EVERYONE DESERVES SUNSHINE
Dick Grayson x bisexual!reader
Summary: Reader struggles with internalized homophobia, and eventually comes out to Dick.
Warnings: heavy internalized homophobia, angst, comfort.
A/n: Happy Pride month everyone!! I wrote this because I know I struggle with internalized homophobia, and it’s hard to understand myself and my sexuality. The internal dialogue is very similar to mine, and I wrote what I wished someone would’ve told me.
Everyone wants normalcy right? Normal means comfort. Normal means happiness. Normal means warmth. And you were normal. You’d grown up being normal. You’d lived your entire life being normal. All except for one part of you… the part you tried so hard to suppress, hide and throw away. You tried brainwashing yourself into thinking it was fine. That it was just your brain being weird, that it didn’t mean anything, except, deep down, you knew it did. You were straight, you told yourself — because straight was normal, unlike whatever you felt —, you were straight and the feeling your stomach got when you were around pretty girls was nothing at all.
The normal part of you, the straight part, soon became the only part of you. You told yourself that all it would take for your weirdness to go away was an amazing man who would take whatever thing you had for girls and discard it away into a bin labeled “not normal do not touch.”
It wasn’t that being bisexual, or gay or lesbian was something weird. Or something you looked down upon. When anyone else was gay, it was normal. It was okay. But for some weird reason, when it came down to you, it was a disgusting untouchable thing that changed who you were.
That’s why you had absentmindedly shrunk all your feelings and emotions about this entire topic, and pushed them into an inactive part of your brain— but no matter how hard you attempted, you couldn’t close the window completely.
Then you met Dick Grayson. And everything with him just feels like warmth. It feels like after constantly sinking and drowning, you’ve been pulled back to the shore, and immediately comforted by his presence. Dick Grayson has a way of being present that makes everything feel like summertime and happiness. He doesn’t demand versions of you. He just… stays.
And somewhere along the way, he becomes your sun.
Not in a poetic way you think about consciously, but in the way your body understands light. In the way you notice it more when it’s gone than when it’s there. When he laughs, it feels like something in your chest unclenches without permission. When he looks at you, it feels like you are allowed to exist exactly as you are in that moment, no translation needed. He warms you up and gives you energy. He brightens your day, you go to sleep looking forward to seeing his face in the morning. His smile and warmth fixes everything. The only thing it didn’t fix was, well, the only thing that needed fixing. His warmth melted your heart into a puddle, your messes into puddles (that he dried up)— but it couldn’t melt away your weirdness. It didn’t change the way you felt when you thought about girls.
And because you love him, because he is your sun, you start to think that maybe this part of you is something that makes you less deserving of that light.
So you don’t say it. You don’t even let the idea fully form it into words in your head at first. You just keep it quiet. And in the quiet, it starts to feel like guilt.
Dick doesn't notice anything. Perhaps he chooses not to. He continues to soak you in rays of love and affection, and you continue to guiltily absorb all his adoration. That’s the part that makes it harder.
You dont tell him because if you do, it becomes real. You don’t tell him because you don’t want to lose the sunshine you don’t even deserve, and you feel terrible about it. He is still there in the same way he always is, still reaching for you like it’s instinct, still smiling at you like you are something uncomplicated and safe. He still talks to you like there is no distance between who you are and who you are allowed to be. Still treating you like you’re fucking normal.
But then, something in you starts to shift around him anyway. You start pausing before answering things that used to be easy. You start choosing silence where you would have spoken not because you are trying to lie to him, but because you failed to successfully lie to yourself. He wouldn’t want to know anyways. Don’t do anything, you’ll ruin everything. You don’t deserve him— he deserves someone normal. Be normal or just stop. You felt guilty for letting him love you. And slowly, without meaning to, you begin stepping away. Not in a dramatic sense, not in a way someone would notice immediately, but in small absences. Shorter conversations. Slightly longer pauses before replying. Moments where you sit beside him and still feel like you are somewhere slightly out of reach.
And Dick starts to notice, because he’s the sun, he notices everything. He notices when his light doesn’t quite touch your soul.
“You’ve been quiet lately,” he says one night, voice soft, almost careful.
“I’m fine,” you answer automatically, because you don’t deserve comfort or warmth.
But even as you say it, you feel it land wrong between you.
He doesn’t argue. He just watches you for a second longer than usual, like he is trying to understand what kind of silence you’re hiding inside of. And that’s when you start realizing something you didn’t want to admit.
The sun is still there. But you’re starting to look away from it. And it already feels undeniably cold and wrong.
It continues to build more and more, until it’s too hard and unusual to ignore. There’s no longer common light and comfort between the two of you. Only the freezing realization that it’s not the same anymore. That you’re not the same anymore.
Dick starts sitting closer in conversations that feel like they are slipping away from him. He stops accepting “I’m fine” as a full answer. Not because he wants to push, but because he is refusing to pretend he doesn’t see what is happening. You’re his moon, his calming shade when he’s forced to constantly bathe in the searing spotlight. The space growing between the two of you has left him feeling a burning pain in his heart. All he needs is for you to cool it.
He sees the pain in your eyes. He sees how cold, miserable and empty you look. He just wants to warm you up.
One night, he doesn’t fill the silence when you don’t speak. He just lets it exist, like he’s waiting for you to choose whether you’re going to stay in it or leave it.
“Talk to me,” he says finally.
And your chest tightens immediately, because there is nowhere safe inside that sentence.
“I am talking to you,” you try.
But it doesn’t sound like truth. And you both know it isn’t.
Dick exhales softly, shaking his head slightly.
“No,” he says. “You’re staying close, but you’re not letting me in.”
And it makes your throat tighten. Because he’s right. You know he’s right and you hate it. You hate that you can’t just take these feelings out of you and throw them away. You hate that you can’t even do that much for Dick, when he’d do anything for you, He leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees, eyes steady on you in a way that feels too kind to run from but too direct to survive. Sometimes the only choice you have is to get burned. That’s what this is. The once warm gaze that comforted you in tough times now feels like it’s burning a hole through your heart.
“I’m not leaving,” he says quietly. “No matter what it is. Just… stop doing this alone.”
That almost breaks you. You flew too far from the sun didn’t you? And now the rays won’t reach you anymore. That burning you felt wasn’t the sun. It was you. It was the crippling shame that you threw away the best thing you had. So you go quiet again.
The silence is no longer quiet. It feels like a yell that's begging to close this distance, and somehow that makes everything worse. If it were quiet, if it were small enough to ignore, maybe you could have continued pretending. Maybe you could have kept carrying it for another week, another month, another year. Maybe you could have gone your entire life without saying it out loud and let it rot somewhere deep inside of you where nobody could see it. But it isn't small anymore. It has grown too large to fit inside your chest. It leaks into conversations, into the spaces between words, into the way you look at Dick and then immediately away again. It follows you everywhere, this ugly little secret that shouldn't even be a secret. It sits between the two of you now, invisible but impossible to miss.
Dick watches you for a long moment, and you can practically see the concern growing behind his eyes. It makes your stomach twist. Concern means he cares. Concern means he hasn't given up. Concern means he still loves you enough to worry, and somehow that hurts worse than anything else because all you can think about is how undeserved it feels. Guilt sends freezing chills all over your body and no words he says can unthaw it. You have spent so long convincing yourself that this thing inside you makes you different, makes you wrong, makes you less than what he deserves, that every ounce of affection he gives you feels borrowed. Like you're walking around wearing clothes that belong to somebody else, waiting for the rightful owner to come take them back.
"You've been carrying something by yourself for a while now."
His voice is so painfully quiet and it kills you. You want him to scream, and shout and do the things you deserve. Not act like you’re still deserving of his love. You hate how easily he sees through you. You hate how badly you want to let him.
Your fingers tighten together in your lap. The pressure hurts, but not enough to drown out the ache sitting beneath your ribs. All you want to do is tell the truth and then hug him, and hold him and soak in all his love. You just want to feel that tenderness again. And you feel guilty for that too.
You feel guilty for everything. Like somehow every terrible thing is because of one thing:
The thought settles heavy in your heart.
The lie sounds weak even to your own ears. Dick's expression doesn't change, and it feels like that’s the worst part. He doesn’t look annoyed or roll his eyes. He doesn’t get frustrated or angry. He just… looks sad. Not sad at you, but rather sad for you. Sad because for the first time ever, he doesn’t know how to use his warmth to disintegrate your worries away. Sad like he's watching somebody drown from the shore and can't understand why they keep refusing the hand being offered to them.
The statement leaves softly, like all his previous ones. But it lands like a slap against your face.
You look away immediately.
His response comes so quickly that it almost sounds automatic, like he knew what you were gonna say, and he knew your response. The certainty in it makes something twist painfully in your chest.
Because he isn't wrong. You are miserable. You've been miserable for months. Every happy moment comes attached to guilt now. Every kiss is followed by the reminder that you haven't told him. Every laugh feels stolen. Every good day ends with the same thought curling up beside you in bed.
He deserves someone normal. The thought has become so familiar that sometimes it doesn't even sound cruel anymore. It just sounds true.
Dick sighs quietly, and it isn’t dramatic, or with pent up frustration spilling out, it’s just tired.
Because Dick has always carried enough burdens for ten people. He's spent his entire life taking care of everyone around him. He shouldn't have to carry you too.
"You know," he says after a moment, "there was a point where I thought maybe you were mad at me."
Your head snaps up immediately at the ridiculous thought. Mad at him? For what? What could he possibly have done to make you mad at him? Sure he did stuff that mad you mad, just not at him. They made you mad at yourself. Because receiving love from him felt like a crime. Like you were stealing it rather than being given it,
His mouth twitches slightly.
The small smile disappears as quickly as it arrived.
The room feels, if it’s even possible, even colder. You don’t know how that’s possible when the sun is literally sitting right across from you.
His voice still stays gentle, making you want to scream.
"I don't know what's happening. I don't know why you've been pulling away from me. I don't know why you look like you're waiting for something terrible to happen every time I walk into a room."
His eyes meet yours. And then the same unbearable warmth is there again— it’s just unreachable. It’s there along with the horrible kindness and the gut wrenching sympathy.
"I just— I know you're hurting."
He’s right again. He always seems to be right. You are hurting.
And it’s not because you're bisexual, and it’s not because there's anything wrong with being bisexual. You know there isn't. You would never look at somebody else and think the things you've spent years thinking about yourself.
You wouldn't ever tell another girl she was broken.
You wouldn't dream of telling another girl she was weird.
You wouldn't instill the concept that she deserved less love because of who she was within her.
But somehow those rules have never applied to you. The hypocrisy isn't lost on you.
It never has been. You know it doesn't make sense and yiu know it isn't logical, and yet somehow the feeling remains. It’s stubborn and persistent and settles in you like a faint, permanent ache that’s buried so deep inside of you that it feels fused to your bones.
You wonder if Dick would still look at you like this if he knew. The thought arrives before you can stop it.
Would he still smile at you the same way?
Would he still call you beautiful?
Would he still kiss you and say you're the best thing that's ever happened to him?
Would he still be your sunshine?
Or would the light finally disappear?
The possibility terrifies you. Because somewhere along the way, Dick stopped being something you simply wanted. He became something you needed. And not in an unhealthy way. Not in a way that made your happiness dependent on him. But in the way plants need sunlight. In the way flowers instinctively turn toward warmth.
Life had existed before him. But it had been colder.
And now that you knew what warmth felt like, the thought of losing it felt unbearable.
A lump forms in your throat and you swallow against it.It doesn't move.
Dick’s expression softens.
The single word almost breaks you.
Your vision starts blurring and you hate that. You hate that you’re crying. You especially hate that you’re crying in front of him. Because Dick always treats your tears like they're important. And you hate it, because he should be disgusted. And that just makes you cry harder.
The words come out as a small, pathetic choked sob. And it’s barely audible, but he hears them immediately. His eyebrows pull together.
Because if you tell him, everything changes.
Because if you tell him, it becomes real.
Because if you tell him, he'll finally realize he could have done better.
The tears are coming faster now, and it’s embarrassing. It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic. You’ve been pathetic because you’ve let all your feelings and emotions escalate over the years. And the things you kept buried quietly now turned into stormy messes of guilt and self deprecation. You can't stop them.
His name cracks apart halfway through.
And instantly, he's moving closer. And it’s somehow, the same amount. It’s not enough to crowd you. It’s just enough to remind you that he's there.
Just enough to remind you that the sun is still trying to reach you.
"Whatever it is," he says softly, "you can tell me."
Your chest hurts. Because he means it. You know he means it.
Dick Grayson has never once made you feel unsafe. Not once. Not ever.
The fear was never that he would scream.
The fear was never that he would mock you.
The fear was never even that he would hate you.
The fear was always simpler than that.
The fear was that he'd look at you differently.
That one day he'd wake up and realize you weren't who he thought you were. That the sunshine you've been standing in all this time would finally belong to somebody else. And suddenly you're so tired. Tired of hiding. Tired of carrying this. Tired of spending every day terrified that the person you love most in the world will stop loving you the moment he sees all of you. Your eyes squeeze shut. The words are right there.
Three stupid words that shouldn't matter nearly this much.
You can feel them sitting on your tongue.
And for the first time, you're not sure you can keep them there. Not because you don’t know what they are anymore and it’s not because you’re unsure of the shape of them or the way they’ve been forming in your chest for far too long, but because holding them in now feels more painful than letting them go. It feels like standing on the edge of something you’ve been circling for months, maybe years, pretending you weren’t already halfway over it. Like your body has already decided what’s going to happen and your mind is just trying to delay the moment it becomes irreversible.
Because once you say it, there’s no taking it back into the quiet. No stuffing it back into the old corners of your mind where you kept it folded up and small and manageable. Once it leaves you, it stops being something you can argue with privately. It becomes real in a way that has shape and weight and consequence, something Dick can hear and respond to and misunderstand or understand too well. And that is what makes it feel like your entire body is bracing for impact even though nothing has happened yet.
Dick is still looking at you like he always does when he’s trying to reach you without pushing too hard. That steady kind of attention that used to feel like safety, like being held without being touched. It makes your chest ache now in a different way, because you can see how much of him is still here, how much warmth is still being offered to you so freely, and all you can think about is how unfair it feels that you’re standing in it while carrying something you’ve convinced yourself makes you unworthy of it.
That thought hits you again, sharp and unbearable in its simplicity. Dick Grayson is still the same person who pulled you out of all those darker places without even trying to make it sound like effort. He still looks at you like you are someone worth staying for, like you are not complicated in the ways you keep telling yourself you are. He is still your warmth, still the thing you orbit without meaning to, still the light you learned to breathe inside of.
And yet something in you keeps insisting you are not supposed to be this close to it.
That you’ve been standing too long in something you were never meant to deserve.
Rip the goddamn bandage .
Your throat tightens around the words before you can even consciously decide to speak. It feels less like a choice now and more like surrender, like your body is finally overriding everything you’ve been telling it to do for years. The fear doesn’t disappear, it just stops being strong enough to hold the words back.
Just fucking rip the bandage .
“I can’t—” you start, and your voice breaks before it can become anything stable, anything usable, anything that would make this easier.
Dick shifts immediately, like that alone is enough to pull all of his attention fully into you.
“Hey,” he says softly, not interrupting, just anchoring. Just waiting.
And that gentleness is what undoes you a little more.
Because you’ve imagined this moment so many times in your head, and never once has it included him sounding like that. Never once has it included him still being here with you, still soft, still close, still waiting instead of pulling away.
You swallow hard, but it doesn’t help.
“I’ve been trying not to say it,” you manage, and even that feels like too much already, like the sentence is already spilling out faster than you can control it, like you’re watching yourself from somewhere slightly outside your body and realizing there is no longer any way to stop this from becoming real.
Dick doesn’t move away. He doesn’t interrupt. He just listens, like he always does, like he always has. And that makes it worse in the most unbearable way, because you can feel how much he trusts you to finish.
You start to pull the bandage off. And it hurts. But it’s too late to close it back up.
You let the words keep forming even though your chest feels like it’s collapsing inward with every syllable.
“It’s just… I don’t think I ever actually stopped feeling it,” you say, and your voice is shaking now in a way you can’t hide anymore, like your control has finally started to slip completely. “And I tried. I really did. I kept telling myself it was nothing, that it didn’t matter, that it would go away if I just ignored it long enough, but it didn’t. It just stayed there, like it was always going to stay there no matter how much I tried to make myself smaller around it.”
You dread the wound that’s underneath bandage .
Your breath stutters, and you hate how loud it sounds in the space between you.
“And I know how it sounds,” you continue, because now that it’s started, it won’t stop, it can’t stop, “I know it sounds like I should’ve dealt with it already, like it should’ve been simple to figure out or fix or whatever, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t make it disappear and I couldn’t make myself stop being scared of it either, because every time I thought about it I just kept thinking that maybe if I was wrong about myself, if I was just overthinking it, then I could still be normal.”
The word lands heavier than the rest.
Normal. Because normal was supposed to be simple. Normal was supposed to mean you didn’t sit here shaking while trying to explain yourself to the person you love most in the world. Normal was supposed to mean you didn’t have to analyze every piece of yourself like it was something dangerous. You finally force yourself to look at him.
And that’s what almost breaks you completely.
Because Dick doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t look disgusted. He doesn’t look his light is about to go out,
He just looks like he’s trying to understand something that hurts because it exists at all, not because it changes how he sees you.
And that realization makes your voice fall apart at the edges when you finally say it.
You fucking ripped the godforsaken bandage .
You wait for the world to end.
Not dramatically. Not in any cinematic way where everything suddenly falls apart at once. It’s quieter than that, more internal, more familiar. It’s the kind of ending you’ve rehearsed so many times in your head that your body already knows the posture of it. The way your shoulders tense. The way your breathing goes shallow. The way your mind starts cataloguing what comes after, because it’s always assumed there will be an “after,” and it will be colder than what came before. The sun is about to stop shining. That thought doesn’t arrive as metaphor right now. It feels physical. Like something in the room has already begun dimming even though nothing has moved. Like warmth can leave a space before the source of it actually goes. You can almost feel it in advance, that imagined absence of Dick’s presence in your life, the way the world would look if you had just broken something irreversible without meaning to. If you had said too much. If you had revealed too much. If you had finally become too complicated to stay loved in the same way. That’s how your world ends. A cold, numb death.
You don’t even realize your hands are trembling until you try to clench them still.
“I didn’t mean for it to be like this,” you say, and your voice comes out strained, like it’s being pulled through something tight inside your chest. “I didn’t mean to make it weird or heavy or turn it into this whole thing, I just— I couldn’t keep pretending I didn’t know anymore.”
The words keep coming because silence feels worse. Because silence feels like waiting tbe judged. And your mind is already filling in what he hasn’t said yet. He’s confused. He’s overwhelmed. He’s realizing something changed. He’s realizing you changed.
“I know how it sounds,” you continue, and now it’s harder to breathe properly, because you can feel yourself slipping into the part of you that always does this, the part that tries to fix the reaction before it happens. “I know people are supposed to just… figure this out earlier or cleaner or whatever, but I didn’t. I didn’t have words for it for a long time and when I did I kept telling myself it didn’t matter and that it wasn’t true for me, because it was easier than admitting it did.”
You swallow, and it hurts.
“And I know you probably didn’t expect this from me,” you add, quieter now, almost apologetic just for taking up space in the conversation, “and I don’t expect you to just understand it, I just— I needed you to know because it was starting to feel like lying every time I didn’t say it.”
A real one. And in that pause your fear grows teeth again.
The silence that follows doesn’t feel empty anymore, not in the way it did before when it used to sound like something breaking. It feels heavier now, fuller, like the air itself has changed shape around what you said, like the room is still adjusting to the fact that something honest finally exists in it. You keep waiting for it to tip into something worse, for the shift you’ve been bracing for your entire life, for the moment where his expression finally turns into something you recognize as rejection.
The sun is about to stop shining.
You look at him then, finally, because not looking feels worse than seeing it happen.
But Dick doesn’t move away.
And then, slowly, like he’s making a decision about how to hold something delicate without dropping it, he exhales.
“I need you to listen to me,” he says quietly, not like an order, but like he’s asking for a space where he can make sure you actually hear him without your fear translating everything into something harsher than it is. “Not to respond. Not to explain. Just… listen for a second.”
Your throat tightens, but you nod anyway.
Because you don’t know what else to do with yourself. Because this is the part where things usually end.
Dick shifts slightly closer, not closing distance in a way that traps you, just enough that he’s fully here with you, fully present in a way that makes it impossible to pretend you’re alone in this moment, or tune him out.
“When you told me,” he starts carefully, “that you’re bisexual… I think what I heard you say was something about yourself being wrong. Or confusing. Or like it changes something fundamental about whether you deserve to be loved the way you are.”
He pauses, watching your face, like he’s checking whether he’s close.
And you don’t say anything, because you are.
“I need to tell you something really clearly,” he continues, voice steady but softer now, “that has nothing to do with fixing you or correcting you or anything like that. It’s just… truth. The kind of truth I wish someone had told me earlier in my life when I was trying to figure out who I was without feeling like I was failing at it.”
That makes something in your chest shift. Because you didn’t expect that. You didn’t expect him to include himself in this.
“I’m not straight in the way people assume— no one really is—” he says, and he doesn’t hesitate on the words, doesn’t make them smaller or lighter than they are. “And I’m not anything neatly boxed either. I’ve had feelings I didn’t understand for a long time. I’ve questioned myself more than once. I’ve stood in the middle of things and thought, ‘What does this make me?’ and the honest answer was always… I don’t know yet.”
Your breath catches slightly.
Dick watches that reaction, then continues anyway, grounding you with how normal he makes it sound.
“And what I’ve learned,” he says, “is that most people are like that. Not just in sexuality, but in everything that has to do with love and attraction and connection. We grow up wanting answers that are clean and final because it makes us feel safe, like we can label ourselves and be done with it. But people don’t really work like that. There isn’t a switch that flips where you become ‘fully one thing’ and stay there perfectly forever.”
His gaze doesn’t leave you.
“There’s a spectrum,” he says simply. “Not as a buzzword. Not as something vague. Just… the reality that attraction, love, identity, all of it exists in a wide space. Some people sit in one place on it their whole lives. Some people move. Some people don’t understand where they are until they’re already living it.”
Your throat tightens again, but this time it isn’t panic.
Because you’re looking down at the wound that was under your bandage, and there’s nothing. No blood. No scratches. Just… healed skin…
“I need you to hear this part especially,” he adds, and his voice drops just slightly. “There is no version of you that was supposed to be ‘normal’ in the way you’re using that word. There isn’t a checklist you failed. There isn’t a right answer you missed. There’s just you. Figuring yourself out in real time like everyone else is, whether they admit it or not.”
The word “normal” lands differently when he says it.
Like something that doesn’t actually exist in the way you’ve been measuring yourself against it.
He leans forward a little more, elbows resting loosely on his knees, hands relaxed, like he’s trying to keep everything about him open instead of overwhelming.
“And love,” he says quietly, “is not something that gets smaller or less real because of who it’s directed toward. It’s not conditional on you fitting into some idea of what you’re supposed to be. It’s not something you have to earn by being uncomplicated.”
Your eyes sting again, but you don’t look away.
“I love you,” he continues, and it’s not dramatic, not sudden, just steady in a way that feels like it’s always been there and will keep being there whether you’re panicking or not. “Not because you’re easy to understand. Not because you fit into something predictable. I love you because you’re you. And that hasn’t changed.”
Your chest tightens so hard it almost hurts. Dick’s voice softens further, like he’s trying to undo years of something in you he didn’t cause but is still choosing to help carry.
“And I need you to stop treating what you just told me like it’s something that puts you outside of being loved,” he says. “Because it doesn’t. It’s just a part of who you are. A real part. A valid part. Not something shameful. Not something you owe anyone an apology for.”
That word—apology—makes your stomach twist automatically.
Because you’ve already apologized in your head a hundred times.
For existing like this. For saying it. For not being simpler.
“And before you even go there,” he adds gently, “there is no guilt here. Not from me. Not from you. Not from this. You didn’t do anything wrong by being who you are. You didn’t do anything wrong by realizing it. And you definitely didn’t do anything wrong by telling me.”
His gaze holds yours, steady and unwavering.
“You’re allowed to exist without punishment,” he says quietly. “You’re allowed to be figuring yourself out without it meaning you’ve broken something. And you’re allowed to love who you love, in whatever way that happens for you, without it turning into something you have to be ashamed of.”
Dick’s hand reaches for yours.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says finally, softer again. “Not because I have to prove something, but because there’s nothing about this that makes me want to leave. If anything, it just makes me understand you more. And I love you more honestly for it, not less.”
The words settle in the room differently now.
And for the first time since you spoke, the sun doesn’t feel like it’s about to disappear.
It feels like it’s resparkling your entire life. Like everything finally has color again. That’s what love is, isn’t it? It’s all the shades of you and who you love. No color is normal. They’re all unique. They all fill your life with warmth and joy. And for the first time ever, you understand why Dick is your sunshine. It’s because love is sunshine, no matter who you love.
The next morning, you wake slowly beneath a patch of warm sunlight spilling through the curtains. For a few disoriented moments, you remain tangled in blankets and sleep, suspended between yesterday and today, between the version of yourself that had spent years carrying a secret and the version that had finally spoken it aloud. The memory returns gradually. The confession. The tears. The shaking in your hands. The way your voice had broken around words that had lived inside your chest for so long they almost felt permanent. The fear comes back too, though weaker now, stripped of the power it once held. Yesterday, you had stood in front of Dick convinced honesty would cost you everything. Instead, he had listened. He had stayed. He had taken every horrible thing you believed about yourself and treated it with more kindness than you had ever offered it.
You roll over instinctively, expecting to find him asleep beside you, but his side of the bed is empty. The blankets are still messy from where he had been, the pillow dented beneath the imprint of his head, but he is gone. A faint frown pulls at your eyebrows as you sit up. The apartment is unusually quiet, though not completely silent. Somewhere in the distance, you hear movement. A cabinet door. A muffled thud. The sound of someone trying very hard not to make noise and failing. Then something else catches your attention.
The apartment smells sweet. Not breakfast sweet. Not coffee sweet. Sugar sweet. Vanilla sweet. The kind of smell that belongs in bakeries and birthday parties and childhood afternoons spent licking frosting from mixing spoons. Curiosity pulls you out of bed.
The sunlight follows you into the hallway, warming the hardwood floors beneath your feet. The apartment feels different this morning. Lighter somehow. As though yesterday opened a window you didn't realize had been shut for years. Nothing around you has changed, and yet everything feels brighter. The air feels easier to breathe. The walls feel less confining. Even the sunlight streaming through the apartment seems warmer than usual, spreading itself across every surface in long golden stretches.
As you approach the kitchen, the sweet smell grows stronger. You round the corner and stop immediately.
Dick is standing in the middle of the kitchen with frosting on his face.
There is frosting on his cheek. More frosting on one hand. A suspicious amount of frosting on his shirt. The kitchen itself looks like it survived a small baking-related disaster. There is powdered sugar on the counter. A mixing bowl sits abandoned beside the sink. A spatula has somehow ended up on the opposite side of the room entirely. And directly in front of him, sitting proudly in the center of the counter as though it belongs in a museum, is a cake.
The frosting is uneven. One side leans slightly lower than the other. The piping looks like it fought for its life. Across the top sits a large yellow sun made of icing that is unmistakably supposed to be a sun despite looking only vaguely circular. Around it are several sunflowers, each one slightly different from the last, their petals uneven and imperfect and completely impossible to mistake for anything other than something made with love.
Dick notices you standing there and immediately lights up.
"There you are," he says, sounding absurdly pleased with himself.
You stare at him. Then at the cake. Then at the frosting on his face. Then back at him. His grin widens. The longer you stare, the more satisfied he seems.
"What did you do?" you finally ask.
"I created art," he replies confidently.
Your eyes drift back toward the cake. The sun is crooked. One sunflower appears to have significantly more petals than the others. Another looks slightly concerned about its own existence. The entire thing is so objectively terrible that you can feel laughter threatening before you've even fully processed what you're looking at.
His offended gasp echoes dramatically through the kitchen.
"You are so unbelievably uncultured."
The laugh escapes before you can stop it. It starts small. Then it grows. Just like flowers when they’re offered sunlight. Then suddenly you're laughing hard enough to have tears gathering in the corners of your eyes.
Dick points triumphantly.
His voice softens slightly.
"I've missed hearing that laugh."
Dick's expression changes as he watches you. The teasing remains, but beneath it sits something gentler. He glances at the cake and then back at you.
"I know yesterday was hard."
The kitchen suddenly feels very still. Sunlight pours through the windows behind him, wrapping itself around his shoulders like gold.
Dick leans against the counter, crossing his arms loosely.
"I know you've probably spent a really long time carrying all of that around by yourself. Longer than I can even understand." His eyes remain fixed on yours. "And I know one conversation doesn't magically make years of guilt disappear. I know it probably doesn't feel fixed."
"But I wanted you to wake up to something good."
You feel your eyes sting and he notices immediately. His expression softens even more.
"I wanted the first morning after telling somebody to be a happy one."
And its because you're devastated or overwhelmed. It’s because you’ve never seen it that way before. Not as a burden or a confession but as something deserving of happiness. As something deserving of sunshine.
Dick takes a small step closer.
"I was proud of you yesterday."
The tears spill over. His voice remains gentle.
"I'm still proud of you."
You shake your head automatically, years of insecurity responding before logic can catch up.
Dick immediately notices.
The word is quiet but firm.
"No, we're not doing that."
A watery laugh escapes you.
His expression remains stubborn.
"You don't get to tell me how I feel."
The morning sunlight catches in his eyes.
"You spent years being scared of something that was never wrong in the first place. You spent years convincing yourself that a part of you made you less deserving of love. Then yesterday you looked me in the eye and told me anyway."
Your throat hurts. Everything hurts. But in the way a healing bruise hurts. The kind that reminds you recovery is happening.
Dick gestures dramatically toward the cake.
You laugh through your tears.
Only now do you notice the bouquet sitting beside the cake. Bright yellow sunflowers. Your favorite.
"I knew those would work."
The answer comes as though the alternative would have been absurd.
A smile finally pulls across your face.
Dick relaxes slightly when he sees it, as though that expression alone was worth the entire disaster currently occupying his kitchen.
The sunlight continues spilling through the windows, filling every corner of the room with warmth. It catches on the yellow petals of the sunflowers. It glows against the frosting sun sitting crookedly atop the cake. It wraps around Dick as he stands there smiling at you with icing still smeared across his face.
For years, you thought sunshine was something fragile. Something you had to earn. Something that would disappear the moment somebody saw all of you.
Instead, it is standing in front of you holding flowers.
It is covered in frosting.
And it spent half the night making a terrible cake just to make you smile.
That’s when you realize, everyone deserves love, no matter what shade it’s in. No matter how they express it. Everyone needs sunshine. Everyone needs love. Everyone deserves sunshine, and so do you
Hi guys! So I just wanted to say sum stuff! First of all, happy pride month! Second of all, I am so proud of every single person who has come out, and every single person who hasn’t. I feel like we’ve really just pressured everyone to stick by a label. I suppose one of the reasons I’m too afraid to admit my sexuality to myself is because of this. Once I admit it, I’m stuck this way. And it’s so hard because we should all be able to accept ourselves. I’ve learned that sexuality isn’t one firm position. We’re all in a vast space, constantly moving and changing. And love, at the end of the day is love! Everyone deserves sunshine.☀️ 💛🧡
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