Chapter Text
Jason wheezes, hand slamming into the counter of the Titan’s Tower changing room. His binder presses on his ribcage like a vice under his wet shirt.
As he struggles to pull the shirt off and breath through the clamp on his lungs he calls himself every variation of stupid under the sun.
His binder is too small, it has been for the past few months, but it's the only one he has without a zipper.
One that won’t show up under a wet shirt.
It’s exactly how Dick found out, spotting his zipper when they’d swam in the pool at the Manor. His brother hadn’t so much as blinked, but Jason, wary of the non-reaction, had eavesdropped on him and Bruce later that day.
They hadn’t ended up arguing, but the deep insult he felt when Dick had asked if Bruce was forcing him to be a boy for the sake of Robin still lingered.
He can’t stand the possibility that the other Titan’s might see his undergarment, what their reactions might be. Everyone already expects him to be Dick, they respect him because of Dick. If they find out about his circumstances that would change, he knows it.
He struggles to get his fingers under the edge of the fabric dimpling his skin and whines when he can’t find any give.
It’s getting increasingly harder to breathe and his ribs are creaking.
Animal panic flutters in his throat.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Robin?”
Donna.
“Are you okay? You left in a hurry.”
He needs something sharp.
He stumbles into the lockers across from the counter with a loud clatter.
Donna’s voice comes again, worried.
“Robin?”
His vision is spotty as the electronic lock beeps in denial as he enters the pass code with trembling fingers, missing the sequence in his hurry.
“I’m coming in,” Donna calls, voice stiff with concern and the door lock cracks under the force of a demigoddess’ strength.
Jason drops to his knees, wheezing and his hand slides off the keypad.
“By the gods,” Donna curses, hurrying across the room and sliding to her knees next to Jason.
She tilts Jason’s head towards her.
“What’s happening--what is it?”
He points to the locker and gasps,
“ Knife.”
Her gaze finally focuses on his binder and the force it's exerting on his ribcage.
She rips the locker door off its hinges with one hand, the other supporting Jason.
She grabs his pocket knife off his folded clothing and unsheathes it, in an expert movement she slices the seam of his binder.
Jason gasps as the vice releases and coughs, groaning as the deep ache of relief spreads through his chest.
Donna helps him slip the ruined piece of clothing off and leans him up against the intact locker next to his own.
His side is bleeding where the knife had sliced in Donna’s hurry to help him breath. The woman takes off her star patterned wrap to press to the wounds.
Once he takes over and presses the cloth there himself she sits back, looking shaken.
Her gaze flickers to his chest and the curve of his waist.
“You’re…a girl.”
He ducks his head, ribs tight for different reasons.
“I’m not.”
There’s a pause.
“It’s not bad if you are,” she says, hesitant but gentle, “the Titan’s wouldn’t--,”
“I’m not,” he snarls, arms rising to wrap around his bruised chest and pulling the wrap around to cover his breasts, “I’m still Jason, I’ve always been Jason, and that’s all I want to be.”
Donna goes silent.
“Jason, being a woman--,”
He can’t scream, his chest is still too bruised for that, but he wishes he could.
“I’m not a woman , I’m trans!”
Donna sits back on her naked heels and blinks.
“Like--transexual?”
Jason huffs out a laugh.
“Yeah, like transexual.”
Close enough.
Donna’s expression is still slightly puzzled.
“So, you’re trying to become a boy and you were born a girl.”
His head thunks into the metal of the locker.
“Pretty much.”
Donna shifts to sit beside him.
“Sorry,” she says, eventually, “I’ve never heard of it…happening the opposite way--I can’t really imagine--wanting to be a man it’s just--,”
Jason giggles, a little hysterically. He thinks he should be allowed, he almost died by bad fashion choices, after all.
“I can’t imagine wanting to be a girl,” he admits, “I--I don’t have the usual experience, I’ve always gotten to live as a boy, you can’t tell the others--I don’t want that to change.”
Donna leans over and wraps a gentle arm around his shoulders, she pats his bicep with a smile.
“I wouldn’t either--but I don’t want to see you put yourself in danger like that ever again,” she says sternly, in the voice of the leader of the Teen Titans, “you could have died, Jason.”
Jason rolls his eyes and huffs.
“It was a one time thing Donna,” he groans, “I won’t do it again.”
Donna offers a grin.
“Good,” then she stands and helps Jason to his feet, “I’ll tell everyone you had a stomach ache, you should go rest.”
He feels warmth suffuse his chest as the demigoddess lets go of his hand and strides towards the door.
He spends the rest of the day wrapped in the blankets on the bed of his room in Titan’s Tower. He reads through one and a half books and thoroughly enjoys the warm street tacos Donna drops by in the evening.
When they run into eachother again, after the Joker, after Batman, after everything, with him barefaced and in civies, she grins like the sun and says,
“It’s good to see you, Jason.”