Sorry to anyone who thinks that I am making Kory too bitchy, that is not my intention at all. I am just trying to elaborate on how this business changes people, and pulls people apart. Nevertheless a review did make me realize there is not enough lovin' going on between Dick and Kory and that worries me, so I'm going to try harder. But I'm not really romantic so I did some research.
Okay onwards.
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans.
-"We're going to be okay." Revolutionary Road, 2008-
"What's this perfume you wear?" he said nuzzling her neck, and planted kisses on the nape. Everything about her, he found infatuating and intoxicating. She drove him crazy.
Her skin was always so soft and smooth. Her hair was full of volume of shine and, what was that shampoo scent? Strawberry? Cherry? It drove him insane. Dick often times wondered how Kory got her hair like that. If it was natural or blow dried or something like that. Sometimes he just wanted to smother himself in it. Dick sometimes had shamefully juvenile fantasies about Kory wearing lacey teddys, garters, and printed bras and panties. Sometimes while zoning out in board meetings, he pondered what kind of kind of underwear she was wearing. It was nice having moments like these, when they were alone away from the stress inducing troubles of the world. Dick brushed a piece of Kory's hair out of her face. He couldn't see much of anything else (most likelt because they were underneath the blanket) just her glowing soft skin.
"You like it. I was trying something new." she said running her finger along his spinal cord, sending chills down his spine. "I know not too many women can wear Chanel No. 5, and make it work."
"You make it work." he told her laying back on his side.
They had not felt this peaceful in weeks. But the guilt was bothering Kory. Dick and Raven never fought. Never. Not since that fateful day on the playground at whatever ultra exclusive grade school they had been dumped at. The closet they had ever come to fighting was one night in Cabo San Lucas when they had a disagreement about whose turn it was to pay the bar tab. They ended up splitting it and probably would not ever remember it today. Needless to say their current situation was bad. They had not spoken, written, or even attempted to make contact with each other. Dick felt awful. Not just awful, like an awful person. After his fit of rage Dick's emotions quickly converted to panic. He'd not only fired the one person who served as hope for the interns, but he had ended his oldest frienship.
This happened all the time after a fall out, even if they did decide to forgive and forget things would never be the same. There would be tension and tip toeing around each others feelings. Their friendship would be forever marred by discontent and untrust. Dick convinced himself that night that Raven was just upset, she needed time to calm down. Once she cleared her head it would alright. He would apologize and she would accept. They'd be okay. That thought came to an abrupt halt the next day when Raven's desk was completely cleared out. Okay her feelings were hurt she needed more than one day. That thought came to an abrupt halt a month later when Raven was yet to return.
Kory had never felt so guilty in her entire life. She still did not remember talking to that reporter but, she felt like she had come between him and Raven. They use to be like brother and sister, and now they were estranged. Kory sighed and rolled over so her back was facing Dick. He frowned and rubbed her bare shoulder. "What? Are you still hung up about what happened? It's over now, and time to move on."
"Move on?" she said slightly appalled, turning her body slightly she she could see him. "How can you say something like that? Raven was your friend and she has given me so many oppurtunities, and we betrayed her."
"She left on her own." Dick defended.
"We made her quit." Kory laid so her back was flat against the mattress. "I made her quit." the words came out quietly.
Kory had never had such a strong urge to take a pill. It was an overwhelming and anxious feeling that ran from her toes to her head. She suddenly threw the covers above her head and ran into the bathroom. "I'll be right back." she murmered to Dick. She carefully locked the doors behind her and pulled her medicine cabinet open. She pushed a few toiletries around and nervously grabbed the bottle. Her hands were shaking violently from the anticipation. They were shaking so bad that she couldn't properly get the bottle open.
"C'mon damn it." she told the bottle. Whose idea was it to child proof presciption bottles anyways? Some soccer mom in Ohio who didn't have anything better to do. Was all they did was make people miserable? Veggie monster and parental advisory on cds, really. Finally the cap popped open, and the tiny pills exploded into the sink and quickly rolling down the drain. Panic filled Kory's chest as she reflexively began to save as many as possible which was only about four or five. Where was the zinfandel 1995 white wine, when she needed it?
She cursed herself, and the worry began to set in. What would she do without the medicine? How would she get by? She needed to take the edge off ASAP. Without taking a second thought, like the post insane mentality of Macbeth, was downed the small handful of pills. In one gulp, with no water. It didn't occur or even matter to Kory that she was not suppose to take more than two every day, but it did cross her mind that she had just desperately horked down a handful of medication that had just fallen into the sink. As of that moment Kory felt lower than she had ever felt in her entire life.
The engery was flooding to her, in one quick wave. She felt abnormally hyper and had the sudden urge to jump rope or run. The unusual high cursed through her veins and she began to shake with anticipation. Kory grabbed the edge of the sink, to slow the hype. She closed her eyes, and leaned to the side. She was feeling dizzy all of a sudden. She opened her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror, except it wasn't her.
This person's eyes burned with the blare of desperation, her eyes were mad and unfamiliar. How low did she sink. She eating pills out of the sink, like some sort of druggy. She couldn't help but cry. Tearful at first, but it quickly escalated into mass hysterics of hiccups and snot. Kory suddenly punched the mirror shattering it into the million little pieces of the person she used be. Without caring about the shards of glass the stuck to her hand, or even that it was bleeding, she sunk to thee ground and curled into a ball.
There was a knock at the door. "Kory?" Dick's voice sounded worried and frantic, but she couldn't bare to face him. She didn't deserve him. "Kory are you alright?"
Kory did not answer, it did not even cross her mind. He must have busted the door wide eyes scanned over the mess that was of the busted mirror and Kory laying in hysterics. He grabbed a wet wash cloth of the counter, and wrapped it around Kory's hand after pulling out a few broken shards. Dick slid down the wall, and scooped Kory into his tan and muscular arms. Kory immediately pressed herself into his chest and allowed him to silently comfort her. She felt so vulnerable and helpless. She stole Raven's job, she hit her, she was doing prescription drugs. Who the hell was this girl that wasn't her? What had she become?
"Kor, what's going on?" Dick said after awhile. She let go of him. It was enough to for the tears to subside enough for her to explain.
She sniffled. "I... just don't know what is happening to me. I used to be a person, I used to be a good person. I- I'm not anymore."
"You are a good person-"
"No, no I'm not." she sighed which evolved into a tremble. "I made Raven quit her job, and I hit her. And worst of all I ruined your friendship with her."
Kory relaxed his grip on Kory. "What is going in with you? Where is all this coming from?"
A moment ago they had been surrounded in a ring of endless light, wrapped in neverending bliss that sailed him to the moon. A moment ago the world had ceased to exsist outside the rapture of his bed. He no longer knew anyone that was outside of her eyes. It brought him back to a year ago when she had kidnapped him to Conneticut and brought him to a little icecream shop in Hartford. She had showed him a world outside the small, claustrophobic walls of his stuffy and sheltered office. Before Kory he had no recollection of ever even being in Conneticut, except to pass through on a long business trip to Boston. He never talked to the people or explored the lands. Hell, he never even got out of the car if it was not to get gas.
Dick spent his childhood, teenhood, and was now throwing away his adulthood wasting his life being the person everyone in his snotty, little blue blooded circle expected him to become. The exact person he promised he would never become. Dick then realized he had just lied to himself. He had felt truly, utterly alive once before meeting Kory. Just once. It was when he ditched school in his sophomore year, stolen Bruce's credit cards, and hijacked his private jet to fly away to China and France. He had felt so extremely and uncompromisingly free. He just needed to get away from the damned ski resort in Colorado Springs, or the vacation house in Tuscany, the chateu in the Hamptons. How the stuck up society types would act to this type of rebellion and scandal, never even crossed his mind until he saw Bruce's disappointed face upon his return.
So what the hell had happened to him over the years? He was not him at all. Ten years ago if Bruce had asked him to do a press conference to explain why he decked a guy, for such barbaric behavior was unacceptable in the fool's paradise that was the upper east side of Manhattan, he would have told him to piss off. He was stuck behind a desk, doing a job he secretly hated and despised. He was a pencil pusher. But he was not what Bruce or anyone else wanted him to be when he was with Kory. With her he was not stuck hiding behind some mask trying to please everyone with his some what undeserved accomplishments. With her he was himself.
In the mysterious, and fictitious utopia that in which he had grown to know, there was a preconceived and inaccurate notion that money solved all your problems and made you happy. Henry David Thoreau practiced and expressed the lifestyle that money only created more problems. Money was suppose the create more less time for a person to spend trying to make money, but when they had money they then spent all their time trying to make more money, and therefore creating more problems. Dick had not grown up rich. His parents were circus performers. He did not exactly go to school wearing Versace and Dior. Maybe that is why when he did so much drugs as a teen, to fill the void because he was numb. Back in his really early years he could not remember a happier time than when he was traveling the world with flying trapeze parents.
Kory brought him back to days when he was truly happy. That was something all the money in the world never, and could never do for him. Didn't he make her feel that way? Why was it he could not lift her stifes, and tear her away from the weight of the world momentairly? As he watched the tears from her sad eyes, for the first time he felt sad when he was with her. His heart was thumping in his chest. His lips were parted and he willed himself to say it. Fear stopped him. Instead he tightened his grip around her, and let his toned arms be her security blanket.
She sobbed into his bare chest. He wished he could say more. He wished he could say the words he had never said to anyone. He wished all her pain onto himself. But he couldn't. Instead he said, "Kory I-" the words willed themselves. Say it! Say it! "I wish you could tell me what was wrongg. You can trust me. Don't you know that? I would never judge you. I could never. I want to be there for you whatever it is. But I can only be there if you let me, and tell me what is going on. Hell, there can not be to much more things you can throw at me. You were married! We have been to hell and back, and by now I know for a fact that everything will turn around."
Kory leaned back, and wiped the tears on the back of her hand. "Dick are you happy with where your life is going? I worry, obess, I obess that working at Wayne Enterprises is going to destroy you and us. I mean look what it has done to me. And I worry day and night that we are going to end up in this seemingly happy lives, pretending to each other, acting to our friends and colleagues, lying to ourselves that we are happy when we are miserable. I do not want us to end up like those philandering and adultress wall street husbands who hit on the nanny, because his neglectful and sado depressed wife spends more time shopping to fill the hole that is her empty shell of a life."
Dick sighed. "No, not at all." he confessed. There was silence for awhile. "This....does not have to be permanant. This does not have to be the rest of our lives. When you put it into perspective I think if I have to work where I do for the next forty or fifty years I think I would kill myself." they both laughed. "This is our lives right now, but it won't be forever. It doesn't have to be."
"Let us make a pack. We will no longer let this business take over our lives. We will be completely honest with each other. Starting with this." she leaned over and picked up the empty bottle of pills. Dick examined it with no expression. The silence was agonizing. Kory bit her lower lip, waiting for a response. Her heart was pounding.
"Is this what has been bothering you?" Kory nodded slowly. "I see. How long have you been taking these?"
"About...two or three months."
Dick sighed. It was like high school all over again. Except he was not the one taking ectasy tablets from the school stoners. "Kory don't you know how addictive these things are? Have you been taking a lot of them. Do you not know how dangerous they are." Oh no, he was sounding exactly like Bruce did when he stumbled home completely stoned at six in the morning. He came to a sudden understanding of Bruce. Bruce was never disappointed in anything Dick had ever done. He geuinely cared about him, and wanted him to be safe. He felt the same way about Kory this very moment.
"I don't want to do this anymore. Any of it. For God's sake I'm popping pills out of the sink." she told him.
"Well one time, I wanted to get high so badly that I ran streaked through central park stark raving nude to get my hands on some coke."
They both laughed. Kory leaned her head against his chest, and snuggled up to him. The high had left her awhile ago, and the feeling of bliss was returning to her. For the first time in a long time, was not afraid of the future. She was ready to face it head on. Whatever the cards held for her, she was going to lay all her chips on the table. Kory was suddenly realizing that life was a gamble but she could not spend of it at one slot. "Are we going to be alright?" she asked into his chest.
"Hm, yeah. We are going to make it. I have a good feeling about this." he said kissing the top of her head. His heart was thudding again, and his mind racing once more.
"Dick, you're heart is-"
"I love you!" he blurted out. To his head it sounded right, like they were meant to be said at that exact moment. To his ears they sounded stupid and pathetic, rushed and chocked, forced out of his mouth by the desire in his heart. The desire to make her understand, to make her happy.
"What?"
He could not believe this is how it was going to be said. "I said I love. I mean I am in love with you. Deeply, madly, passionately in love with you. I want us to always be-"
She cut him off by attacking her lips onto his. Her soft petals lips winded him. He held onto her back and tangled his fingers in her hair. And just like that as if those three little, but completing and meaningful words were said , all was right in the world, nothing else in the world mattered. They could do no wrong.
Dick cleared his throat awkwardly, for the ninth time in three minutes. Raven solemnly took a sip of water. It was a beautiful June afternoon, and he had invited her to a business lunch to discuss the terms of her possible return. They had not muttered a word to each other in almost a month and they had left on such bad terms, there was much to be said. Dick wanted to ask her how she was and what she had been up to, but there was still alot of tension. Raven did not say anything. She seemed very nonchalant about the situation.
Dick pretended to read the menu, it was in Italian, which he could not read. Usually when they went to Italian restuaraunts Raven read the selections to him. He was too brash to ask at the moment. He sighed. "Okay Raven there is no point in beating around the bush. We- that is I- really want you back. I know what happened between us- that is the company- ended pretty badly and for that I'm sorry. So what do you have to say?"
He held his breath and waited for a response. She picked up her glass and took a sip of lemon water. For the first time he noticed she was wearing a rather large black ring. She gently placed the glass back on the table. "You know Windsor and Sons pay for dental." she stated it as a basic fact.
"Raven-" Dick said exasperated.
"Dick, it's...nothing personal." she sighed. "During my- time away, I have really reflected to where my work is going to take me in the future and I have concluded it will take me absolutely nowhere. I have been working the same job for nearly four years now, and now I know if I don't do something about it now I'll be there for the next four years."
Dick was not mad at Raven. He felt inexplicable sad. They'd been friends for years and something as shallow as business was tearing them apart. He recognized that Raven was no longer mad at him. She did not want to be stuck doing desk work her whole life, and it was unfair to ask her to. The woman went to Harvard for God's sake! She just wanted something more than what she was getting. It was all just business.
Raven continued. "With that being said, if I were to return to my former position as manager, there would be certain...conditions." she said conditions rather darkly.
Dick was excited now. This meant they were making progress. Raven would get her old job back and maybe even end the fued with Kory. Whose says you can't have it all? He could have his cake and eat it too. "Whatever it is, you name it."
"I want a raise." she said carelessly examining a dry piece of lemon, sitting on a damp napkin.
"Okay?" he was not expecting that-exactly. But it wasn't unreasonable. "We can check out the budget for this semester and maybe raise you up three percent."
"Ten percent." she said uninterested. She came knowing exactly what Dick wanted. "And-" she added. "I want to renogotiate my contract from five years, and lower it to two."
That was strange. "Why?"
Here comes the hard part. "Dick," she said seriously. "I have taken this time to reevaluate where I want to go in life, professionally speaking. I strongly believe that I have used up any and all oppurtunities that may have been given to me while working at Wayne Enterprises, and that in my current position there will be no other chances for me to rise in the corporate ladder. Besides I kind of hate and despise my job with every fiber of my being."
What! She wanted to quit! He was not expecting that. Dick never took much time to realize how much it bothered Raven that he had turned her down for partner. To Raven it was not just a job it was restitution for the three hard years she had put in for him, and a way she could further her career. Hardly any managers at all, made it far past the desk in which they were originally assigned. It was a dead end job.
Dick did not want Raven to continue to work for him, if it made her unhappy. But he did not want her to leave either. They had been through the internship together, and there was no way he could survive without her business savvy, and personal connections. This position Dick had just been thrust into sucked to the maximum. He sighed and ran his finger through his hair. What to do, what to do. He could let Raven return on her condition even if it were just for two years, or tell her to piss off and find some one less qualified to fill the void.
He looked up and realized she was waiting for his response. "What will you do if you leave." he was careful to say if and not when.
She leaned forward. "Well, I have had a few meetings with a lawyer from the Andrew Launder law firm, Matthew O' Hara, and he is planning on starting his own law firm based on civil rights and international affairs. He contacted me shortly after I- left, and wants me to consider going into it as partner."
"Wait, you majored in business and law?" he asked incredible. He had not known that.
She nodded. "Double major."
All through high school, Dick had felt like Raven out acheived him in almost everything. She had better grades, she was in National Honor Society from the ninth grade, captain of the debate team, creative writing, National Merit Scholar, advanced Latin, AP everything, she took two calculas classes, did ballet until she was fifteen,and was even on the girl's varsity Lacrosse team (which she swears she only joined to release her pent up anger). Pretty impressive for someone who was an avid cocaine using through half of high school. Dick on the other hand almost flunked out in his sophmore due to extended and unexcused absents. He had a feeling Bruce did a bit of negotiating to get him into Princeton.
He groaned. "Are you sure this is what you want? There is a position open in the scamatics department."
"Don't insult me Dick, I think we both know that I am way over qualified for any positions that this company has to offer." Which was way beyond the truth.
Admittedly Dick felt a pang of jealousy. This went back to the conversation he had had with Kory the other night. Raven was another unhappy victim of growing up gotti. But unlike all the seventy percent of other people stuck in her position she was doing something about it. Raven was so fiercely independent. She refused to live her entire life by daddy's money. As soon as she graduated high school she dove and never looked back. It was that determination, and refusal to settle where she could not prosper that Dick so admired about her. Hell maybe some of that independence would rub off on him.
Dick smiled, and suddenly he could not feel happier for her. If she could do it, so could he and he would too some day. He did not have a game plan like Raven did, but it was all part of the mystery of the game of life. "Well Raven if you insist I fully support you decision and will arrange for your return."
Raven leaned back. "You ever notice how- or what rather, this job and place does to people? I mean instill it in our heads from birth pretty much, that we're suppose to go to these expensive private and or bording schools, then immediately ship out to some overpriced ivy league college, and straight from graduation head right on over to wall street to work with the greedy, wall street money hounds. So alright, you get through all that shit, and you finally get there it's like: what's the big fucking deal? You know." she shook her head. "I don't know, but I don't really want to spend the rest of my life trying to figure it out. I want out, while am young and can do so."
Dick rasied his glass to a toast. "Here is to that." they clanged their glasses against together, a few drops of water sploshing onto the table. "Recently I began thinking about quitting."
Wow it felt good to have best friend again. "Yeah, you know. If those pig headed corporate embezzlars want the fucking job so fucking bad, they can fucking have it, because I don't want it." she sighed. "Those motherfuckers. I feel so much better. After I quit I really took a lot of time to think about this damned job. At first when I quit I was so mad, at first at myself for acting so irrationally, then at you. But when I thought about what about that job made me so so angry, I honestly did not have a single clue. I made alist of the pros and cons, and I then I realized: I hated that fucking job. If I had not quit I would have never known that, and spent a lifetime being miserable."
"So," Dick said carefully. "in the long run, I kind of did you a favor by not choosing you for partner."
Raven's eyes narrowed and she snorted. "Let's not get crazy now. But like I said I am not looking back anymore, and I can live with it now."
"Look Raven," Dick said. "I know I never told you this but... I am really sorry. I know I should have given you partner, and I didn't. I will reget it for the rest of my life, and I know that you deserved it. After everything you did for me...I am just....I'm sorry."
The silence was thick, he just wished she would say something. A faint ghost of a smile swept across her lips. "So, what is my first assignment after reinstating my job."
"Well, there is a business conference trip in two weeks to Vegas. Are you up for it?"
I am horrible. I had two major state exams, and I joined the tennis team. I was feeling really depressed and I really can't stand living with my parents anymore, but I had a horrible case of writer's block. Tennis is over, yay for you. I really hope to finish this before the end of summer because next year I will be much to busy in the school year to update a lot. I will really try not to take that long ever again.
In any case, I know there was only two scenes, but there were very significant. Finally good things are falling upon the good friends. But Las Vegas is a crazy place, and I promise crazy things will happen.