song title from 'one night only' by the kooks

blame my friend, who requested this pairing, set in the 'how long is forever' timeline. ANGST. SO MUCH ANGST.

It's unhealthy.

That's the long and short of it. No loose, delusional threads of maybe it might work, no nuance. Because it's unsustainable, what they're doing, and Gar knows that—he knows that, but in the moment, it's familiar, the gravity of shared experiences tugging them flush into distraction, and afterwards—

Afterwards, with their sweat drying and a stiff body curled into the corner of the bed to hold cold space between them, it's not as easy. Afterwards, Gar remembers how it started, why. Afterwards, he remembers that this won't bring her back, that she's gone, that bodies are just addictions and stand-ins.

Unhealthy started in the evidence room, probably. Dick's mask slipping around the corners, shoulders hunched in, fingers shaking with something like withdrawal. From caffeine, maybe, but Gar never asked because it was easier to ignore the strained lines of sleep deprivation. No one knew how to get her back, so… Coffee wasn't the worst coping mechanism.

Better than Gar's delirious highs and nightclubs, at least. Better than disco lights on green-glitter lips, better than regret.

Unhealthy started in the evidence room, probably, but it exploded in the gym, on the plastic mats, in the hot spike adrenaline of sparring and sweat and pain-is-better-than-thinking-about-it. Because Dick's unhealthy is not sleeping, and Gar's unhealthy is sleeping with, and fuck, it's unstable together.

"You should go," says Dick from the cold corner of his bed as the clock ticks forward, and Gar thinks that's shitty.

Shitty in that way he doesn't have the patience for anymore, now that he's worn down so close to the bone that little things like this make him feral.

"That's funny."

"Gar…"

"I live here." Because that's their truth five years after empty. They're still empty, and she's still gone, and Dick only comes back on the anniversary to stare at the washed-out purple of her lifeless curtains.

I live here, and you don't.

Maybe, the first time it happened, they were just two broken people. Panting in the gym post-workout, the black hole space of her untouched weights pulling their eyes in. A whispered laugh, a hand on the wrong place at the right time, a falling into each other that was easier than talking.

In the gaping of the second hand, a silence that could swallow him whole, Gar leans over the tangled mess of Dick's old bedsheets in this abandoned room that's stale with the scent of their bodies, their mistakes. If Dick came back to visit him, to pretend to visit them, maybe Gar wouldn't hate it so much. If he talked to Raven, who hasn't been okay since the almost-apocalypse. If he saw Vic, who hasn't been okay since his organs got discontinued.

Gar has been fighting crime solo for a year, and it's not working. Too much screaming about limitations and broken bones that Raven doesn't have the self-control to heal, that Vic thinks he should have been there to cover for, and all the lies get turned over like funeral dirt, leaving him stiff and buried, the weight of their expectations shoveled over him.

"Not in my room, you don't," says Dick, pulling on his pants without looking at him, without acknowledging the kiss bites interlaced over his hip in pale pink and purple.

Gar touches him on impulse, fingers twitching together involuntarily over the curve of bare shoulder, and then he clings flush to Dick's back, brushing a kiss over the ridge of his vertebrae, holding onto the feeling of not alone. "Stay."

"Batman's expecting me."

"You haven't seen Vic or Raven yet."

"It's better if I don't."

It's unhealthy, and Gar knows that Dick's careful façade of distance shouldn't pull him in. The problem is, it's familiar like nothing else is anymore. A call back to happy, to home, and even if his costume is black and blue now, the same as Gar's post-battle bruises, it's so close to what they're both missing. Like grief strung between their throats, pulling their mouths into whispered, empty promises that she'll be back in the morning.

Dick breaks those threads loose, afterwards. Pretends their lips weren't cross-stitched together all night.

"You're not going to ask how they're doing?"

Dick doesn't answer this time, breaking the brittle grip of Gar's fingers around him so that he can tug on his shirt.

Then there's the mask.

"I'll see you next year," he says finally, and Gar—

—falls. Back into the bed with one elbow thrown over his eyes to avoid staring at the ceiling the way he did last night with their breaths pulsing in sync. Gar knows that he reminds Dick of her, just enough that he'll come back and hold him next year and whisper, let me see your eyes.

Green and reflective in the dark, which is the only way Dick will love him.

"Damn it, Gar!"

It's not an unfamiliar sentence, at this point, and Gar lets it slide right past him into nothingness. Maybe, at this point, he should know better. Maybe, at this point, he'd be better at watching his blind spot, but—

"Raven's inpatient until next week, you know she can't fix you, and I'm not a doctor, no matter how many times you make me fix you up—"

"I'm fine, Vic."

"Your bones set wrong because you flew all the way back to the Tower after he broke your arm, and he's still out there—"

In one ear, out the other. Easier than arguing, which is all they know how to do anymore. Arguing from a place of caring, probably, but now it's just another reason that Gar hates his job. Hates the HIVE and the downtown gangs and the metagene trafficking that he's not smart enough to stop.

"Okay."

"And I'm mad because I should be out there with you, so stop looking at me like that. Give me your arm."

Gar knows it's popped out of its socket, based on the loose way it rolls on his left. Easier not to move it. "Okay."

The world goes fuzzy around the edges while Vic pops his arm into place. Rebreaks it to reset the bones and tells him he can't shapeshift for a few weeks while it heals, and Gar makes another empty promise he doesn't intend to keep. He's got a shift at the circus tonight, and they're going to want elephants and lions. Good money for shitty work, and another three or four months will get Vic a new battery pack, probably.

Hopefully.

Fingers crossed, stars crossed, maybe before the end of summer when they leave for the next big city, the next big payday.

"You're not listening to me," says Vic quietly with his metal palm pressed over Gar's sling. "Hey. Hey, I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you, I'm just mad at"—he gestures at what amounts to everything—"this. And you'll run yourself into the ground, at this rate."

These are important words, apologetic and kind, but Gar is more interested in the feeling of Vic's hand lightly hung over his shoulder, how the thumb is massaging a soft circle. It's breaking open the floodgates of something desperate and needy inside of him, something that hasn't been touched since dusty rooms and anniversaries.

When Gar leans into Vic on the Med-bay cot, it's a mimicry of normal, a lot like movie nights in the common room used to be in the warm heat of bodies piled, twined, slow-breathing. Since she disappeared, since Dick left, this is a rare and special thing, intimacy that only exists in the space between heartbeats. So short that when Gar blinks, it will probably be gone.

"I'm at the circus tonight," he says, head falling back to rest against Vic's chest. If he angles right, his nose brushes the soft skin of Vic's neck. "So you might have to fix my shoulder again when I get back."

Instead of shouting, Vic sighs, bringing an arm to tousle the post-battle blood and sweat in Gar's hair. "I still think I should get an accounting job. Take some of the money stress off you."

"We talked about this."

"Yeah, I know. But I could—"

"No," says Gar firmly, twisting beneath the weight of metal to look Vic in the eye. "Not until we can afford a new battery pack."

If he were less selfish, Gar might tell him to power down for the night. That they're wasting precious seconds curled together in the bed cot, not making money, not doing anything at all. Each second that Gar breathes in the smell of cologne at the hollow of Vic's neck, is another second closer to graying, blacking out.

He can't bring himself to care.

In the sterile white reminder of everything that's wrong, feeling the cold tubes that stick out from Vic's back with a gentle whirring sound, seeing the backup generator tucked into the corner of the Med-Bay, Gar loses the line of reality, just a bit. He inhales a deep breath and finds his lips pressed against the metal curve of Vic's shoulder, soft and tentative.

When Vic doesn't react, Gar kisses higher. The puckered edge of skin between his neck and chest plate, the raised scars, and this time Vic startles. He looks over, down, and Gar takes the chance to kiss his cheek, the corner of his mouth, and before he can fit their lips into not alone, Vic shoves him backwards.

"No."

In the bed cot, Gar is breathing too hard. Reality starts tumbling around him, square boxes of platonic that he's not supposed to break down. He has too much blood rush in his face, and desperation turns him clingy.

"I'm sorry," says Gar stupidly, as though that explains anything.

Vic's stare has too many unspoken words in it, pity and judgment knotted all tight together. There's something in it that says, Stop defaulting to sex for intimacy.

Stop coming back from the clubs with lipstick stains.

Stop using people.

Vic doesn't know about the nights after the anniversary, though, and Gar won't ever tell him. That's a dirty secret bundled far from his mouth with invisible thread because Gar thinks admitting—out loud—that Dick thinks about her instead of him will make the reality of it unmanageable.

That Gar's laughter is close enough, that Gar's green eyes are passable.

It's not something Dick has ever said aloud, but Gar knows how to read the desperation in his hands and sober smiles. He knows that Dick doesn't see him in the clenched-hair-cramped-calf gasps, and Gar doesn't see anyone at all.

It's just a sensation close to feeling, close to love, close to being loved, which he doesn't know how to replicate anywhere else.

"I'm sorry," Gar repeats. "I wasn't—I wasn't thinking."

Maybe Vic says, it's okay, because Gar is his only lifeline to leaving the Tower again. Maybe Vic forgives him for complicating their habitual, platonic affection because he's desperate for Gar's circus money to get him out of plug-ins and wires, and that's a shitty thought that freezes his muscles stiff, sends a shiver down his spine.

There can't be a next time, another slip-up, because Gar's the one who controls what they can afford to buy. Raven's psychiatric bills, Vic's batteries. And that's a fucking power dynamic he doesn't want, so this?

This, using Vic to chase a distant ideal of self-respect that Gar doesn't know how to find after five years of self-destructing habits? Using Vic to forget, for a second, that Dick doesn't love him the way he needs—

"I'm sorry," Gar repeats, shoving his body back to avoid the temptation of cologne and corded muscle. He—can't. Touch Vic anymore. "It won't happen again."

He's an idiot and a masochist, so he goes back to the dusty room that Dick used to live in and pretends, just long enough to forget, that next anniversary will be different.

When Gar gets home, he doesn't expect to see a newspaper on the kitchen counter, black and white pages crumpled and smoothed over so many times the words are faded. It's late August, and this is routine, except for the newspaper. Routine, except for the single bulb that is swinging over the island in bright yellow. Routine, except for the silhouette of shoulders braced against the counter with a pale, scarred hand pressed over the headline with tight tendons.

Last spring, before Gar was broken by the routine of wet tomatoes and French fry bits matted in his hair from audiences who think it's funny to throw things at sleeping lions, Gar might have acknowledged the silhouette. But he's three months into juggling two careers, and heroics feel too distant and laughable to care that someone broke in again. The HIVE does this, sometimes, when he's working a late shift at the circus. Loots Raven's closet because she's in-patient again, because no one will care if some of her cloaks go missing, and Gar doesn't have the leftover energy to do anything about it when another kid shows up downtown with a familiar blue hood pulled up, bought on the black market of Jump.

This is routine except for the newspaper and swinging bulb, and Gar realizes a second too late that the room smells like him. An artificial hair product sort of thing, mixed with Bludhaven cigarette butts and gas stations. Not as familiar as it used to be, and it's nine months too soon for him to be back.

Last spring, Gar might have felt a dangerous rush of excitement. He might have thought that this was coming home or he's back and to stay this time. But it's not last spring, and Gar is not that naïve. If he looks up, around, there's no suitcase or bags or signs of moving.

"Vic's powered down," is all Gar ends up saying. "And Raven's not here."

Slowly, and then all at once, Dick leans into the yellow light, and Gar's almost surprised to find him in civvies. In his blue sweatshirt, in track pants, he looks so much younger than he usually does. No. No, Gar realizes with a start. He looks his age.

Twenty-one, barely old enough to drink.

"You work for the circus now?" Dick asks, voice all pinched together, shoving the newspaper forward.

As soon as the edges hit Gar's hands, he recognizes the headline. One-Man Zoo: Freakshow. "Oh."

Dick's mouth opens, as if to ask something, but nothing comes out. As though some sort of traumatic block is keeping it all tucked inside him, knotted.

"You… okay?"

A headshake. A tremor that goes down the length of his body.

"Do you… want me to…?" His hand reaches out.

A tiny nod.

Gar figures it's the hold me kind of touch, softer and kinder than what they're used to. So he wraps both arms around Dick's body and feels the bones beneath the muscle, too prominent, too sharp. He smells like rain this close, like maybe it was storming on the way over.

"Why are you working for the circus?" Dick asks, curling into Gar's neck, fingers clawing at Gar's shoulder blades as if he can push their bodies closer. It's clingy like Gar's usually clingy, and completely unexpected.

"They asked me to. We needed the money."

"They shouldn't call you a freak."

Gar shrugs, noncommittal, because that's not something that he likes to think about.

"You're not a freak."

Another shrug.

"Gar," says Dick, a hoarse whisper, pulling back to rest their foreheads together, "why didn't you tell me you needed the money?"

Eye contact is too vulnerable, so Gar rests his lids shut. Refusing to see the guilt spilled all over Dick's face like a coffee stain. "Thought you already knew. It's all over the news."

Raven's breakdown, Vic's retirement, Gar's circus career.

Usually overshadowed by Nightwing, who the media loves, who's not broken down like the rest of the Titans, who's not so painful to look at.

"I haven't—been watching."

Suddenly, Gar feels like he's supposed to pull away. Like holding Dick is too generous for what he deserves right now, and maybe Gar wants to be angry for once, like he hasn't been allowed to be angry because he's too busy holding up the weight of everyone else. But something stops him from moving back, and he's stuck sharing air with Dick in a cruel parody of intimacy. Their forearms are hot against each other.

"I'm sorry," says Dick fiercely, brushing his lips over Gar's, exhaling over chapped skin. "I'm so sorry I'm like this."

Gar is wholly uninterested in this apology if it means nothing else is changing. "It's fine."

"It's not. You've been"—another kiss, deeper—"doing this alone, and I haven't—"

Gar is stiff as Dick's hands cup his face, as they smooth over the shell of his ear and twine through his hair.

"I watched you perform tonight," Dick confesses between kisses, leaning both of their bodies back, hitching Gar's legs up, and Gar feels the island table beneath him, feels the weight of their moans. "I haven't been back to the circus since—"

"Since?" he asks against his better judgment, softening under the feeling that, just this once, he is the center of Dick's attention.

"Since I was a kid. I don't want to talk about it. You were so good, so—"

"Dick," Gar gasps, head thrown back.

"I wish you'd told me you needed money, you shouldn't have to—"

"Hah."

And then there's not much room for talking, all the guilty compliments cut short from panting, hot mouths, swearing when clothes get caught, when Gar gets shoved against the cold window and bends into the curve of skin behind him.

Gar refuses to memorize the words because it will make tomorrow morning harder, and after Vic, after his fuck-up in the Med-Bay, he can't.

He can't, and he lets it all go gray and meaningless, so that this memory won't be sweet, and he can't play it on repeat in his empty dreams, and he can't pretend it means more than another night of forgetting what's gone.

Who's missing.

The kitchen isn't romantic, he tells himself with his eyes squeezed shut, and they're using each other. Dick's compliments don't mean anything, and there will be a cold space in his arms tomorrow, the ghost of absence, and it's easier if he ignores the broken shudders of Dick's body, the quiet whimpers, the whispered confessions in his ear.

"I need you, I need you, I need you."

It's not real, so he refuses to remember it.

"Go away," she says without turning around, and Gar's too jaded for that to hurt.

The walls look bleached, whiter than they were two weeks ago, the last time he visited with Vic to pay for another three months of inpatient, five days before "anonymous donors." God, that was a slap in the face in the morning. Empty bedsheets, full account.

Thank you for your services.

"It's just me, Rae," he tells her, stomping a heel over the spell runes along the doorway, pretending that his weight is enough to crush them, pretending that this room isn't stacked with defensive wards and stasis circles.

Three years of relapses, and sometimes there's a good day thrown into the incoherent sentences. Sometimes she'll look up when he visits and smile her quiet little smile and ask if he brought the book she wanted, and Gar will read manga on the floor while they exist in silence.

"Gar?" She turns around, eyes flickering with something like recognition.

God. God, that feels good. It wasn't like this last time.

"Yeah. You miss me?"

"How long has it been?" she asks, lifting into the air to sit cross-legged, her shadow wiggling on the floor. "Did you bring me—?"

"Right here," he says, setting the pile of hardbacks in the corner because now that they've got money, now that he doesn't have to worry about her in-patient bills, it's okay to splurge on wish lists. And Dick sends her books in the mail, sometimes, like it makes up for him not visiting. "And two weeks, this time. Sorry I didn't come last weekend. Vic needed me to make some calls."

"Did you find a new provider?"

He forces the no out in a single breath, coughs it up out of his chest and flings it between them like a raw, bloody mess. "There's no money in it anymore, so they can't find the parts to make him a new one. Or to let him make it himself. And it's expensive. Apparently."

"More than what you make with the circus?"

God. God, Gar doesn't know how to tell her that not even Dick's anonymous donations are enough to fund Vic's new body and software. They don't talk about him anymore, not since he left, and she refuses to acknowledge his name. So Gar ends up saying nothing at all.

She nudges him with her toe in a familiar sort of way, and nostalgia saws through his chest like a dull knife. "My doctors say I'm doing better, this week. I might be able to come home soon."

"Yeah?" They said that last spring, and then she crumpled back into a tiny ball of flashbacks and wrecked her hospital room with black magic and Azarathian spells. Trying to split the timestream open, like she promised Gar she wouldn't.

As Raven folds herself onto the floor beside him, she offers one of those rare smiles, like this tiny drop of happy might last her months. If she saves it up for special occasions. "Yes. I'm even sleeping again."

"God, that's good to hear. No nightmares?"

"Not many."

Gar doesn't think he'll ever forget the gray beneath her eyes, four weeks after Trigon. Or the pale of her skin, or the too-thin set of her shoulders, or the white flicker of magic every time he found her awake at four am surrounded by spell books and candles. Lips moving silently as she dog-eared dimension hopping and time stopping and—Gar shoves the memories down.

He doesn't want to think about the plane split. He doesn't want to think about the League getting called in, or Raven strapped down screaming, or the shockwave of energy that collapsed the Tower and—

He's not thinking about it.

He's not thinking about the apocalypse, either.

"You're quiet today," says Raven, using her magic to pull a book over from the stack he brought. Her fingers run down the spine, open to the dedication which is written in Latin. "How's Vic?"

"He's… okay. I guess. He's powered down most of the time."

"Ah."

"Trying to save energy in case Jump gets attacked and I really need the backup. I don't know."

"Mm."

"I did something stupid, and he says it's fine, but—" Gar shakes his head, not sure how she always pulls the confessions right out of him, even when he's trying not to word vomit. "I think he's powered down all the time because he's avoiding me."

Raven doesn't reassure him, which he appreciates. She's not the kind of person to sugarcoat mistakes or offer noncommittal platitudes. She doesn't tell him that Vic wouldn't power down just to avoid talking, because they both know he would. That he has before.

That he did it a lot, right after the almost-apocalypse.

"I'll just give him a little more time, I guess. That should fix things, right?" He licks his lips, looks at her for that something he's always looking for, that something he can't ever seem to find. "Right?"

"It depends."

"On?"

"What you're trying to fix."

When Gar looks down, his knuckles are a light green from clenching so hard. In this room, empty except for the sink and bed and toilet, his bad habits seem so stupid. The lights are so bright in here he can't imagine doing to Raven what he did to Vic. It's an out of body experience almost, floating up, out, seeing his idiocy for what it is.

"I tried to use him for sex."

A skipped beat, and then—

"Pfft."

He bristles. "I'm sorry, are you laughing? Is my misery funny to you?"

"No, it's just—"

"I tried to use him," Gar snaps, like the louder he says it, the realer it is. "And I—I've lost count of how many one night stands I've had at the club downtown."

"Gar…"

"Don't." He doesn't like the pity in her eyes, which are a dark gray-purple today. Not glowing, not white.

"There are worse ways to cope," she says softly. "Better than what I'm doing, probably."

"I'm addicted to sex, Raven."

"You're not, you're just—"

He interrupts, as if it's an argument that is possible to win, as if admitting it will rip open the scabs of not-healing, and then it falls out before he can stop it, and— "Raven, I'm sleeping with Dick."

Dead silence.

A cold wave of her aura splashing out, raising the hair on Gar's arms.

Raven blinks as the words process, and Gar hopes he won't be impulsive, one day. One day, he'll figure out how to keep secrets to himself and not blurt out the mistakes he's making with people who don't bother to visit. People who put her into this glorified prison cell, people who said she needed more help than just counseling, people who forced her into inpatient.

People he's not supposed to talk about.

"You… still talk to him?" Her voice is forcefully calm, her hands twining together like maybe the movement will distract him from the awful.

"There's not… much talking, really."

Ten minutes ago, she looked lucid. She recognized him, and today was a good day, which they haven't had together in a while. Now the magic is smoking off her fingertips and split ends, making her white cloak billow, making the air go cold. The anger spilling out because they don't talk about Dick anymore. Not since he left, not since he said—in not so many words—that he couldn't move on from her unless he moved on from them.

A rune on the wall flashes white, and something invisible tugs Gar by the waist, yanks him backwards.

"Raven!"

"If I bring her back, if I find her, if she comes home—" Her mouth is moving, echoing, and sigils brand themselves into the ceiling in glowing red. Spell books are pulled through black portals, pages flapping, and Raven's cheeks are feverish pink.

"If you would just let me, I can fix this," Raven says, eyes splitting into white circles, hood flying back. "I can make it like none of this ever happened—"

"Rae, no."

"There's a spell I haven't tried yet. I can bring her home."

The defensive ward shoves Gar through the door right as three doctors rush past shouting, trying to calm Raven down, and one of them has a sedative in his steady hand.

"Don't," Gar says, but they slam the door in his face, and he's left with the hollow reality of it all, scraped into the white swirled wood around the silver lock like fate.

He caused her relapse, this time.

I might be able to come home soon, except he messed that up.

On the sixth anniversary, in the yellow wash of sunset and with his lips against Gar's hot throat, his hands cupped around Gar's ass, hips stuttering forward, Dick gasps, "God, Star—"

And then chokes the rest of it down.

Star, as in green glowing memories, as in tumbling through time, as in long fingers wrapped around Warp's armored chest, as in absence, as in mourning, as in they will never talk about it, as in Gar would rather die than say her name.

It's the first time anyone has said it since she disappeared, and they go so far out of their way to avoid talking about constellations and space since it all happened that it punches Gar into stillness. Like splintered glass, like a broken mirror, like realizing in the sudden quiet that this is what their relationship is.

This.

This silence, right now, staring at each other with their breath held, their naked legs still twined together. This, the grief spilling all over the bedsheets, their sweat-slick chests, and it's gray and cold and engulfing the sun outside Gar's window, and this is a wake, probably.

One last chance to pay their respects.

"I didn't—" says Dick.

Gar shoves him away so hard that his wrists crack like shotguns, and it's a small miracle, actually, that the bones don't break. So used to fracturing when he shifts because he's got too many years of the same damn injury layered up. In the glare of the window, the setting sun, his creaking wrists are gold, almost orange, and that makes everything worse.

"Guess that answers that question," Gar says in a tight voice. He hasn't breathed in thirty seconds, and the edges of his room blur with sunspots, shadows.

The first time it happened, when it was just convenience in the gym, when Gar whispered too many bad pick-up lines into the warm curve of Dick's ear, it wasn't full-tilt masochistic. There was a hushed gasp of laughter, asking Dick if he was Kryptonian. A muffled why as they slipped belt loops lower, a distracted moan when Gar growled because you're super. And in the hazy aftermath of their hearts slowing down together, Dick even brushed his pinky over Gar's wrist like an electric line of connection.

"I didn't mean to—" says Dick, yellow-eyed in the sunlight, hands pressed over his flushed lips.

Except as soon as the first time was over, Gar knows they didn't talk about it. They never said (aloud) what it meant, and Dick never said (aloud) why he let Gar kiss him in March under the weight of being pinned down.

Six years she's been gone, and three of them Gar's been wearing her warmth in Dick's bed.

"I think you should go." Gar means goodbye, don't come back. Because it's taking his full resolve not to crumble in front of his last coping mechanism, and he's trying not to think about what happens next.

"Gar—"

"—oh, now you know my name."

As soon as Gar says it, Dick jolts backwards, his whole face turning down, and that's—something. More vulnerable than what he usually lets Gar see, because ninety-nine percent of the time they're fucking in the dark. Maybe, he feels vindicated by that. Maybe, he's glad that he finally hurt him.

Dick's left hand presses—briefly—into the purpling kiss bites on his hip, like touching the sloppy leftovers of their love might remind Gar why they do it. But then he reaches for his shirt, his underwear, and as his skin gets tucked back into too-tight jeans, Gar hesitates.

If Dick leaves now, Gar won't ever know if—

"Wait."

A sharp breath, the sudden silence of half-zipped pants forgotten.

"Was it… every time?" Gar asks, hating that his voice cracks the way it used to, hating that Dick always has the upper hand around him.

A head shake, a little eyebrow knot of not understanding.

"Thinking about her—?" Instead of me, but he doesn't say it.

"No."

Gar won't ever know if he's lying. He turns the words over, watches his expectations filter through the cracks like silver water, and then there's nothing left but empty.

"I can keep paying for Raven's program," Dick says as he pulls on his boots, and that solidifies the goodbye. As in next year they won't be grieving together, as in this is the last anniversary.

"I don't want your money."

"You can't afford—"

"—I'll pay for it myself," Gar hisses, claws shuttering through his fingertips like they sometimes do when he's too tired to hold his body together. "Vic and I will figure it out."

"I could ask the League if—"

"Don't."

Dick's always been like this, Gar realizes. It's why they're always slightly out of sync, why their seesaw mistakes always tilt to one side and stick, because Dick only knows how to love by doing things.

For the last three years, Gar's been things.

"But—"

"I don't want your money, dick. I'm not—we're not—this isn't something I want to be paid for."

Blue eyes shatter wide open. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah, well, now you know how it feels. Just—get out."

In the gilded weight of their last sunset, Dick hesitates.

"I need you to get out. Please."

"Okay. I'm—sorry."

That hurts, that hurts worse than it should, that's something Gar is weak for, that's something he doesn't want to hear anymore.

"Wait."

For the second time, Dick turns back to him, small and broken in the harshness of their reality. He's a beautiful man, Gar thinks wistfully, and he tries to memorize the sex-tangled mess of dark hair, the reflected light in his un-shuttered eyes, the wrinkle of his buttoned-wrong flannel. Slowly, too exhausted to care about his clothes on the floor, Gar stands from their—his—bed and stops two inches away. Their breath mingles in sharp bursts, a hah-hah-hah too close to anticipation, so far away from healthy that Gar knows this goodbye is the one that will actually stick.

"Tell me you love me. Just—once. I need to hear it before—"

"Gar…"

"I need to think you're talking to me, just once. I don't care if it's fake."

When Dick kisses him for the last time, it's chapped and breathy, their mouths just barely brushing together with held-back longing, their fingers lacing together in a parody of sweet. Gar doesn't close his eyes. He needs to watch it happening, needs to know that Dick sees his green skin, his flat chest, his short hair.

Neither of them is blinking.

"I love you, Gar," Dick says into his mouth, hot air and peppermint from who the hell knows where.

"God."

"Don't make me go."

For sixty seconds, an entire minute of their skin-connected short circuits, Gar believes him. He imagines a reality in which they work together, and he chooses to love Dick with the entirety of his instability and half-collapsed cells.

He'll never let Dick hear him say it.

"You should go."

Raven was going to tell him he's addicted to love, not sex, but he kept talking over her.

Come yell at me in the comments!