Summary: Written for a tumblr challenge prompt - "A fic where every sentence starts with 'The Real Dick Roman', exactly 1000 words long and about him before the Leviathans." - The real Dick Roman was a businessman, first and foremost. He wasn't exactly a shining example of humanity - but then, nobody really is, are they?
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Word Count: 1000
The real Dick Roman was a businessman, first and foremost. The real Dick Roman fired employees by the dozen for being five minutes late, not getting the best deal they could, the real Dick Roman had a limousine and a Mercedes and listened to punk rock stations when nobody was in his office with him and had an entire wardrobe of suits and the real Dick Roman took a different woman – or occasionally, man – to dinner, the most expensive Italian restaurant in the near vicinity, every Friday only to promote them and fire them and take them to dances and never speak to them again.
The real Dick Roman never spoke to his mother but he made weekly phonecalls to his father to talk about business and – "Yes, I'm sorry Mother's dead – no, I'm not particularly upset – don't talk to me like that, I have more money than you have brain cells – she never cared anyway – when did she ever tell me she was proud of me?" – nothing of great importance while pacing his office and glaring at anyone who dared to even knock, the real Dick Roman had three double beds in his designer mansion covered in silk sheets for no reason – his clone later went on to sneer in disgust at them and tear them apart, the horrible things – the real Dick Roman had a parakeet which didn't survive much longer than him and a framed picture of it on his desk, the real Dick Roman liked Chinese food and knew ten different languages and could have single handedly solved the problem of poverty, the real Dick Roman liked Shakespeare when he was younger but never had any time for fiction once he turned 18 and got into the real world, the real Dick Roman never got attached to anyone because first and foremost, he was a businessman and a billionaire and his only real attachment could be his company and what's life if you don't get to have fun occasionally?
The real Dick Roman never touched anything supernatural in his life up until That Day, the real Dick Roman slept around and yelled at employees and broke people's hearts and never lost a wink of sleep – the three hours of sleep he usually got, once he'd done working and got home from his office, only to fall asleep on his desk the next day and have to be handed a cup of coffee by his secretary – over it, but the real Dick Roman never would have killed anyone because he'd seen the movies and watched the shows where everything crumbled because of a decision like that. The real Dick Roman had no allusions, he knew that Real Life wasn't like that, didn't have any monsters or supercops or business sharks in jail cells – not with their money – but the real Dick Roman was not a killer.
The real Dick Roman had travelled around half the world by the age of 30 and back again by 32, had stakes in half the businesses around the globe, was in the top 35 most successful before the age of 40. The real Dick Roman first got interested in money and money and money and it's many uses when children from his high school started buying exam answers, the real Dick Roman had favourite things and interests and likes – the real Dick Roman's favourite animal was a shark, the real Dick Roman turned up to prom alone in a navy blue suit and kissed nearly all the girls – and again, some of the boys – there except for the redhead he'd liked since forever, the real Dick Roman went to the most expensive universities he could using his dad's money while his mother looked on in distaste and the real Dick Roman boasted of his investments over Christmas dinner while his family snickered and he scowled and didn't speak to them except to snap at them to pass the butter for the rest of the day.
The real Dick Roman got his big break a few years later and stopped talking to nearly all of them except for his father because the man insisted on it. The real Dick Roman never smoked but he drank just enough wine at restaurants to make him look like the perfect date, the real Dick Roman had at least two cups of coffee a day, the real Dick Roman would never be caught dead on a golf course because he hated the sport, simple as that. The real Dick Roman preferred tennis, but the only thing his hands could do was crunch numbers and type and paint and he never took up the latter because business came before pleasure and after a while business became pleasure. The real Dick Roman, for all that he had, had nothing at all. The real Dick Roman watched Dr Sexy MD once and never did it again because he just never had the time or got too distracted by work, the real Dick Roman, on weekends, worked and worked and worked but after that he got some wine and watched terrible crime shows on an HD TV that spanned half the wall.
The real Dick Roman scoffed at The New God on the news, invested more money in more businesses in case anything bad happened, tried to forget about the raving lunatic with the trench coat. The real Dick Roman spent 2010 gnashing his teeth and growling as he lost customers to the strange murders and lost warehouses to the storms by the dozen, the real Dick Roman had never been to Church in his life except for one Christmas after he first started with business and never went back and the real Dick Roman never saw anything coming. The real Dick Roman went to wash his hands and wipe the sweat off his forehead one day before the most important meeting of his career, and the water turned black and sticky and the real Dick Roman never woke up.