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Roy starts the conversation like he does fifty percent of the time: with a shit eating grin. Mia sensed it was coming from the action directly preceding it, the way he slid next to her on the couch; he’s the only guy she’s seen pull off what she dubs nonsexually sleazy swagger, coined for and inspired by him and only him.
“So… Bart, huh?”
His suggestive tone alerts Ollie, who looks over from his spot at the counter. Mia shoots Roy a quizzical look, and he knows her well enough to decipher the core message, which is how’d you know about that?
“A little birdie told me.”
“Dick?” she guesses.
Sideyeing her, he taps the bookspine of his finger against his chin. “No, but that’s clever. I actually meant Donna.”
She knows Bart has a big mouth, and so do all his friends, and the Teen Titans in general. It shouldn’t be surprising. Still, a sudden anxiety grips her at the knowledge this was big enough news to inspire discussion among one of the older hero generations, especially the faction consisting of Roy’s peers. Her first instinct is always to assume judgement—that the gossip is a front for cruel remarks, nothing more than an opportunity to express what everybody really thinks of her. With the right segue, nasty opinions become socially acceptable, and under the guise of concern they can finally reveal how she disgusts them, how Mia’s equally unqualified for this line of work or for a relationship with one of them. Not that she and Bart are in a relationship, per se.
“Donna?” she repeats, latching onto that nugget of information amidst the sea of implications foaming in her mind.
Ollie sets his mug down. “Bart? As in Bart Allen? Barry’s grandson from the future?”
Mia sighs.
“That’s the one,” Roy confirms, still grinning like an asshole, apparently enjoying Ollie’s prodding as long as it’s not directed at him.
Ollie’s eyebrows squish together like one of those fat, bushy caterpillars. “Isn’t he a little young for you?”
Though not the line of questioning she expected, it was surprisingly considerate and sensible for Ollie, even if it was only rational on the surface. What he really wanted to ask was likely more critical of him than her. She supposes their dynamic would seem strange to someone ignorant of the situation, a situation Mia doesn’t completely understand herself. Thinking about it now did feel a little weird, honestly.
They don’t mean it that way, but imagining someone assuming that she’s—that she would—
“Uh, technically no,” is what Mia settles on as an explanation.
“It’s weird Flash shit,” handwaves Roy. “They’re the same age. Basically.”
“Oh,” says Ollie. He blinks a few times. “I guess it’s just that he acts pretty juvenile. At least the few times I’ve met him,” he amends.
“Yeah, he’s sort of a goofball,” Roy nods, though his tone is nonjudgmental, maybe even laudatory of Bart for this particular quality of his.
“You’re a goofball,” Mia retorts, and by the small smile she’s got on, Roy knows to send her one back. Her smile disappears into pursed lips. “But, yeah, he is.”
“Is that what you like about him?”
It’s clear Ollie’s prompting for more details. With a shrug, Mia vaguely agrees, “One of the things.”
“And the others…?”
At least Connor wasn’t present; he was too prudish for the turn she was about to take this conversation. It couldn’t be said Roy and Ollie weren’t asking for it, though.
“He doesn’t have refractory periods,” she erects a finger as a tally mark and Ollie looks downright horrified, the weirdo, “can’t catch HIV,” his face falls, dark like he’s the one whose haunted, “and can literally vibrate his tongue.”
That last point has his face scrunching back up, and she feels a little sadistic pride at successfully punishing him for his paternalism disguised as nosiness. It’s astonishingly easy, Mia’s learned, to make him cycle through facial expressions like she’s running a slideshow.
“Ew,” Roy says, completely deadpan, “although surprisingly reasonable.” He scratches his stubble thoughtfully. “Giving me a lot of insight into why Linda puts up with Wally like she does.”
Ollie recovers quicker than he would’ve a few years ago. Credit where credit was due. “There are things you like about him that aren’t related to his… sexual performance, I hope?”
He cringes as he says it, and it makes her want to do the same. Only Ollie can deliver lines like that and sound genuinely concerned, not for her sanctity but for her heart; coming from anybody else and she imagines shrinking into a tiny, unwelcome bug. But at the same time, when it’s from him, some virgin she can’t remember existing emerges deep from inside and worries he’ll view her as a slut, even though she’s been over that a million times already.
“I mean, yeah, but we’re not technically… y’know, dating.”
“Really? He doesn’t strike me as the casual type.” Roy says. “Or the type for anything, actually. Feels wrong, somehow.”
Mia’s cheeks heat up and she flashes him an angry look. “Well, it’s none of your business, is it, so who cares about what you think?”
He finally touched a nerve, and from that stupid expression Roy’s wearing, he’s contemplating why. Ollie is too, probably. Assholes.
She turns away and rests her chin in her palm. “He’s not casual in the normal sense of the word.”
“Nothing about that kid is normal,” Roy laughs.
Mia ignores him. “Man, his head’s always in the clouds,” she continues. “He’s got crazy ADHD.” She’s not explaining this aptly, but doesn’t know better phrasing to use. Bart is sort of a foreign concept. “He’s not, like, thinking about relationships in typical terms the way other people are. I don’t think.”
The boys are silent for a few seconds, until Roy says, “Yeah, that doesn’t clear anything up.”
Mia throws a couch pillow at him, and Roy, the loser he is, refuses to dodge it.