask what he’s running from, as if every good feeling has to be an escape from something bad. They’d frame it as a problem, a warning sign, a slippery slope that needs addressing before it’s too late.
Roy doesn’t want to be anyone right now. He doesn’t want to represent anything or carry anything heavier than the beat vibrating through his chest. He just wants to exist inside the noise and the warmth and the easy way no one expects him to save them, or prove anything, or be better than he feels.
They wouldn’t get it.
Fuck that. He doesn’t need them to.
The bass surges again, the night folding back in on itself, and Roy closes his eyes for a second and lets it all wash over him, unencumbered by tomorrow, unburdened by what comes next.
For now, this is enough.
For now, this feels like he's really living.
- ·················•·················•
It’s easier at Oliver’s place if Roy is careful about it.
The pills live in the bathroom cabinet, tucked behind a bottle of antiseptic and a half-empty roll of bandage wrap. Prescription label still intact, his name spelt correctly, dosage printed clean and official. They rattle if he lets them. He doesn’t.
He pops them with a glass of water while the kettle heats downstairs, the house still half-asleep and smelling faintly of coffee grounds and polish. The ache in his shoulder is already there when he wakes up, deep and stubborn, like it’s settled in overnight and decided to stay. He rolls it once to test the range of motion. It protests and he ignores it.
By the time Oliver calls him down, the edge has softened. Not gone, just manageable. That’s all he needs.
Training starts the same way it always does.
Oliver doesn’t ask if Roy slept. He asks if he stretched. He watches Roy’s stance, his grip, the way he sets his feet, eyes sharp and assessing in that way that never really turns off. Corrections come quick and precise, clipped words that land exactly where they’re meant to.
“Again.”
Roy does it again.
Pain is treated like the weather in training sessions: it's something you note, adjust for, and most importantly, work through. If it lingers, that’s a problem of discipline, not circumstance. You warm up properly. You pace yourself. You don’t complain.
Roy doesn’t complain.
It's like adjusting your aim to account for the wind.
He’s good at this part. Endurance has always come easily to him, or at least he’s learned how to make it look that way. Oliver notices that. He always does, and Roy thinks that's what he appreciates about his ward.
“Better,” Oliver says, when Roy doesn’t drop his form even as sweat starts to slick his hands. “That’s what I want to see.”
Praise is sparse, but it counts when it comes. Roy feels it settle somewhere solid in his chest, steadying him, and he can't help but smile.
They break for water. Roy drinks, slow and deliberate, and lets his breathing even out. His shoulder throbs faintly beneath the surface now, a reminder more than a warning. He knows exactly how long he has before it starts to matter again.
He knows Oliver should notice how often he reaches for the bottle.
He’s thought about it while standing there in the kitchen, another pill dry-swallowed, waiting for the comment that never comes. Oliver has seen the prescriptions. He was there when the doctor wrote them up, nodded along, and asked when Roy could be back in the field.
So long as Roy keeps training, keeps showing up, keeps pushing through, the pills don’t seem to register as a problem. They’re just another tool. Ice packs. Wraps. Painkillers.
It's all maintenance.
Garth had mentioned it once, back at the Tower, after a patrol Roy barely remembers. “You compensate when you’re hurt,” he’d said, not looking at Roy when he said it. Just watching the way Roy rolled his shoulder like it was nothing.
Not accusing. Not even advising. Just stating it like a fact.
Roy had laughed. Said something about adapting or dying.
Garth hadn’t laughed back.
Roy is careful anyway. He doesn’t take them in front of Oliver unless he has to. He spaces them out. Keeps track. Keeps it reasonable. He waits, every time, for Oliver to say something — to ask if he still needs them, to suggest cutting back, to check in.
And maybe he’s always a little surprised when it doesn’t happen.
Training ramps back up. Arrows thud into targets. Roy’s arms start to burn. He grits his teeth and adjusts, compensates without thinking about it. The pills make it easier to keep up. They make it possible to finish the set without shaking.
“That’s it,” Oliver says. “Don’t slow down now.”
Roy doesn’t.
By the time they’re done, he’s exhausted in that clean, satisfying way that makes the rest of the day feel earned. Oliver claps him once on the shoulder — careful of the injured one, but only just — and heads off to shower.
Roy stays where he is for a second longer, catching his breath.
He knows, distantly, that this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. That someone should probably be keeping a closer eye on this. Asking questions. Adjusting expectations.
But Oliver is satisfied. Training is on track. Roy is holding together.
That’s enough.
Roy wipes his hands on his pants and heads inside, already thinking about when he can take the next dose without it being obvious.
•·················•·················•
It’s another day, another night after another show. Roy didn’t hang around the bar that long this time. But it had been long enough.
Titans Tower smells like coffee, cleaning solution, and whatever Donna cooked last night that no one’s finished eating yet. It’s a layered smell, familiar and domestic in a way that should be grounding. The kind of place where routines settle into the walls and stay there. The lights are softer here, warmer — set to mimic late afternoon even though the sun outside has already started its slow descent toward evening. Everything is where it’s supposed to be. Furniture arranged just so. Weapons racked and cleaned. Half-empty mugs abandoned in predictable places.
Order, disguised as comfort.
The kind that assumes things will be fine.
Roy drops onto the couch with a loose, easy confidence that earns him a look from Wally and lands him close enough that his knee brushes Donna’s. He doesn’t move away. Neither does she. Their legs stay in light contact, casual and unremarked, like it’s always been that way — or like it used to be, and no one ever bothered to redefine it.
“Damn,” Wally says, spinning slightly in the chair he’s half-perched on. “You’re in a good mood.”
Roy grins, all teeth, sharp and bright. “Am I not allowed?”
“No, no,” Wally says quickly, hands up in surrender. “Just— wow. You’re, like. Vibrating.”
Roy snorts and tips his head back against the cushions, stretching his arms out along the back of the couch. His fingers hook over the edge, relaxed. His body feels light, tuned just right, like he’s running half a second ahead of the room and it’s his job to wait for everyone else to catch up.
He’s aware of it, distantly — the contrast. How obvious it probably looks from the outside.
Hey, this is probably what Wally feels like half the time.
Next to him, Donna flips through something on her tablet, brow furrowed in concentration. She doesn’t look up right away, but her thumb pauses against the glass for a beat longer than necessary.
Garth is near the windows, where the light catches faintly in his hair and turns it almost metallic. He’s stretched out in one of the low chairs, long legs crossed at the ankle, fingers loosely laced together over his stomach. He hasn’t said anything since Roy walked in but he doesn’t take that personally. Chances are Garth hasn’t said anything for a while. Wally and Dick usually don’t shut up so it’s not like he needs to.
He’s just watching.
Not in the way Dick watches — sharp and strategic. Not in the way Donna watches — soft and searching.
Garth watches like he’s listening for something beneath the surface.
“So,” Dick says from the counter, tone easy. “How was it?”
The question is casual. Friendly. An opening, not a test.
Roy opens his mouth—
And then stalls, just a fraction.
It’s not that he doesn’t have an answer. He has too many. The sound — thick and vibrating straight through his chest, bass climbing his spine and settling behind his eyes. The crowd pressed close, bodies moving as one, faces lit in quick flashes every time the lights cut. The heat, the sweat, the way the room seemed to breathe with the music, expanding and contracting around the beat. That moment when everything locked in — not because he was part of it, but because he was inside it, carried along by something bigger and louder than any one person.
None of it fits neatly into the space between Dick’s question and the expectant pause that follows.
“Good,” he says. “Loud. Packed. They were way better than I expected, honestly— like, I don’t even think the room was built for that kind of sound, you know? It was rattling everything.”
He realises, a second too late, that Dick had already nodded. That the space he’s filling didn’t actually need filling.
Donna looks up, tablet resting against her thigh. “You still spending most of your nights downtown?”
Roy blinks.
It shouldn’t feel like a loaded question. Donna’s never been like that, never judgmental, never nosy. But something in the way she asks it makes his chest tighten anyway. Like she’s not asking about where he goes so much as why. Like there’s a bigger question tucked inside it and he’s already supposed to know what it is.
Irritation sparks low and fast, sharp enough to surprise him.
God, why does everything suddenly need a reason?
“Yeah,” he says, a little too quickly. “That’s where things are happening.”
Donna’s brows knit — just slightly. Not disapproval. Consideration. The look she gets lately when she’s turning something over from more than one angle.
“I just meant—” she starts, then pauses, choosing her words. “It seems like you’re barely here anymore.”
The comment lands wrong. Too close. Too personal. Roy reacts before he can stop himself.
“I’m here,” he says. “When it counts.”
There’s a beat.
Donna’s expression shifts subtly, but Roy catches it. Not offended. Recalibrating. Like she’s realising she’s stepped into something she didn’t mean to.
“I wasn’t saying you weren’t,” she says, gently.
“I know what you meant,” Roy cuts in, smiling so she knows he’s not mad. He reaches out, taps her knee with the back of his fingers, a familiar gesture but just a little too quick. “I’m good. Really. Just busy. Things are… moving.”
The words tumble out polished, prepackaged. A reassurance bundle.
Donna holds his gaze for a second longer than necessary. Then she nods once with a small smile to match Roy's. “Okay.”
The word isn’t agreement. It’s acceptance.
The silence that follows is brief, almost invisible— but Roy feels it anyway, like he answered a different question than the one she asked.
The realisation skims the surface of his thoughts, uncomfortable and fleeting.
It’s short. Barely noticeable. But Roy feels it anyway, like a hitch in the room’s breathing.
Wally glances between them, then laughs lightly, like he’s filling in space that doesn’t need filling. “Man, I should come see one of these gigs. You’re making it sound legendary.”
“Yeah,” Roy says, too fast again. “You should. It’s fun.”
Fun. Easy. No follow-up required. He tosses the word out like a bone and waits for it to land.
Dick tilts his head, studying Roy with that quiet, careful attention that always makes Roy feel like he’s being looked at through glass. Like there’s a version of him on display that Roy himself can’t quite see.
“You seem… wired,” Dick says.
Roy laughs, sharp and bright, the sound bouncing too loud off the walls. “Wow. Thanks.”
“No, I mean—” Dick lifts a shoulder, adjusting his grip on a piece of gear. “Just energetic.”
There’s a beat.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” Garth says quietly. It’s not a question.
Roy’s grin falters for half a second before snapping back into place.
Why can’t they just exist for five minutes?
The thought flares, irrational and hot, and Roy clamps down on it just as quickly. He pushes himself up from the couch and starts pacing, because standing still suddenly feels unbearable. Like his skin doesn’t quite fit unless he’s moving. He gestures as he talks, words tumbling out faster than necessary, anecdotes stretching longer than they need to be.
“It’s just nice, you know?” he says. “Doing something that isn’t life-or-death all the time. Trying to copy rhe riffs I heard downtown. Hanging out. Y'know, normal stuff.”
He says it like it’s obvious. Like it’s an answer and not a defence. Like the concept of normal isn’t something he’s had to claw his way toward in pieces.
Donna watches him for a moment, thoughtful, eyes tracking his movement. “You don’t have to justify it.”
Roy flashes her a grin. “I’m not.”
Which is technically true. He’s not justifying it. He’s performing it — ease, confidence, happiness — because that’s what’s expected. Because anything less would invite questions he doesn’t want to answer.
The room settles back into its usual rhythm. Donna returns to her tablet, stylus tapping softly against the screen. Wally starts rambling about something he read online, spiralling off into a tangent that only half makes sense. Dick goes back to sorting gear, the quiet clink of metal against metal steady and grounding.
Roy keeps smiling.
He feels a little out of sync, like he’s clapping on the off-beat and no one else has noticed yet. Conversations drag. Jokes take too long to land. People pause between sentences in ways that feel exaggerated, unnecessary. Everyone keeps circling topics instead of letting them die naturally, revisiting the same beats, the same concerns, the same rhythms.
It’s maddening.
He tells himself they’re just tired. That he’s keyed up from the show. That this is normal, that the shift is in him and not in the room.
He sits back down, forces himself to be still, to match their pace. He pulls his arms in, plants his feet on the floor, tries to let the noise inside him settle to the level everyone else seems comfortable with.
It takes more effort than it should.
He nods at the right moments. Laughs when Wally expects him to. Makes eye contact, holds it just long enough. He can feel the performance running, smooth and well-practised, and he resents that it’s necessary at all.
Roy doesn’t notice the way Dick’s eyes linger on him a second longer than usual. Doesn’t notice the way Donna watches him over the edge of her screen, thoughtful and quiet, like she’s filing something away without naming it yet.
All Roy knows is that the room feels smaller than it did an hour ago. The walls closer. The air heavier.
And that somewhere else — somewhere louder, brighter, and less careful — time moves at exactly the right speed.
The thought slips in uninvited and settles there, warm and tempting.
•·················•·················•
At some point, it stops being about the odd night here and there.
Roy couldn’t say exactly when. There isn’t a clean line between once and often, no single moment he can point to and say, that was it.
There’s just a gradual shift, subtle enough to miss if you’re not looking for it, where the pills stop feeling like an event and start feeling like part of the background. They're something that happens between one crowded room and the next, between the bathroom and the bar, between the noise outside and the quiet he has to return to afterward.
At first, it’s still memorable. Tied to specific nights, specific shows. He remembers the feeling of it like a snapshot: the lights, the bass thick in his chest, the taste of beer still sharp on his tongue, the way laughter came easier and stayed longer. He remembers the novelty of it, the quiet thrill of doing something unmonitored and unremarked upon.
Then the memories blur.
Not because they’re bad, but because they’re unremarkable.
He doesn’t mark the time. He doesn’t count. He doesn’t tell himself only on weekends or only after shows; he doesn’t draw neat little rules around it that would require him to acknowledge the habit taking shape. He just notices, one evening, that he’s already anticipating it.
The realisation comes to him sideways, catching him off guard.
He’s alone in his room at the Tower, sprawled on his bed with his boots kicked off somewhere near the door. The lights are low, the kind of ambient glow meant to ease people into sleep. The city hums somewhere below.
His head feels clear. Not buzzing, not foggy. Just… aligned. His body is pleasantly loose, like the tension he’s used to carrying in his shoulders and jaw has been dialled down a notch. The night is winding down, but it doesn’t feel like an ending. It feels like something he’s successfully made it through.
That’s when the thought drifts in, uninvited and oddly calm.
I should probably tell someone.
The idea doesn’t come with panic. It doesn’t even come with guilt. It’s almost administrative, an observation rather than a confession. Like noting that something has become part of the routine, and routines are the kind of thing you mention to other people, eventually.
Not because he’s done anything wrong.
Just because it’s become a thing.
The thought settles in his chest and immediately starts to itch.
His brain, traitorously efficient, supplies the consequences before he can stop it.
Dick first. Always Dick.
Roy can picture it too clearly: Dick sitting across from him at the kitchen counter, posture casual but attentive, eyes focused in that way that means he’s already thinking three steps ahead. Dick would listen. He always listens. He wouldn’t interrupt, wouldn’t jump to conclusions. He’d frown in that thoughtful way of his — not angry, not accusing — just quietly recalculating.
Roy can already hear the questions lining up behind Dick’s eyes.
How often?
What are you taking?
Is this something you need to be worried about?
They’d come out gentle, carefully phrased, but the weight would be there all the same. Roy imagines answering honestly — sometimes, nothing serious, it’s not a big deal — and feels the irritation spike before the conversation even gets going. He can see the moment it stops being casual, the moment Dick’s attention sharpens. The moment the words stop being about Roy and start being about patterns, trajectories, and what this could turn into if it keeps going this way.
Dick wouldn’t mean to make it heavy.
He would anyway.
Roy exhales slowly, breath fogging faintly in the dim light, and lets the image fade. He doesn’t want to be angry at Dick. He isn’t. The irritation feels misplaced, like snapping at a mirror for reflecting something you don’t want to look at.
Donna would be worse.
Not louder. Not harsher. Worse in the way that gets under his skin and stays there.
Donna wouldn’t accuse or lecture. She’d ask questions instead — soft ones, reasonable ones, the kind that sound like concern and feel like pressure. She’d sit close, knee brushing his, voice low and steady.
Have you been sleeping?
Is this about stress?
Is something changing, and you’re just not ready to say it yet?
She’d frame it like an invitation, like Roy had all the space in the world to answer honestly. And that would make it unbearable. Because Roy can already hear himself snapping back, defensive and too sharp, the words coming out harsher than he intends.
I’m fine. Why does this need to be analysed?
Donna would give him that look — the one that says she hears him and doesn’t quite believe him all at once. The look that doesn’t argue but also doesn’t let things slide. That look would linger long after the conversation ended, hanging between them every time they shared a room.
Garth would be different.
He wouldn’t lean forward or soften his voice. He wouldn’t interrogate or lecture. He’d just go very still, shoulders settling like he’s bracing against a current only he can feel.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” he’d ask. Quiet. Level.
Not angry.
That would be worse.
Roy can almost see it: the hurt slipping in before the frustration, the subtle recalibration as Garth rewrites the version of Roy he thought he knew.
That look would linger longer than any argument.
He shifts on the bed, jaw tightening, and drags a hand over his face.
Oliver comes last. He always does.
Roy doesn’t imagine Ollie yelling. That’s not the part that scares him. He imagines the silence — the dangerous kind. The way Ollie gets very still when something has crossed a line Roy didn’t realise was there. The way humour drains out of him all at once, like a switch being flipped.
Oliver would stop joking.
Stop assuming Roy could handle it.
Stop treating pain like something you work through.
Then he’d say Roy’s name.
Full name.
Like a verdict.
Everything after that would be about responsibility. About image. About keeping himself sharp. About how some things don’t stay manageable if you let them slide. About how Roy owes it to himself — and to the people counting on him — to be better than this.
Roy swallows, throat tight.
None of this has happened.
No one has asked how often. No one has commented on the timing, or the way it’s stopped feeling special. No one has noticed how easily the pills fit into his pockets now, how naturally they sit there alongside everything else he carries because it’s useful.
No one has noticed him thinking ahead to the bathroom before the night even starts. No one has noticed the way his shoulders ease when he knows he’ll have something to take later, the way the night feels easier to endure when there’s a quiet promise threaded through it.
And yet the argument is already playing out in his head, rehearsed until it feels inevitable.
That’s when it clicks.
It wouldn’t be a conversation.
It would be a correction.
It would be concern dressed up as authority. It would be everyone telling him what this means, where it leads, and what he needs to do differently before it turns into something harder to control.
Roy stares at the ceiling, the faint pattern of light from the city shifting slowly above him, and lets out a quiet, humourless laugh.
“Yeah,” he murmurs to the empty room. “No.”
Like he's letting that shitshow happen.
It's not like he’s hurting anyone. He’s not missing patrols. He’s not falling behind. If anything, he’s keeping up better than ever. He's more focused, more even, more capable of getting through what’s expected of him without it scraping him raw.
If he keeps it to himself, no one gets weird about it.
If he keeps it to himself, it stays manageable.
The logic slides into place with frightening ease, neat and self-contained. It doesn’t feel like a decision so much as an alignment, like everything has finally settled into the shape it was always meant to have.
Roy rolls onto his side, facing the wall, and closes his eyes.
Tomorrow night, there’ll be another show. Another crowded room. Another bathroom with bad lighting and a cracked mirror, and someone offering him something unremarkable in the palm of their hand.
And that’s fine.
That’s normal.
The thought drifts with him as sleep finally pulls him under, untroubled by doubt, buoyed by the certainty that as long as he keeps this to himself, nothing has to change.
After all, if it were really a problem, someone would have said something by now.
And Roy, comfortable in the quiet of his own reasoning, lets himself believe that too.
- ·················•·················•
Roy’s routine is tight.
That’s always been one of his strengths: knowing how to get from point A to point B with minimal wasted motion, no wasted energy. He’s Speedy after all. He learned early — first in training rooms that smelled like rubber mats and disinfectant, later on rooftops and backstage floors — that if you build something solid enough, you can run on it even when everything else starts to wobble. Structure holds. Structure carries you when instinct gets noisy.
He does everything in the same order now. Not out of superstition. Not out of nerves. Just because it’s efficient.
Efficiency feels like control. Control feels like safety.
Jacket first, shrugged on with a quick, efficient motion. Phone next — screen dark, battery full, tucked into the same pocket every time. Wallet after that, worn soft at the edges, cash folded once and slid where he can reach it without fumbling. Earplugs come next, looped together and dropped into the side pocket of his bag. He doesn’t need them, but he likes knowing they’re there.
The bag itself gets a brief once-over — zipper tugged closed, strap adjusted to the right length so it won’t slip or dig. Nothing rattles when he lifts it. Nothing snags. He doesn’t look at it while he does it. His hands know where everything goes.
He ties his boots without looking, fingers moving on muscle memory alone, tugging the laces tight, double-knotting them in the same rhythm every time. The knots come out even and secure. He presses his heel down once, testing the fit, feeling the familiar pressure lock into place.
Grounded.
The pills come somewhere in the middle.
Not at the start. Not at the end. They don’t get pride of place. They’re just folded into the sequence like anything else that needs doing. He doesn’t pause over them. Doesn’t frame the moment in his head or build it up into something that needs acknowledging. Half the time they’re already in his pocket before he consciously registers the weight — a familiar, reassuring press against his thigh when he shifts, like spare change or a key he doesn’t want to forget.
Sometimes he takes them before he leaves, dry-swallowing at the sink while the tap runs and the mirror fogs slightly with steam. He doesn’t watch himself do it. He’s never liked mirrors much. Sometimes it’s in the bathroom at the venue, perched on the edge of a chipped counter while someone knocks impatiently on the door and tells him to hurry the hell up. Sometimes it’s leaning against a brick wall out back, the city humming around him — sirens in the distance, a bus wheezing past — while someone else fumbles for a lighter and laughs about something that barely registers.
The location doesn’t matter.
What matters is the way the night settles into place afterwards.
There’s no rush of anticipation anymore. No spike of nerves or excitement that makes his hands shake, or his thoughts scatter. Just a quiet click in his head as everything lines up the way it’s supposed to. Like tuning a string until it stops fighting you and starts resonating cleanly. Like the moment before an arrow leaves the bow, when the tension finally feels right.
Roy checks himself in the mirror — not out of vanity, but habit. He’s learned to do quick assessments and learned to trust what he sees. He looks sharp. Awake. Focused. His eyes are clear, his posture loose but ready. This is the version of himself that shows up when it counts.
He feels better at everything.
In the room, everything comes easier.
He moves through the crowd without thinking about it, slipping between bodies like he’s reading the current instead of fighting it. The music plays cleanly, settling into him without rattling loose ends. His head stays clear, no second-guessing, no background noise, just the beat and the motion and the sense of being exactly where he needs to be.
The lights don’t overwhelm him anymore; they feel like fuel, heat soaking into his skin instead of blinding him. He knows when to lean in, when to hang back, and when to let the sound carry him without forcing it.
There’s a moment during the night now — usually somewhere in the middle — where he realises he hasn’t thought about himself at all for a while. Not his posture, not his pace, not whether he’s doing this right. He’s just there, plugged in, moving with the sound instead of bracing against it.
The room feels close. Responsive. Alive.
Jokes land where they’re supposed to. He fills silences without effort, keeps conversations buoyant instead of grinding through them. He listens just long enough to catch the rhythm of someone’s speech, then slips his words into the gaps like he’s always known where they’d fit. People laugh more around him. People want him nearby. He can feel it — that subtle shift where attention starts to orbit instead of drift, where people angle their bodies toward him without realising it.
He doesn’t have to try so hard anymore. He doesn’t have to perform normal, okay or approachable. He just is.
Even patrol goes better on the nights he bothers with it.
He notices it first in the small things: the way his feet find purchase faster, the way his eyes track movement without strain. His reactions are sharper. Decisions come quicker, cleaner. There’s less second-guessing every move, less mental back-and-forth about whether he’s choosing the right angle or the best approach. He doesn’t freeze on the edge of choices the way he sometimes used to, caught between too many possibilities. He trusts his instincts — and they reward him for it.
He moves like he used to, back when everything felt simpler. Back when the world narrowed down to the next step, the next shot, the next breath.
It’s not like he’s high.
That’s the thing that keeps circling back, reassuring him every time the thought threatens to sharpen. He’s not slurring or drifting or losing time. He’s present. He’s locked in. If anything, he feels more himself than he has in a long time.
He's more capable, more alive, more on purpose.
He thinks of it the way he thinks of training. Of adjustments. Of finding the right balance between tension and release. You tweak a stance. You adjust your grip. You learn how to breathe through the adrenaline instead of fighting it. You find the sweet spot and stay there as long as you can.
This is just another tool.
People drink coffee for the same reason. People take supplements. People do whatever they can to keep up, to stay sharp, to stay relevant, to stay ahead of the curve. No one calls that dependence. They call it discipline.
Roy’s just honest about wanting to be good at what he does.
There’s no craving, no urgency. If he misses a night, he shrugs it off. He’s done it before. He can do it again. If he takes a little more than usual, there’s always a reason: the set runs long, the crowd’s rough, he didn’t sleep enough the night before. Variables. Adjustments. You adapt to conditions. That’s how you survive.
It’s flexible. Controlled.
He doesn’t mark the change when it happens. Doesn’t notice the exact moment the pills stop being something he adds to his night and start being something he factors in automatically. They’re just part of the equation now — like spare strings tucked into his case, like knowing which alley cuts five minutes off the walk back to the venue, like the way the city sounds different depending on how late it is.
He starts planning around them without realising it. Making sure he’s got enough before he heads out. Noting, vaguely, which bathrooms are least likely to have a line. Adjusting his pace so the night crests at just the right moment.
It feels smart. Prepared.
Sometimes — rarely — something flickers at the edges of his awareness. A moment where he catches himself reaching for his pocket automatically, or feeling a low, restless irritation when plans shift unexpectedly. He notices it the way you notice a muscle ache after a long day: there, but manageable.
He stretches past it. Keeps moving.
He grabs his jacket, slings it on, and heads out without a second thought. The door clicks shut behind him, the sound clean and decisive.
The night feels wide open. Manageable. Like something he can step into and shape instead of bracing against.
Roy smiles to himself as he heads down the stairs, boots hitting each step in an easy rhythm. He feels good. Sharp. Ready.
This isn’t dependence.
It’s optimisation.
And it works.
That’s the most dangerous part of all.
•·················•·················•
The dining area in Titans Tower always feels a little too bright after a mission.
Not harsh — Donna hates harsh lighting, insists it makes everything look like a hospital — but bright in the sense that it leaves nowhere to hide. The overheads glow warm and steady, reflecting off the clean tabletop and the pale walls, catching on every surface until the room feels gently overexposed. The table is too clean, wiped down with military precision, the faint citrus-and-chemical smell of cleaning solution still lingering in the air. The plates are mismatched in that way that suggests they’ve been stolen, gifted, scavenged, kept — ceramic beside plastic beside something chipped and handmade that Donna refuses to throw out. Familiar. Domestic. Safe.
The kind of place you’re supposed to exhale.
Roy is still keyed up.
The mission wasn’t even that bad. A quick hit-and-run — warehouse, stolen tech, a handful of armed idiots who thought masks made them untouchable. It was the kind of job they could’ve done in their sleep. No hostages. No moral grey areas. No one screaming. Roy didn’t even take the worst of it. He’s got a bruise forming along his forearm where someone caught him with a baton, already purpling under the skin, and a dull ache in his shoulder from wrenching the bowstring too hard, too fast, too many times in a row.
It’s nothing. It’s an irritation. It’s the kind of pain that should fade into the background if you ignore it.
That’s what Oliver always said. Pain was information, not an excuse. Something you logged and worked around.
Except Roy can’t quite ignore anything tonight.
Everything in him is on, humming at a higher frequency than the room. The kind of keyed-up alertness Oliver praised. The kind that meant you were ready. His thoughts feel too quick for the space they’re moving in, ricocheting off the edges instead of settling. He can hear everything at once: the scrape of a chair leg, the clink of cutlery, the low hum of the Tower’s systems running behind the walls. It’s all too crisp, too present, like the world forgot to turn the volume down after the mission ended.
He drops into a chair at the table like it’s a stage mark, precise and deliberate, leans back, stretches his legs out under the table until his boot nudges the opposite chair. Someone laughs — Wally, of course — and the sound lands in Roy’s chest like applause. He takes it. He doesn’t mean to, but he does. His mouth curves up instinctively, chasing the echo of it.
Wally is talking — Wally is always talking — about how the guy with the tech arm tried to act intimidating and then slipped on a patch of oil like a cartoon character. He reenacts it with exaggerated sound effects, nearly toppling off his chair in the process. Dick is at the counter with a plate in his hands, moving with quiet precision as he dishes food out for everyone, like the world is still something that can be organised if you do it carefully enough. Donna is sitting cross-legged on one of the chairs, hair still damp from a quick shower, looking over a mission report like it’s a puzzle she’s already halfway solved.
Roy watches them and feels… fond, briefly. Warmth, the genuine kind, flares in his chest. These are his people. This is the place he’s supposed to come back to when the night ends and the masks come off. This is home.
So why does it feel like he’s arriving a half-beat early every time?
Like he’s stepping into a song that hasn’t quite caught up to him yet.
He reaches for his glass and finds it empty. The absence irritates him more than it should. He stands, takes it to the sink, fills it, then fills it again because he forgot he already did the first time. He drinks anyway, gulps too much too fast. The water is cold enough to sting his teeth. It doesn’t do anything for the buzzing under his skin. It just makes him aware of his mouth, his throat, the way his body wants something and doesn’t care what.
Donna looks up from the report. “You okay over there?”
The words are casual. Not interrogative. Not even particularly concerned. The kind of check-in you toss out without thinking when you’ve known someone long enough to register the slight changes in their orbit. The kind of question that usually slides right past without snagging.
Roy feels something in him spike, sharp and irrational, like a reflex firing before he’s had time to identify the stimulus.
His mouth moves before his brain can catch up.
“I’m fine,” he says, too loud, too fast. “Jesus.”
Across the table, Garth’s fork stills mid-air.
Silence lands around him like a dropped plate crashing on the tiled floor.
It lasts maybe half a second, less. The smallest pause in the rhythm of the room. But Roy feels it. Wally’s laughter cuts off mid-breath. Dick’s hands still over the stack of plates, frozen in motion. Donna’s expression goes still — not offended, because Donna doesn’t offend easily — but caught between surprise and that careful, measured patience she saves for volatile situations.
Roy’s stomach drops.
Why does everyone keep acting like something’s wrong when nothing is? When he’s still standing, still sharp, still doing exactly what he’s supposed to?
He hears how it sounded. He hears the edge in it, the defensive bite that doesn’t match the question. He feels the air shift, the way a room adjusts when someone’s mood becomes the most important thing in it, whether anyone wants it to or not.
He hates that.
He hates that they’re all looking at him like he’s a problem to solve, like a sudden variable that needs accounting for. Like the evening has been derailed by his tone instead of by the simple fact that he answered a question.
Roy laughs — bright, sudden, practised. He tosses the sound in the air like confetti and prays it sticks.
“I mean—” he adds, waving his hand like the whole thing is ridiculous, like he’s ridiculous for snapping. “Yeah. I’m fine. I’m great. Sorry. I’m just—still amped.” He grins wider, leans into it until it feels almost exaggerated. “You guys are moving like you’re eighty. I swear to God, Wally, if you yawn in my presence, I’m gonna fight you.”
Wally blinks, then recovers with the grace of a man whose superpower is speed and social recovery. “Wow,” he says. “Threatening violence. Love that for you.”
There’s laughter again — small, cautious at first, then a little freer. The rhythm tries to return, like a skipped beat being smoothed over. Roy can feel the room deciding whether to let him have the moment back.
Garth doesn’t laugh.
He isn’t frowning either. He’s just watching Roy with that same unreadable focus, like he’s waiting to see if the surface settles or cracks further.
But it’s Donna’s gaze that stays on him a beat longer than everyone else’s.
“You don’t have to apologise,” she says, mildly. Gentle. Always so gentle.
Which makes Roy’s teeth ache.
Apologies imply something happened. Something bad. Something that needs addressing. Roy doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want this to become a thing.
Something did happen. Roy knows it did. He just doesn’t understand why it had to.
Dick sets the plate down in front of Roy like nothing’s wrong, like the interruption never happened, like he’s not clocking every movement Roy makes and filing it away for later. “Eat,” he says. The tone is light, but there’s a steadiness to it that makes it hard to argue with. Dick has always been good at making suggestions sound optional when they’re anything but.
Roy looks down at the plate. Pasta, probably. Something with sauce and vegetables and enough calories to keep them functional. Normal food. Comfort food. The kind of thing you eat because you’re supposed to.
He stabs a piece of broccoli and chews. The texture is wrong in his mouth — too soft, too slow. He wants something sharper. Something with an edge to it. Something that matches the tempo in his bones instead of fighting it.
Donna shifts in her chair, slides the report aside. “We should go over what happened at the east entrance,” she says. “The timing was a little off.”
“Timing was fine,” Roy says immediately.
He doesn’t even look up. The words come out automatically, reflexively. He keeps chewing, jaw working faster than necessary. He can already see what she’s going to say. He can already hear the analysis building in the shape of her sentences, the way she puts problems on the table and expects everyone to pick at them until they’re understood.
God, why do they need to analyse everything?
“We had it,” Roy adds, swallowing. “We got in, we got out. No one got hurt. We’re good.”
Donna’s brows lift slightly. It’s barely a movement, but Roy catches it. “Roy—”
“No, seriously.” Roy sets his fork down, but he can’t sit still with his hands empty. He taps his fingers against the table, quick little rhythms that don’t quite settle into a pattern. “We did what we came to do. We don’t have to turn it into a thing.”
Wally makes a noise like he’s trying not to laugh. He fails. “You say that like it’s an option,” he says. “Donna literally lives to turn things into a thing.”
Donna shoots him a look that would be intimidating if she weren’t smiling. “Wally.”
Roy laughs again — too quick, too bright — relieved that the focus has shifted away from him. Relief floods his chest, sharp and immediate. He leans forward, elbows on the table, and starts talking, because talking keeps them from asking. Talking keeps him ahead of the room, sets the pace instead of reacting to it.
He tells a story about the guard who tried to intimidate them with a crowbar and then dropped it on his own foot. He exaggerates the timing, the expression, the way the guy’s bravado collapsed into embarrassment. He makes the punchline sharp because Wally laughs loudest when Roy does that. Dick’s mouth twitches in amusement. Donna’s smile is small, but it’s there.
Roy feeds the room what it wants: charm, humour, ease. The version of himself that fits in perfectly, that smooths over rough edges and keeps things light.
He keeps smiling until his cheeks feel tight.
Every so often, his gaze flicks to Donna without meaning to. Not because he’s worried about her judgment. Roy doesn’t care about judgment. That’s the point. He’s having fun. He’s fine.
But Donna watches him like she’s listening to the spaces between his words, like she’s paying attention to the rhythm instead of the lyrics.
Roy hates that she can do that.
He doesn’t want to be known that closely tonight. He doesn’t want to be seen in the way Donna sees things.
Dick interrupts him mid-story with a casual, “You still messing around with the guitar?”
Roy’s tongue stutters for half a second, caught between gears. The question shouldn’t matter. It’s normal. It’s friendly. It’s the kind of thing people ask because they care, because they want to stay connected.
Roy forces his grin back into place, wider this time, a fraction too deliberate. “Depends what you mean by messing around.”
Wally perks up immediately. “You ever gonna play something for us, or are you just gonna keep being mysterious about it?”
“Yeah,” Roy says, a little too fast. “Yeah. I’ve been practising.”
“You’ve been out at a lot of gigs lately,” Donna says.
Roy’s fingers tap harder on the table before he can stop them. The irritation flares again, hot and unreasonable, like a match struck too close to skin.
Why are they doing this. Why can’t they just—
He swallows it down, because he’s not stupid. He’s not reckless. He’s not going to snap again. He smooths his expression, keeps his tone light.
“It’s just a hobby,” Roy says lightly. “I’m allowed to have those.”
Dick’s voice stays easy, but there’s an undercurrent to it now, subtle and steady. “Just making sure you’re sleeping.”
Roy’s laugh comes out a little sharp. “You sound like my mom.”
Wally makes a gagging noise. “Ew. Don’t say that. None of us have moms. We’re a tragic theme.”
Donna throws a napkin at him.
Roy smiles. Laughs. Performs.
Inside, something twists.
Because this is the difference, isn’t it?
At the gigs, no one asks if he’s sleeping. No one asks if he’s okay. No one looks at him like he’s fragile, like he’s something that can be damaged if handled wrong. No one here is trying to preserve anything. They laugh at his jokes and slap his shoulder and hand him drinks and offer him something small and white in the palm of their hand like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
No one tries to pull him apart and inspect the pieces.
Here, in the Tower, everyone wants to know the why behind everything. They want context. They want to understand. They want to fix. Oliver never asked why. He asked if Roy could still draw, still hit, still keep up.
Roy doesn’t need fixing.
Roy doesn’t need anyone to slow him down.
He’s fine. He’s great. He’s having a great time.
So why does it feel like he’s constantly defending that fact?
He catches Dick watching him, not overtly, not obviously. Just a glance that lingers a fraction too long before Dick looks away and pretends he wasn’t looking at all. It’s subtle enough that Roy could ignore it if he wanted to.
He doesn’t.
A cold prickle crawls up the base of his spine.
He smiles wider.
He forces his shoulders to relax. He makes himself lean back, casual, open. He tells another joke. He reaches for his glass again and drinks too fast, barely tasting the water.
Donna says something about the report. Dick responds. Wally interrupts. The conversation carries on, mostly normal, stitched back together with practised ease.
But the half-second pause is still sitting in Roy’s chest like a swallowed stone.
He keeps smiling anyway, because if he stops smiling, they’ll ask again.
And Roy can’t stand the idea of them asking again.
He can’t stand the idea of them looking at him like something is wrong.
Because there isn’t.
There isn’t.
He’s literally having a great time.
And the fact that he has to keep saying it — to himself most of all — doesn’t mean anything.
He could stay the night. Crash on one of the Tower’s couches, wake up to Donna making tea she insists is medicinal and Dick pretending not to watch him too closely over breakfast.
Instead, he zetas back to Star City.
The city meets him like it always does — louder, messier, and less interested in how he’s holding up. The bar he ends up in doesn’t ask for ID. Never has. The bartender nods at him like Roy’s just another regular, like there’s nothing strange about a kid with too much energy and a fake name ordering something bitter and cheap.
Roy likes places that don’t ask questions.
•·················•·················•
The invite comes in like it always does: casual and unassuming, designed to be easy to say yes to.
Roy’s halfway through rewrapping the grip on one of his bows when his phone buzzes. He ignores it at first, fingers moving by habit, smoothing the tape down in tight, even spirals, pressing each layer into place with his thumb to make sure it won’t slip. This is muscle memory. This is something he knows how to do without thinking, and right now he likes that. He likes the way the task narrows his focus down to something clean and linear, the way it leaves no room for static.
Buzz.
He keeps going, tugging the wrap just a fraction tighter, checking the tension, adjusting his grip until it sits exactly right in his hand.
Buzz.
That one’s louder. More insistent. The kind of interruption that doesn’t let itself be dismissed.
Roy exhales through his nose, just short of a sigh, and finally stops. He flexes his fingers once, tests the bow out of habit, then sets it carefully on the bed beside him before reaching for the phone.
Wally: movie night. you in?
Dick: Donna lost a bet, she’s making popcorn. Don’t be late if you are.
Roy stares at the words longer than he means to.
Movie night. Training. Sparring. Dinner. It’s always something low-stakes, deliberately normal. The Tower’s way of pretending they’re just a group of friends who happen to save the world instead of a collection of people orbiting shared trauma, shared responsibility, shared watchfulness. It’s ritual disguised as spontaneity — check-ins masquerading as hangouts.
Lately, the rituals have felt tighter somehow.
Like everyone’s holding on a little too deliberately, afraid of what happens if they stop.
He knows the shape of the night already. He can see it play out with irritating clarity: the couch, Wally sprawled in every direction at once, Donna curled up with her bowl of popcorn that she’ll inevitably hog to herself, Dick half-watching the movie and half-watching everyone else. Jokes at the predictable beats. Commentary layered over dialogue. Someone pausing the movie to argue about a plot hole.
Someone — probably Donna, maybe Dick — glancing at Roy every so often, not obvious, not pointed, just… attentive.
The same as always — except lately there’s been an undercurrent to it.
A sense that these nights are being scheduled instead of happening naturally.
Roy exhales and sets the bow down more firmly this time.
He could go.
That’s the annoying part. There’s no real obstacle. He isn’t injured. He isn’t on patrol. He could Zeta over in under a minute if he wanted to. Show up. Sit on the couch. Laugh at the right parts of a bad movie.
The thought of it makes something in his chest tighten, sharp and immediate, like a hand closing around his ribs.
He doesn’t want to spend another night explaining his mood with a smile plastered over it. He doesn’t want to feel the subtle drag of the Tower’s pace, the way everything there seems calibrated to downshift, to settle, to wind people down whether they want it or not. He doesn’t want to be asked if he’s sleeping. Or how training’s going. Or if he’s “doing okay lately.”
And he definitely doesn’t want to sit through a night that feels like proof.
Like evidence that this — them — is something that needs effort now.
He types back without overthinking it — because overthinking is how you end up doing things you don’t want to do.
Roy: can’t tonight. long day. rain check?
If he goes — if he lets himself settle into it — he might have to admit that these nights aren’t infinite. That people are already being pulled in different directions, even if no one’s said it out loud yet.
The lie slips out easily. Smooth as muscle memory. It costs him nothing.
There’s a pause. Not long. Just enough.
The typing dots appear, disappear, reappear.
Wally: boo
Wally: next time tho
Dick: All good. Get some rest.
Garth’s typing dots appear and disappear but no text ever comes.
Roy locks his phone and tosses it onto the bed.
The relief hits immediately, sharp and unmistakable.
He hadn’t realised how tense he’d been until the tension releases, sliding off him like a coat he hadn’t noticed he was wearing. His shoulders drop. His jaw unclenches. The room feels bigger somehow, like it’s exhaled with him.
Good, he thinks.
Good.
He doesn’t sit with the feeling. Sitting with things is dangerous. Sitting with things invites questions — internal ones, worse than the external kind. Questions about why the relief feels this good, why avoiding his friends feels like a victory instead of a compromise.
Instead, he grabs his jacket, checks his reflection in the mirror automatically. He looks fine. Better than fine. Awake. Sharp. A little flushed, maybe, but that just makes him look alive. He runs a hand through his hair, doesn’t bother smoothing it down all the way.
Then he heads out.
Star City meets him halfway down the block, loud and wet and breathing. The air smells like rain and exhaust and fried food from somewhere that’s definitely still open. Neon spills across the pavement, fractured and colourful. Music bleeds out of doorways, basslines overlapping, competing.
Roy follows the sound without thinking.
The bar he ends up at doesn’t bother checking IDs anymore— hasn’t for a while. The bouncer nods when he sees Roy, recognition easy and unremarkable, like this is just another piece of the city’s rhythm. Roy slips inside without breaking stride.
“Thought you weren’t coming out tonight,” someone shouts in his ear.
Roy grins, wide and easy. “Changed my mind.”
That’s all the explanation anyone needs.
Inside, the sound hits him first: live music tonight, too loud for the room, amps pushed just a little past where they should be. It rattles his bones in a way that feels good. Familiar. Someone onstage is trying something ambitious and not quite nailing it, but Roy doesn’t mind. He watches their hands instead. Memorises the motion. Files it away.
Someone shoves a drink into his hand without asking what he wants.
Roy grins. Takes it.
He’s good like this. He knows it. He feels it.
This version of himself is easy. Loud. Unexamined. He doesn’t have to calibrate every reaction or soften his edges so no one gets worried. He doesn’t have to pretend he’s slowing down when everything in him wants to move faster.
He can let the buzz carry him. Let his thoughts move faster than the room and trust that no one will ask him to slow down.
He checks his phone once — out of habit more than anything — and sees a follow-up message from Dick he didn’t notice before.
Dick: Seriously though, if you want to talk—
Roy locks the screen again before the rest of the message can load.
He doesn’t want to talk.
He doesn’t need to talk.
Talking leads to explaining, and explaining leads to looks like the ones Donna’s been giving him lately — quiet, thoughtful, just this side of concerned. Looks that make Roy feel like he’s already doing something wrong, even when he isn’t. Looks that make everything heavier just by existing.
Here, no one looks at him like that.
Here, no one asks what he’s thinking about or why he’s been out so much or whether he’s “handling things okay.”
Here, he can exist without being interpreted.
Someone bumps into him, apologises, and grins like it’s a shared joke. Someone else leans in close to shout something he doesn’t quite catch over the music. Roy laughs anyway, because it feels good, because it’s easy, because this version of him doesn’t require translation.
He dances — badly, enthusiastically, without caring how it looks. The music moves through him, loosens something in his shoulders, his hips, his spine. The night stretches, elastic and forgiving, not demanding anything from him except presence.
When the line clears, he ducks into the bathroom. The mirror is just as smeared and cracked as the last one, the lighting just as unforgiving. Someone’s bassline bleeds through the walls, rattling the sink.
He barely glances at his reflection this time. He already knows what he looks like — alive, wired, exactly where he’s supposed to be.
The pills are already in his pocket.
He doesn’t think about when he put them there. It doesn’t feel like a decision anymore. It feels like preparation, like grabbing keys before leaving the house.
He swallows them dry and washes them down with a mouthful of beer someone left on the counter. The bitterness doesn’t bother him. The ritual doesn’t register as one. It’s just another step, another adjustment to keep the night running smoothly.
When he steps back out into the club, the relief deepens, settles into something warm and steady. The edges of the world soften just enough. The noise fits him better. His body feels aligned with the moment instead of buzzing against it.
This is the part he doesn’t want to explain to the Titans.
Not because it’s wrong. Not because it’s shameful.
Because they wouldn’t understand the math of it.
They’d see the skipping movie nights, the missed training sessions, the half-truths stacking up, and assume it’s all leading somewhere bad. They’d want to intervene. To slow him down. To pull this version of him under a microscope and decide whether it’s safe to keep around.
Roy doesn’t want that.
This version of him is efficient. Functional. Happy.
The Roy who sits on the Tower couch and fields questions and pretends he isn’t bored out of his skull — that Roy is a compromise. A performance. A version that exists to keep the peace, to reassure everyone that nothing is changing too fast.
This Roy — the one laughing too loud in a room full of strangers, moving with the music, letting the night stretch as long as it wants to — that Roy is honest.
They don’t need to see this version of me, he thinks, and the thought settles with surprising certainty.
It’s not resentment. It’s practicality.
Everyone gets different versions of everyone else. That’s normal. That’s healthy. You don’t bring your whole self into every room. You don’t tell your coworkers the same things you tell your friends. You don’t act the same at home as you do onstage.
Roy has just gotten better at deciding which parts of himself belong where.
The Titans get the careful one. The controlled one. The Roy who shows up when it matters and doesn’t rock the boat. The version that still knows how to pass.
This place gets the rest.
The music surges, the bass rattling his bones, and Roy closes his eyes for a moment, letting it wash over him. The noise fills every gap, leaving no room for second-guessing or self-reflection. There’s no space for Donna’s quiet concern or Dick’s careful questions. No room for the half-second pauses that make his stomach knot.
He opens his eyes again, smiling.
This works, he thinks.
This is balance.
And for the first time in a while, he feels light — unburdened by expectations, by concern, by the constant sense of being evaluated.
He’s exactly where he wants to be.
And he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for that.