Work Text:
“Helena and I broke up,” Dick says, apropos of nothing, as he and Jason run surveillance atop a Blüdhaven skyscraper at 1 AM.
It throws Jason for a loop, if the way he freezes in an obvious record scratch moment is anything to show for it.
“What—” He’s clearly trying to be polite and bite his tongue. “I thought you and Shawn were starting a family together.”
“It was a pregnancy scare,” Dick says, going for flippant and missing by a mile. He’s still not sure how he feels about being a dad. He knows he’d like it, with the right person, maybe. He had enough practice raising Damian to understand the basics of kids, at least. The coparenting part, that’s an entirely different ballgame. “And almost two months ago.”
“So you and Helena were together for a month and you’re so torn up about it that you’re telling me?”
Dick shakes his head and laughs it off, “Right, never mind, it’s not that important.”
He keeps this mouth in check for the majority of the patrol — Blockbuster’s gang has been popping up more and more, but with no leader in sight. He knows when to focus on the mission, but now that they’re back in his cozy, if cluttered, apartment, it’s once again free rein.
“Actually, is there something about me that just drives women away?” Dick asks. It comes out a bit muffled as he works his Nightwing mask off his face, so he hopes it comes across as at least a partial joke, despite the long-forgotten conversation topic.
He messed it up with Babs, for sure, and Shawn was both of their faults, but Helena — how did he manage to ruin something that barely started?
“Do you want a comprehensive list or something?” Jason jokes, instead. Which is exactly what Dick hoped for.
The smack to the back of Jason’s sweaty head comes easier, then.
He shouldn’t be unloading this onto his little brother, really. For all they act like they’re on exactly equal footing, Dick is over half a decade Jason’s senior, and he should act like it, no matter how much post-death bonding they’ve gone through together.
“But really,” Jason says, sounding horrifyingly pensive and sincere, and Dick freezes halfway through removing a stuck glove. “Did you actually like her? Or were you just wanting to be in a relationship with someone?”
Dick rips the glove the rest of the way off his arm. “Obviously I like Helena, what kind of question is that?”
When Jason doesn’t answer, Dick adds, “She was my girlfriend, not just someone I wanted to keep around.”
“I’m just saying,” he says, putting his hands up in surrender. Though the tone of voice was a touch too sharp for someone wanting to give in. “You have some attachment issues — we all do. Bruce definitely fucked up somewhere between letting you run around half naked and me dying, but that’s besides the point.”
Jason waits for Dick to look at him, instead of the clutter of his Blüdhaven apartment, which takes a few painful seconds of waiting in suspense.
“I wouldn’t put it past you — or any of us — to try and stick through failing relationships because it feels better than being alone,” he says.
Dick bristles. “It’s not like that. All relationships need compromise; you’re not going to agree on every little thing, it takes work to keep the relationship going.”
“Yeah?” Jason asks, obviously fishing for details.
“I mean, with Helena,” Dick says. He lingers in the space between the foyer and the living room overflowing with half-fixed Nightwing equipment. “She didn’t like going out much, which is fine, but it meant we stayed in a lot more.”
“And you wanted to take her out on dates,” Jason surmises.
“Well, yeah, but more so that a majority of our ‘dates’ were just sex,” Dick says, and has a feeling he’s oversharing. “It didn’t feel like we were actually dating.”
“Because you weren’t.” Jason glumly kicks a Nightwing discarded boot under the sofa for Dick to collect later. “It sounds like she got what she wanted — being friends with benefits or casual or whatever you call it — while you compromised away your relationship. Did she ever do anything you wanted?”
It probably doesn’t help his case that Dick has to stop and think before answering. Their relationship wasn’t just sex, of course, but sometimes he couldn’t help but feel that Helena didn’t want him for much else.
“She let me take her out on a few dates in Blüdhaven,” Dick says, and it comes out a bit more somber than he’s wanting. Probably because each of those dates still ended in his bed.
“But…?” Jason probes. Dick doesn’t know when people gained the ability to read him like an open book, but he’s starting to hate it.
“But nothing,” he says. He doesn’t know why he’s complaining, he likes having sex with Helena. It’s sex. But…
“But you still had sex with her after the dates? But she didn’t actually compromise anything?”
“People have sex after good dates,” Dick says, defensive. “That’s a thing that happens.”
Jason looks upset for him, despite Dick never asking him to be. “But you didn’t want it.”
Dick puts a hand on Jason’s chest, it’s not quite a shove, but it’s not gentle, either.
“Don’t make this into something it’s not. Helena didn’t force me into anything, it’s just — sex gets boring when that’s the only part of the relationship. That’s all.”
“You know that you can say ‘no’ sometimes, right?” He sounds meek. Jason Todd does not know the meaning of quiet and gentle, yet his voice barely comes out above a whisper. Dick goes silent.
”Actually,” Jason says, building his fervor, “Please tell me you’ve told her ‘no’ at least once if you didn’t want it.”
Dick is dumbstruck.
He pushes past Jason, further into the apartment. “I am not talking about this with you.”
This is Dick’s little brother — his little brother who’s never had a real, long-term relationship before. He’s not talking about his rocky sex life with Jason. There are things they don’t need to share with one another. They’re not that close.
Jason follows him through the kitchen, and Dick can’t get far enough away.
“Dick,” he emphasizes. He’s blocking him inside the room while still giving enough distance between them as to not completely crowd him in his own home. Dick still feels crowded. “You have to know how incriminating this looks. Did Helena force you —”
“She never forced me to do anything,” Dick swears. “We’re two fully consenting adults in a normal relationship—”
“You know marital—”
“Don’t try and lecture me about the statistics of marital rape,” Dick huffs. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then, by all means, explain what ‘this’ is.”
Dick fumes, bracing his hands on the electric stovetop behind him.
“I’m done talking about my sex life with someone who’s never even been in a real relationship,” he snaps. “If you can’t understand that you might not always be in the mood at the same time—“
“So would you still have sex when you wanted to but she didn’t?” Jason’s voice went hard.
“She always did.”
Jason huffs, and his intimidating posture shifts. With an irritated eye roll, he crosses his arms and shifts his weight into one hip. Dick scoffs under his breath.
“That sounds hard to believe. She initiated every time? For two months?”
“No,” Dick says, trying to collect his thoughts. “But I’d only initiate if I knew she already wanted it — now stop talking about this.”
Jason actually goes quiet, but there’s something ruminating just below the surface. Definitely spelling trouble for Dick and his sanity.
“Okay, let’s forget Helena,” Jason starts.
Dick crosses his arms now. “Wow, I never thought I’d see the day.”
“In general, not just with Helena,” Jason hedges, and Dick scowls. “Do you… like sex? Like, do you see someone and know you want to fuck them?”
Dick groans and puts his head in his hands. This will never end. He’s in hell, that’s what this is. He never actually made it back from patrol, and Satan has a really bad sense of humor.
“No really,” Jason says, kicking at Dick’s shin until he looks at him again. Sure, if he’s just on this earth to be made miserable, why not? Let’s continue this farce of a conversation and see where it goes. “Answer the question.”
“Everyone likes sex,” Dick says plainly. “It’s sex.”
Jason makes a loud wrong-buzzer sound. “That’s a cop-out answer, try again. Do you — independently of anyone’s request — want to have sex with people?”
And now it’s too much. This is the line now, he’s decided, and he’s not going to talk about this with Jason.
“You’re obsessive. We’re done with this,” Dick says icily, and shoulder checks Jason as he exits the kitchen.
Before Dick can throw his bedroom door open, Jason stomps up behind him.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jason fumes. “You’re the one who had me come all the way to Blüdhaven to vent about your girl issues, and now that we’re actually talking about it, you’re mad at me?”
“I’m not mad, I—”
“I’m leaving,” Jason decides in the moment. He snatches his helmet and heads for the fire escape. “But do yourself a fucking favor and look up ‘asexuality’ before throwing yourself into your next failing relationship.”
“Fuck you,” Dick says, matching Jason’s sudden threatening energy. It keeps Jason in the apartment for whatever reason, and the tense face he’s making only spurs Dick’s irritation further. “I’m not asexual, there’s nothing wrong with me—”
Nostrils flaring, Jason drops his helmet at his feet and lines up to punch Dick.
Dick brings his arms up in defense, but Jason takes a growled breath and settles on glaring at him instead.
“There’s nothing—” Jason grits his teeth and looks at a spot over Dick’s shoulder instead of directly at him. “I’m asexual, asshole.”
Dick stills, barely breathing, and an immediate ceasefire washes over the apartment. It’s a ruse, it has to be. They’re one misstep from a full nuclear war, and Dick doesn’t know what to do with this confession.
“Oh,” he says lamely. “I didn’t know.”
Dick barely knows the word asexual, but he can put it together — a- and -sexual, it’s not rocket science.
“I don’t go around advertising it,” Jason says, a nervous laugh barely tinting the words. “More something you’d tell your partner, not your brother.”
“I’m sorry,” Dick says, and means it all-encompassing. For assuming. For whatever happened to Jason to make him avoid sex. He doesn’t want to think about anyone hurting him in that way. “Did— Were you always— Was it because of the Lazarus Pit?”
“What are you talking about?” Jason blinks at him with confusion, he’s not evading the question, but there’s a touch of distrust hiding in his furrowed brows.
“I mean, the Lazarus Pit isn’t perfect, it takes as much as it gives,” Dick says, thinking of Talia and Ra’s and all of the horrors that came with their exposures. “I guess I’m asking if you’re okay? If you’re missing something in you, we can figure it out, we can fix it.”
“I don’t need to be fixed,” he says, shaking his head viciously. “Nothing made me this way — unless you’re counting, I dunno, God?”
Dick shakes his head minutely at the question, on the off chance it wasn’t rhetorical, but he doesn’t understand.
“It’s just what I am,” Jason says. “I’m not attracted to anyone, never have been.”
For a long moment, Dick just stares at him. “…How?”
”How do I not want sex?”
Dick nods. “It’s sex, everyone wants sex. It’s… I don’t know, it’s fun and it feels good— Does it not— Do you not… enjoy it?”
It’s Jason’s turn to go bashful, blushing down to his neck and turning his head as he mumbles something unintelligible.
“What was that?” Maybe Dick is a little glad the tables have turned and he can give a sly grin at his brother’s misfortune in the conversation. Payback.
Jason rubs the back of his neck and continues talking at the wall over Dick’s shoulder. “I’ve, uh… I’ve never done it before.”
“Huh,” Dick says, appraising. He’s clearly never thought those words would come out of Jason’s mouth.
“What,” Jason snaps, hackles raised.
“You’re twenty-three and you’re still a virgin?” is what Dick ends up saying. It’s far too late in the conversation to put his foot in his mouth.
“Well, I’m sorry that dying at fifteen set me back a few years!” Jason’s face goes scarlet in his frustration, over-emphasizing the jagged, white scars along the side of his face and neck.
”You’re right, I’m sorry,” Dick says. “I was just surprised, I don’t know.”
Jason still doesn’t look at him as he says, “It’s whatever, I’m sure I’ll get around to it one day.”
“So then how do you know you’re… asexual,” Dick says, the last part barely a whisper on his lips. “How do you know you won’t like it if you’ve never tried it?”
“I’ll probably like it,” he admits, “but I’ll never really seek it out. Apparently, it’s pretty common to be sexually attracted to people, but… I’m not. Never have been.”
Dick stays quiet. Jason toys with the next words in his head before he says them.
“I knew I was asexual since I was 13,” he says. He breathes out a small laugh— “Honestly, I thought people were joking about wanting to fuck people for the longest time. Still do, sometimes. It’s just not an urge I get for people.”
Humming in agreement, Dick plans his next words carefully.
“I think I understand what you mean,” he says. “When Bruce first took me in, it was around the height of his playboy days, and it seemed like he always had a girl over. I couldn’t imagine he — well, I was nine so I pictured it as ‘falling in love with’ — that many people.”
“Did that change as you got older?” Jason asks, genuinely curious.
Did it?
Thinking on it, Dick may have internalized some of Bruce’s playboy antics as he grew up and into the spotlight himself. He never went out with someone he didn’t like, but maybe he wasn’t as physically into them as they were him. He never thought it was a big deal, sex was just another thing you did with a partner, like going out to dinner or taking a walk in the park. But… yeah. He could’ve been more proactive, but that isn’t who he is.
Actually.
Through his teens and early twenties, Dick was a completely normal guy with completely normal relationships. But now in his late twenties, both Dick Grayson and Nightwing are so constantly ogled and in the spotlight and he… doesn’t like it.
He doesn’t like being looked at or touched or talked about, but it always happens.
At some point, he stopped fighting it and accepted it as a fact of life. A fact of his life, anyway. He embraced it, made little jokes here and there like he was in on it and not the butt of them, but he never actually liked any of it.
People-pleasing tendencies got the better of him, then, and he’s been ignoring his comfort for years.
“I think,” Dick says, still lost in his head. “I think I have a lot to think about.”
“There you go.” Jason claps him on the shoulder, a little harder than necessary — he probably misses the lost opportunity to deck him earlier. “A good night of introspection never hurt anybody, huh?”
Dick just hums, and barely shoves Jason’s hand off of him. He’s kind like that.
“And, Dick,” Jason says, scooping up his equipment like he’s leaving for real this time. “You don’t have to give it a name if you don’t want to. It’s whatever makes you feel better — they’re your feelings, not anybody else’s.”
“Right,” he says, still a little lost in thought, trying to grasp at any old memories and connect dots he can’t quite see just yet.
As Jason heads for the window again, Dick says, “Wait. You don’t have to leave. I really am sorry for all that, you were just trying to help.”
Jason shrugs off the apology, clearly uncomfortable about having the ball in his court again.
“It’s not too late to drive back to Gotham,” he says. “You’ve got your own shit to deal with and I’m not in the mood to be your personal Wikipedia for the night.”
Dick laughs because he’s supposed to, but Jason is right. He’s made enough of an ass of himself tonight by pushing all his assumptions onto Jason, he doesn’t need to bug him further with dumb questions.
“If you do need anything,” Jason says, sounding a lot like goodbye, “or if you just want to talk, the drive down to Blüdhaven isn’t so bad, either.”
To Jason, Dick smiles gratefully.
To himself, Dick vows to do some research and figure things out before the next time they meet. The distance between them really isn’t so far.