Crack pairing slash and Robin angst. You know you love it.

Lazy

(Massively AU)

Robin probably hadn't meant to fall asleep, but he was more than halfway there anyway. He'd been up all night, researching something or analyzing something, or whatever really boring things that Robin did when he said he had "work to do." It usually meant that he'd be in his workroom forever, and that's what had happened this time. Now, it was late enough for Wally to have decided that getting out of bed wasn't a crime against nature, but early enough that he wouldn't mind dozing off again. Not that there was a time of day at which Wally would mind dozing off. Especially with Robin.

He'd found Robin in his room, on his bed, wedged between several stacks of paper, staring sleepily into them as if they'd tell him the meaning of life if he could just keep his eyes open for five more minutes. The mask was off, which was unusual but not astonishing—Robin got headaches when he worked for too long, and taking the mask off helped, though obviously he never did it if he thought there was any chance of somebody being around. So it was usually safe behind his locked door. Except Wally knew the combination. And Robin wasn't trying to hide from him.

Wally made his presence known with an exasperated sigh, even though Robin would have already known who was in his room, because he was psychic like that. "Baby, what are you doing?" He said it in the voice he usually used whenever he thought Robin had gone slightly insane.

Robin didn't look up. "Working," he muttered, moving one of the papers in front of him to the stack at his side.

"Which was the same thing you told me last night, when you glued yourself to your computer. Ever thought about maybe coming up with a few different ways to say it, just for variety?" He took a few steps into the room, letting one hand fall onto the edge of Robin's bed, feeling himself smile.

Silence answered him as Robin sifted through the papers, hunched over them with his legs crossed.

Wally poked his knee. "You still trying to come up with something, or was this your idea of variety?"

Then, Robin did look at him, and seeing him without the mask was so rare that it almost distracted Wally—distracted him from what he was trying to do, what he was going to say next, maybe why he was here and what his name was and some other things that didn't matter at all… But he did hear the words, intense and annoyed but hard to take seriously when they were stretched around a yawn, "Wally, I have to get this done. I'm sorry, but this is very important and it should have been done days ago. Maybe we can do something later, but you need to just go watch cartoons with Beast Boy or something if you're bored, because—"

He leaned a second hand on Robin's bed, cutting the other boy off with a laugh.

Robin glared. It made the blue eyes even more distracting. "What, Wally?"

He swallowed, then made himself talk. "I was just thinking that whatever's written on those papers couldn't possibly be as interesting as me. And that we're in the wrong places, me and the papers."

"Uh huh," said Robin, turning back to his work. "And why that's funny, I'll never—Wally!"

Grinning, Wally innocently laid the stack of paper on a table, the stack that had been in Robin's lap a second prior. The boy really needed to learn that some people had superpowers. Reaching his hand up slightly, he turned the lights off, and an instant after that he was back at Robin's side, fixing him with a disarming smile. "You gonna give me the rest or do I have to take 'em?"

For a moment, it seemed as if Robin was going to protest, but it got lost somewhere between the second yawn and the way his eyes blinked several times in an attempt to stay open. "You're incorrigible, you know that?" It wasn't an objection, just a formality. Robin had to complain about anything that wasn't horrifically uncomfortable; it was part of some kind of bizarre code of law he insisted on following.

Wally nodded sympathetically. "Yep, and I even know what that means." He shook his head, taking the rest of the papers from Robin's hands. "Yeah, I know, don't worry; I won't mess up your life's work or something." Well, he didn't exactly organize the stacks perfectly, but it was good enough and Robin was way too tired to critique.

He was also too tired to say anything when Wally crawled into Robin's bed and kissed him, smiling against his mouth before tugging on his hand to get him to lie down. Robin broke the kiss and made a noise halfway between a growl and a sigh, but he let himself be dragged, actually leaning into the contact when Wally put his arms around him, Robin's back warm against his chest. He felt Robin relax almost immediately, breath catching in his throat for a moment when he realized how tired his boyfriend was. Really, Robin was almost always tired because he'd never sleep—and when he did, it was for a few hours at his desk—but this was a deeper kind of tired that meant he'd been staying up and abusing himself for days and days, and why hadn't Wally noticed sooner?

After a minute of silence, when he'd thought that Robin was asleep, he heard the sleepy mumble, nothing more than a formality, "I'm only doing this to placate you. I hope you know that."

Wally kissed the back of Robin's neck. "'Kay, baby. You can blame it on me and my incorrigible laziness."

"Uh huh." His hands covered Wally's, and then the other boy didn't say anything else.

Well. Wally wasn't one to protest spending the day in bed.

Oil

(Post-Season Five)

He'd thrown it away. He'd been immeasurably lucky that it was even his to end, and maybe he'd never find anything like her again, and he'd thrown it away. That's what they told him. That's what the look on Beast Boy's face said after the six seconds that it had taken for half the world to find out. The Break Up. It merited capitalization. It merited italics, really. Because he was the idiot who couldn't see, couldn't appreciate what he had—what he somehow had, because he'd probably never deserved it anyway, but she was kind and generous and saw the best in everyone, and out of the goodness of her heart, she'd tried to pass some of that elegance to him. And he'd thrown it away.

At least, that's what they told him.

She'd started out beautiful. In the beginning, across three months or several dimensions or however far it would take before he'd find a time where he felt that way—in the beginning, he'd been fascinated. He held onto every word she spoke, not because he'd never heard stilted English before, but because he'd never heard it spoken with such…confidence. She didn't care that she didn't know the difference between cotton balls and cotton candy, that the proper uses of contractions eluded her, that she thought "chill out" meant to stick your head in the refrigerator. For Starfire, the world was as it was, everything in it up to and including herself, and she did not apologize for the way things were. He'd met people who felt that way, too, of course—he'd lived with one of them. But Bruce didn't apologize because he refused to. Starfire didn't because she didn't know that it was possible. It wasn't that she was secure, exactly; it was that she didn't know how to be insecure.

And he'd liked that. He'd been drawn to it like a child to the glowing candles of a birthday cake. Had listened intently for hours on the roof while she told him about her home, horrified to discover that his mind often wandered when she spoke, especially when the wind blew her hair. He'd considered it his personal duty to protect her from everything about the planet that she didn't understand—and discovered over and over that said protection was unneeded, though not unappreciated.

They could understand each other through math and science. She used different symbols and different names, but it was the same language underneath; it was comforting, somehow, to know that even across light years, the laws of physics still applied. Starfire enjoyed learning their formulas—and, sometimes, chucking over the mistakes and holes in the theories—and they'd once spent an entire afternoon discussing gravity and how it applied to flight.

And then that afternoon when suddenly they weren't just discussing anymore, when their hands touched, and he'd wrapped an arm around her waist and he couldn't remember who had kissed whom, but it didn't matter then and it definitely didn't matter now.

She'd started out beautiful. She was beautiful when her eyes went pupil-less, clouding over with green as she clutched energy in her palm during battle, when she stood over the sink licking mustard off her fingers, when she drifted off to sleep next to him while they were watching a movie. When her hair spilled over the couch while she read a book and he couldn't keep his hands out of it. The way her laugh erased everything wrong about his day. All the things that, rationally, he knew he'd once felt, but were at best a distant memory.

There was only one rational explanation. It was him. It was his fault—there was something abnormal about him, there had to be, because anyone else wouldn't feel this way, and if he was better, he wouldn't be lying on his back staring at the ceiling, wondering why. Why couldn't he be what he needed to be, why couldn't he be happy with what he should be happy with…why couldn't he at least be properly sad after it was gone?

That was the problem. He couldn't be sad. Something was broken inside of him because he couldn't be sad. That's what they told him.

He couldn't be what she wanted. He wasn't enough for her, wasn't what she needed or even what she thought she needed. And if it hadn't worked with Starfire, it couldn't work with anyone, and he shouldn't try. Shouldn't hurt somebody else because of all the things that were wrong with him. The things that made him pretend that he had somewhere to be so he wouldn't have to go out with her, to forget to call her even though he never forgot anything, to go down to the gym and run and run as fast as the treadmill would go because he just wanted to get away…He couldn't be what she wanted.

Starfire was in love with a person who didn't exist, and that was why he'd had to at least try to make the right words appear in the places that he needed them, even though he'd failed at that, too. And when she'd calmly taken over for him and did the thing he was too cowardly to do. When she'd turned and walked out of his room, footsteps noticeably heavier than they'd ever been, leaving him standing there like a moron and wondering which one of them had been dumped. It didn't matter, just like it didn't matter which one of them had been kissed. It just happened. It just…had to be done.

He'd thrown her away, made the biggest mistake of his life. That's what they told him. But no matter how many times he told himself that he should cry, there weren't any tears.

Fourteen

(Pre-series)

It had been a stupid fight, anyway. Yeah, he admitted it: stupid. And, alright, he hadn't really meant it. And yet he did. The truth was…actually, he didn't know what the truth was. What he did know was that his room was big, and that lying on his stomach with a pillow over his head wasn't going to make it any smaller. That had stopped mattering five years ago, when he'd gotten used to living with the guy who owned half the world—but, for some reason, it mattered again. For some reason, it made him feel like a trespasser, despite how irrational that was. Because, really, it was his room.

But it wasn't.

Maybe he should be relieved that he could argue with Bruce, because it meant that they were comfortable enough with each other to fight without fear of permanent consequences. At first, he'd been afraid to say anything that Bruce wouldn't like—which usually meant that he didn't say anything at all (because when a large part of you wanted to call him "your highness," talking back wasn't exactly the first thing on your mind). But now at least they could have stupid fights. Why that was important—or why it made things better—he didn't know.

They'd been fighting about carelessness. Or negligence. Or whatever ridiculous label Bruce wanted to put on it this week. What it meant was that he'd failed to tell Bruce every single thing he was doing at every single moment, because he wasn't trusted to handle a simple decision. And he was tired of it, so he just hadn't answered when Bru—when Batman had asked where he was for the fifth time that night, and he was fine, there had never been any danger at all, but he'd endured a twenty-seven minute lecture for it (he'd spent more time watching the time than listening).

So maybe it would have been easier if he'd just answered. But how would he ever get better if he kept answering? Kept letting Bruce make decisions for him. Kept being nine when he was really fourteen—when Bruce wouldn't let him be fourteen.

It would be easier. But Richard didn't do things because they were easy. Except lately, he wasn't doing anything, of course: and he never would, not if Bruce had his way.

He didn't move when he heard the knock on his door. He knew who it was from the sound. Alfred's would have been softer.

"Go away."

Bruce didn't open the door, but he didn't leave, either. "Did you finish your calculus?"

"Yes. And I finished what you wanted me to do tomorrow, too. Now will you go away?"

"Don't speak to me in that tone."

He sat up, crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the headboard and glared at the door, as if daring it to open. "Maybe I wouldn't, if you wouldn't speak to me in that tone."

A long pause. "Dick—"

"Why don't you just start calling me Robin all the time? That's all I am to you, anyway. Of course, I bet I'm not even good enough for that." He took a breath, words that he knew he shouldn't say burning in his throat, and when he continued it was someone else who was saying them, a character in a movie—but not him, not here, not to Bruce. "I never want to see you again!"

The next pause was longer. The doorknob turned, halfway, and Richard bit his lip as he watched it, silently because he wasn't sure what he wanted to happen next. Finally, it spun back into place with a soft click, the door remaining closed.

"Alright," Bruce stated. "We'll talk about that tomorrow. Goodnight."

And then he was gone.

Frozen into some strange state of numb satisfaction, Richard watched the glowing clock on his desk count out the minutes—and when he reached behind him to grab one of his pillows and hold it against his chest, it took every ounce of strength he had. He listened to his breathing, fast and light and shallow, and every minute that he stayed on his bed and didn't go find Bruce was one more light year away from fixing whatever had broken, whatever had finally snapped in half from behind his door, and all the remorse in the world would never fix it. But he didn't feel remorse. Not really. He didn't know what he felt—just what he didn't feel. Things that used to matter, but somehow weren't important anymore, things he wished could be important—but wishes weren't real, he'd found that out when he was nine, night after night of wishing on falling stars that he could just wake up and his parents would be alive, and then he'd finally given up after number twenty-seven.

He tried to remember nine. Staring at the new clothes and swearing that he'd pay it all back when he was bigger. Telling Bruce that he was glad Batman was around because he got scared sometimes, and wondering what the man was hiding behind his smile. Watching television with him on the couch and falling asleep in his arms. But it was gone, and it didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered when Richard couldn't summon the will to get up and open the door and tell Bruce that he didn't mean it.

Because it would be a lie. He did mean it.

Except, it scared him. He meant it, and he wouldn't have taken it back in a thousand years, but something about the way the doorknob had shuddered back into place…it was wrong, it wasn't supposed to happen, and it scared him. Something had happened, something had changed, just right then, and even though it might not happen right away—he knew that he could never take it back. And he wasn't going to be nine anymore, not ever again, all he was going to be was fourteen…but Richard didn't know if even fourteen was old enough to handle what he'd done. What they'd both done. It was hollow and helpless and it was the first, little hole that would keep getting bigger and bigger, the vine that wrapped around and squeezed until there was no more life left, and it was slow, quiet, subtle, but always there, always killing, just under the surface where nobody thought to look.

He didn't sleep that night. He didn't know what they would be talking about tomorrow, but if it had anything to do with never seeing Bruce again, Richard didn't want it to come. He wanted to hold onto every bit of 'today,' that he could, watching the glowing, red numbers until the last sliver of quiet slipped away, and Bruce came to get him.