Fic: The Smell of Smoke [DCU: Teen Titans v.1]
Title: The Smell of Smoke
Author: lady_sarai
Fandom/Continuity: DCU, Teen Titans v.1
Length: ~1,900 words
Characters: Roy Harper, Dick Grayson; cameos by Donna, Wally and Garth
Warnings: Potentially disturbing references to dead bodies
Disclaimer: I so own nothing.
Author's Note: Thanks to zoe_chan for letting me flail and corrupt her share the Roy love, and for hand-holding and encouraging. ♥
Summary: It took six fire departments and the Teen Titans to contain that fire, and now Roy can’t get rid of the smell of smoke.
A short Author’s Note at the end. Also archived at my website.
"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." -Tom Stoppard
***
It wasn’t anything like a normal mission-not that any missions were normal, but this one didn’t even have any kind of super villain or alien invasion or metas or even mob bosses or pickpockets, for cryin’ out loud-it wasn’t even a mission. No one called them, no one asked for their help. It was just Dick watching the news-and what self-respecting teenage boy watches the news on a Saturday night, anyway?-and Donna, Wally and Garth having powers that actually made them useful in that kind of situation. It wasn’t like arrows-even his best trick arrows-have anything on a fire that consumes three city blocks and half the park and takes six fire departments and the Teen Titans to contain.
Not that he did much to help with the containing, he reminds himself as he shampoos his hair for the third time. No, he and Robin rescued survivors-pulled people from burning buildings, and dragged kids from behind couches and saved a fucking kitten from a balcony-and maybe that was just as important as putting the fire out, but they couldn’t get everyone. Superman could have helped, but he was off with the Justice League or maybe in space or Greenland saving the whales and anyway, this fire wasn’t the biggest crisis in the world at the moment.
Roy finishes his shower and returns to his room, where it smells like smoke. The smell is so thick he can almost see it, and it chokes him. He grabs his costume and manages to avoid his teammates while he bags it and tosses it in the bottom of a trashcan as far from his room as he can get. He’ll have to tell Ollie it got burnt or something and he doesn’t care. No amount of washing will get the soot and smoke out of that thing now, and he’d rather spend his allowance on a new uniform than wear it again.
He takes another shower.
After washing his hair five times, Roy returns to his room, his skin tinged pink from the rubbing and the hot water. His room still smells like smoke and he can’t get the images out of his head. He opens the window as wide as he can, strips his bed and changes the sheets. Sneaking into Donna’s room is tricky, but he manages and soon his room smells more like lavender and vanilla than charred wood.
It smells entirely too girly, even if it is an improvement, so Roy leaves the window open-even though it’s February and cold-while he takes a third shower. He lets the hot water pour over his head and uses the last of his shampoo and stays there even when the hot water runs out, and his skin is raw from the washcloth. Roy focuses on the water pouring down the drain and decidedly does not think about the people he and Robin didn’t save. It wasn’t like he’d never seen a body before. It wasn’t like he’d thought they could save everyone.
He just can’t get rid of that smell.
When he starts shivering and his teeth start clacking, Roy turns the water off and gets out of the shower. He pauses in the hall, listening. He can hear voices in the kitchen-Dick and Wally-but he’s not hungry. He doesn’t want to see the others, but he’s too keyed up to go to bed yet-besides, it’s not even midnight. They left before noon and they should be tired, but he’s not. Roy has no idea where Donna and Garth are, but they’ll all probably be pretty pissed at him for using all the hot water.
Roy retreats to his room and locks the door. He throws himself face-down on his bed and breathes in whatever flowery air freshener he stole from Donna. It’s not long before he has to roll over and take deep breaths of the frigid air pouring in the open window. Even under layers of Donna’s smelly stuff he can make out that choking, acrid scent of burning wood and other things he’s not thinking about.
Maybe he needs another shower. Roy’s hair isn’t long enough for him to sniff at, but he knows from experience that it’s hard to get certain smells out of hair. Maybe one of the others will lend him their shampoo-except that would involve asking them for it, and he’d rather try and find a Seven-Eleven or something and buy a new bottle, but he’s not sure he has the cash with him if he wants to get home before school Monday morning.
Before he can seriously contemplate getting up and stealing Dick or Wally’s shampoo, there’s a knock on the door. He curses under his breath.
"Roy?" Dick. Damn it. "Roy, we’ve got pizza."
"I’m not hungry," he calls out, hoping that Dick doesn’t notice the way his voice shakes a little. His stomach growls and makes him a liar, but Dick couldn’t possibly hear it from the hall-probably.
Roy’s not sure if Dick’s pause has to do with shock over Roy not being hungry or if he’s just thinking of all the ways he can break down Roy’s door. "I promise Wally didn’t make it. C’mon, Roy."
Roy can think of a million reasons why he shouldn’t go have pizza with his best friends right now, but the reason he should is why he ultimately gets up-Dick probably does know at least twenty ways to get into Roy’s room, and he’d rather not find out the hard way.
It’s pizza with his friends, and it shouldn’t be as excruciating as it feels. But the pizza tastes dry and burns the roof of his mouth. It was a frozen pizza, and maybe it would have been better if Wally had cooked it-he’s too impatient to let it burn and it’s just this side of well-done. The crust scrapes Roy’s raw throat and the kitchen smells like bitter garlic and charred bread and no one opened a window. He thinks about doing it himself, but it would draw attention to him and right now he’s focusing on finishing his slice and getting out of there as quickly as possible.
It’s baffling. Dick’s cracking jokes and Wally’s zipping around after napkins and red pepper and Donna’s laughing and Garth is talking about something he did with the fire hose and Roy wants to vomit, or yell at them, or something. They’re acting like it’s a normal Saturday night, and it is even while it isn’t.
Roy’s not in the mood, and when he finishes his pizza he goes to put away his plate. Dick grabs his arm to yank him back into his seat. Roy doesn’t even know what he says; something inside just snaps and everything stops. Wally’s pizza is halfway to his mouth-it has to be a record, how long Wally doesn’t move-and Garth puts his down and Donna does that little sharp inhale thing she does when he’s being extremely stupid and Dick. Dick lets go of his arm.
Roy can’t look at any of them, and he feels his face burning, but he drops his plate in the sink and leaves the kitchen, the silence and their eyes following him.
When he gets to his room, he’s surprised that he manages not to slam his door or to sink to the floor against it the way his knees threaten to give out. He’s got a lump in his throat and his eyes burn and he can smell burnt pizza, burnt carpet, burnt curtains, furniture, wood, flesh.
Roy’s leaning against the window frame before he realizes it, gasping in the night air so it burns in his lungs and he might be hyperventilating a little. He’s screwed up. He doesn’t know what he said, but it was bad and Dick let go and sometimes he’s so fucking stupid. Roy thinks dimly that he could probably get back to Star City tonight if he has to, and Ollie won’t be there but that’s not new and he’s clearly not fit for company anyway.
Roy winds up on the floor under the window, arms around his knees. He’s cold, though he doesn’t feel it. He smells smoke, but it’s less powerful here where the air is washing over him. His room is dark, because he never bothered with the light. His chest hurts, like there’s something pressing on it; he can’t breathe, he can’t think and now he’s ruined everything.
When his door opens, he realizes that he didn’t lock it, and he’s momentarily blinded when light spills in from the hall. When he stops blinking, Roy sees Dick leaning against the doorframe, frowning. This is it, he thinks, even if he doesn’t know what it is. He should apologize, but he doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for and anyway, his throat seems swollen shut.
It’s forever, but Dick flips the light switch, and Roy’s blinded for a second time. When he can see again, Dick’s shut the door behind him and is sitting on Roy’s bed, watching him. "Roy," he says. It’s wary and annoyed but worried, too.
Roy drops his head to his knees. He asks it before he thinks. His voice shakes, but if anyone knows the answer to this, it’s Robin-Dick. "Do you think they knew what was happening?"
He can’t look at Dick. Roy can’t look anywhere because he’s asked and now he can’t breathe. He wants to take it back, he wants to un-ask, he wants to know. He’s asked and now he needs… He didn’t know how much he needed to know this. Dick takes forever to answer. "Why-What do you mean, Roy?"
He can’t ask again. He can’t. There’s something choking him and his eyes are burning. It’s a hell of a time for his voice to break like he’s thirteen again. "That last apartment. That… that family, Dick. Did they even have a chance? Did they know… did it hurt?" He hates how fucking young, how pathetic and shaky and desperate he sounds to himself. He shuts his eyes because he doesn’t want to see Dick look at him like he’s… he doesn’t know what, but he doesn’t want to see it.
The thing is, he can’t stop seeing that apartment, those unrecognizable bodies, the fucking curtains hanging in smoldering tatters. He can see them, trapped and waiting-for someone to save them, for their death, he doesn’t know. Roy can’t turn his brain off, he can’t stop wondering how long it takes to die when you’re burning alive, and he can’t stop imagining how much it must fucking hurt.
Roy isn’t even aware that he’s crying in the long, silent moment after he’s spoken, but then Dick’s pulling him into an awkward embrace and he fights it at first. Dick says urgently, "Smoke inhalation, Roy. They were dead before the flames even got to them."
He hears the roar of flames, sees the bodies, chokes on smoke. There’s a sound like an animal’s howl, and he can’t breathe, he's choking and blind-Roy grips Dick’s shoulders and tucks his head into his best friend’s neck and it’s uncomfortable but Dick’s got his arms around him. Now that he’s started, he can’t stop.
Dick holds Roy together while he falls apart.
***
Author’s Note: This could easily be set after Roy’s heroin addiction, but I intended it to be set before, when they’re all a bit younger-say 14 or 15. And then I realized that I’d written it as if they were living in Titan’s Tower, and I think that contradicts canon somewhere but… maybe that's okay? This is a direct result of reading far too much about Roy and trying to figure out a personal timeline/canon for him, and thinking about how his father died in that forest fire when he was two. This assumes Roy knows that he died in a fire, but not necessarily the specific cause of his death.
Feedback is love. ♥ me?
Author: lady_sarai
Fandom/Continuity: DCU, Teen Titans v.1
Length: ~1,900 words
Characters: Roy Harper, Dick Grayson; cameos by Donna, Wally and Garth
Warnings: Potentially disturbing references to dead bodies
Disclaimer: I so own nothing.
Author's Note: Thanks to zoe_chan for letting me flail and corrupt her share the Roy love, and for hand-holding and encouraging. ♥
Summary: It took six fire departments and the Teen Titans to contain that fire, and now Roy can’t get rid of the smell of smoke.
A short Author’s Note at the end. Also archived at my website.
"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." -Tom Stoppard
***
It wasn’t anything like a normal mission-not that any missions were normal, but this one didn’t even have any kind of super villain or alien invasion or metas or even mob bosses or pickpockets, for cryin’ out loud-it wasn’t even a mission. No one called them, no one asked for their help. It was just Dick watching the news-and what self-respecting teenage boy watches the news on a Saturday night, anyway?-and Donna, Wally and Garth having powers that actually made them useful in that kind of situation. It wasn’t like arrows-even his best trick arrows-have anything on a fire that consumes three city blocks and half the park and takes six fire departments and the Teen Titans to contain.
Not that he did much to help with the containing, he reminds himself as he shampoos his hair for the third time. No, he and Robin rescued survivors-pulled people from burning buildings, and dragged kids from behind couches and saved a fucking kitten from a balcony-and maybe that was just as important as putting the fire out, but they couldn’t get everyone. Superman could have helped, but he was off with the Justice League or maybe in space or Greenland saving the whales and anyway, this fire wasn’t the biggest crisis in the world at the moment.
Roy finishes his shower and returns to his room, where it smells like smoke. The smell is so thick he can almost see it, and it chokes him. He grabs his costume and manages to avoid his teammates while he bags it and tosses it in the bottom of a trashcan as far from his room as he can get. He’ll have to tell Ollie it got burnt or something and he doesn’t care. No amount of washing will get the soot and smoke out of that thing now, and he’d rather spend his allowance on a new uniform than wear it again.
He takes another shower.
After washing his hair five times, Roy returns to his room, his skin tinged pink from the rubbing and the hot water. His room still smells like smoke and he can’t get the images out of his head. He opens the window as wide as he can, strips his bed and changes the sheets. Sneaking into Donna’s room is tricky, but he manages and soon his room smells more like lavender and vanilla than charred wood.
It smells entirely too girly, even if it is an improvement, so Roy leaves the window open-even though it’s February and cold-while he takes a third shower. He lets the hot water pour over his head and uses the last of his shampoo and stays there even when the hot water runs out, and his skin is raw from the washcloth. Roy focuses on the water pouring down the drain and decidedly does not think about the people he and Robin didn’t save. It wasn’t like he’d never seen a body before. It wasn’t like he’d thought they could save everyone.
He just can’t get rid of that smell.
When he starts shivering and his teeth start clacking, Roy turns the water off and gets out of the shower. He pauses in the hall, listening. He can hear voices in the kitchen-Dick and Wally-but he’s not hungry. He doesn’t want to see the others, but he’s too keyed up to go to bed yet-besides, it’s not even midnight. They left before noon and they should be tired, but he’s not. Roy has no idea where Donna and Garth are, but they’ll all probably be pretty pissed at him for using all the hot water.
Roy retreats to his room and locks the door. He throws himself face-down on his bed and breathes in whatever flowery air freshener he stole from Donna. It’s not long before he has to roll over and take deep breaths of the frigid air pouring in the open window. Even under layers of Donna’s smelly stuff he can make out that choking, acrid scent of burning wood and other things he’s not thinking about.
Maybe he needs another shower. Roy’s hair isn’t long enough for him to sniff at, but he knows from experience that it’s hard to get certain smells out of hair. Maybe one of the others will lend him their shampoo-except that would involve asking them for it, and he’d rather try and find a Seven-Eleven or something and buy a new bottle, but he’s not sure he has the cash with him if he wants to get home before school Monday morning.
Before he can seriously contemplate getting up and stealing Dick or Wally’s shampoo, there’s a knock on the door. He curses under his breath.
"Roy?" Dick. Damn it. "Roy, we’ve got pizza."
"I’m not hungry," he calls out, hoping that Dick doesn’t notice the way his voice shakes a little. His stomach growls and makes him a liar, but Dick couldn’t possibly hear it from the hall-probably.
Roy’s not sure if Dick’s pause has to do with shock over Roy not being hungry or if he’s just thinking of all the ways he can break down Roy’s door. "I promise Wally didn’t make it. C’mon, Roy."
Roy can think of a million reasons why he shouldn’t go have pizza with his best friends right now, but the reason he should is why he ultimately gets up-Dick probably does know at least twenty ways to get into Roy’s room, and he’d rather not find out the hard way.
It’s pizza with his friends, and it shouldn’t be as excruciating as it feels. But the pizza tastes dry and burns the roof of his mouth. It was a frozen pizza, and maybe it would have been better if Wally had cooked it-he’s too impatient to let it burn and it’s just this side of well-done. The crust scrapes Roy’s raw throat and the kitchen smells like bitter garlic and charred bread and no one opened a window. He thinks about doing it himself, but it would draw attention to him and right now he’s focusing on finishing his slice and getting out of there as quickly as possible.
It’s baffling. Dick’s cracking jokes and Wally’s zipping around after napkins and red pepper and Donna’s laughing and Garth is talking about something he did with the fire hose and Roy wants to vomit, or yell at them, or something. They’re acting like it’s a normal Saturday night, and it is even while it isn’t.
Roy’s not in the mood, and when he finishes his pizza he goes to put away his plate. Dick grabs his arm to yank him back into his seat. Roy doesn’t even know what he says; something inside just snaps and everything stops. Wally’s pizza is halfway to his mouth-it has to be a record, how long Wally doesn’t move-and Garth puts his down and Donna does that little sharp inhale thing she does when he’s being extremely stupid and Dick. Dick lets go of his arm.
Roy can’t look at any of them, and he feels his face burning, but he drops his plate in the sink and leaves the kitchen, the silence and their eyes following him.
When he gets to his room, he’s surprised that he manages not to slam his door or to sink to the floor against it the way his knees threaten to give out. He’s got a lump in his throat and his eyes burn and he can smell burnt pizza, burnt carpet, burnt curtains, furniture, wood, flesh.
Roy’s leaning against the window frame before he realizes it, gasping in the night air so it burns in his lungs and he might be hyperventilating a little. He’s screwed up. He doesn’t know what he said, but it was bad and Dick let go and sometimes he’s so fucking stupid. Roy thinks dimly that he could probably get back to Star City tonight if he has to, and Ollie won’t be there but that’s not new and he’s clearly not fit for company anyway.
Roy winds up on the floor under the window, arms around his knees. He’s cold, though he doesn’t feel it. He smells smoke, but it’s less powerful here where the air is washing over him. His room is dark, because he never bothered with the light. His chest hurts, like there’s something pressing on it; he can’t breathe, he can’t think and now he’s ruined everything.
When his door opens, he realizes that he didn’t lock it, and he’s momentarily blinded when light spills in from the hall. When he stops blinking, Roy sees Dick leaning against the doorframe, frowning. This is it, he thinks, even if he doesn’t know what it is. He should apologize, but he doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for and anyway, his throat seems swollen shut.
It’s forever, but Dick flips the light switch, and Roy’s blinded for a second time. When he can see again, Dick’s shut the door behind him and is sitting on Roy’s bed, watching him. "Roy," he says. It’s wary and annoyed but worried, too.
Roy drops his head to his knees. He asks it before he thinks. His voice shakes, but if anyone knows the answer to this, it’s Robin-Dick. "Do you think they knew what was happening?"
He can’t look at Dick. Roy can’t look anywhere because he’s asked and now he can’t breathe. He wants to take it back, he wants to un-ask, he wants to know. He’s asked and now he needs… He didn’t know how much he needed to know this. Dick takes forever to answer. "Why-What do you mean, Roy?"
He can’t ask again. He can’t. There’s something choking him and his eyes are burning. It’s a hell of a time for his voice to break like he’s thirteen again. "That last apartment. That… that family, Dick. Did they even have a chance? Did they know… did it hurt?" He hates how fucking young, how pathetic and shaky and desperate he sounds to himself. He shuts his eyes because he doesn’t want to see Dick look at him like he’s… he doesn’t know what, but he doesn’t want to see it.
The thing is, he can’t stop seeing that apartment, those unrecognizable bodies, the fucking curtains hanging in smoldering tatters. He can see them, trapped and waiting-for someone to save them, for their death, he doesn’t know. Roy can’t turn his brain off, he can’t stop wondering how long it takes to die when you’re burning alive, and he can’t stop imagining how much it must fucking hurt.
Roy isn’t even aware that he’s crying in the long, silent moment after he’s spoken, but then Dick’s pulling him into an awkward embrace and he fights it at first. Dick says urgently, "Smoke inhalation, Roy. They were dead before the flames even got to them."
He hears the roar of flames, sees the bodies, chokes on smoke. There’s a sound like an animal’s howl, and he can’t breathe, he's choking and blind-Roy grips Dick’s shoulders and tucks his head into his best friend’s neck and it’s uncomfortable but Dick’s got his arms around him. Now that he’s started, he can’t stop.
Dick holds Roy together while he falls apart.
***
Author’s Note: This could easily be set after Roy’s heroin addiction, but I intended it to be set before, when they’re all a bit younger-say 14 or 15. And then I realized that I’d written it as if they were living in Titan’s Tower, and I think that contradicts canon somewhere but… maybe that's okay? This is a direct result of reading far too much about Roy and trying to figure out a personal timeline/canon for him, and thinking about how his father died in that forest fire when he was two. This assumes Roy knows that he died in a fire, but not necessarily the specific cause of his death.
Feedback is love. ♥ me?