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“What’s your deepest, darkest secret? The thing you’ve not told anyone else?”
───
Sixteen hours later and Jason feels like he’s fully suffused with his sofa.
He’s not a stranger to locking things away, just as he’s entrapped himself within his apartment now. There are dozens of things his family would hate him for, would pity him for, should they know.
But the one thing he’d have pleaded second death for before consenting to its release, the one thing he shoved and buried so far down, deeper than his grave so that it would have never had a chance of crawling its way back out with fingers bloodied by his torn guts, dirtier and worse and more wrong than it already was, the thing that’s haunted him since he was thirteen years old, already aware of its absurdity—he’s sure he’ll never come back from this.
They’ve forgiven him for so many things, let countless bodies be swept under the rug, but some things are unignorable, in the same way they’re incurable.
───
“I say we start with you,” the magician said, staring at Tim where he was bound wrists and ankles to the wall like an elongated starfish, just as Jason and Dick were on either side of him.
“Y’know,” Dick interrupted, trying to buy time, “you must have a lot of insecurities yourself if you’re going around digging up people’s secrets like this.”
The magician ignored him, stepping forward until he was a foot from Tim, staff smartly held behind his back and out of reach. “Well, Red Robin? Tell us: what is your deepest, darkest secret, the thing you’ve not told anyone else?”
Tim’s posture showed none of the tenseness Jason expected from fighting off a truth and compliance spell. He simply tilted his head as if in thought, then said, “I tell people my bi-awakening was Matt Damon since he looks like my boyfriend, but it was actually Clint Eastwood.” His cheeks dusted pink as he added, “and not when he was young.”
The magician blinked, lips curved down. “That’s it?”
“Screw you,” Jason bit out, because while everything in him wanted to tease Tim, a secret was still a secret, something he hadn’t chosen to share of his own accord.
Tim looked surprised at Jason’s reaction, then half shrugged in his restraints. “I tell my team and partner almost everything.”
───
At a knock on the door, Jason reluctantly peels himself from his spot and looks through the peephole, then grits his teeth. He barely remembers to unlock door before he rips it open. “What the fuck do you want?”
Tim holds up a brown take-out bag with a calm, practiced smile. “Since it's mutual that we're family now, thought we could eat take-out and watch a movie.”
“No.”
Jason goes to slam the door, but it jars against Tim’s sneaker instead. Tim shoves the bag through the opening and shakes it like he’s holding out a treat for a dog.
“Just food and a movie! I'm too tired for serious conversations.”
Jason opens the door again but doesn’t step aside. He eyes Tim critically. “When was the last time you slept six hours?”
“Irrelevant. I got Vietnamese. Not from that place you like on Smith. They're closed on Sundays. But I've had this before and thought it was pretty good.”
“Where from?”
“Honestly? I can’t read the sign. It’s beside that convenience store on Murphy Ave.”
Jason hums. “Fine.”
He walks away from the door towards the kitchen, and Tim shuffles in and slips off his shoes like nothing’s wrong, like his view of Jason hasn’t been irrevocably changed.
“No movie. I don’t wanna follow a plot right now,” Jason says as he grabs two plates and passes one to Tim. He almost wants to suggest a Clint Eastwood film to keep the topic off of himself, but he doesn’t have the energy or mind for ribbing.
Tim nods as he takes a few containers out of the bag. “Seinfeld?”
“Sure.”
They sit on the couch with their food, and Jason navigates to Netflix, quietly grateful he doesn’t have to scrounge up the energy to cook. He didn’t manage to after patrol last night, and today’s meals have been more or less just grabbing random ingredients from the fridge or cupboards to snack on.
The Vietnamese is good, but his stomach is churning.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop feeling sick.
───
“Well, maybe you’ve got something more exciting to share,” the magician moved on as he turned. “What do you say, Nightwing? What’s your deepest, closest held secret, the thing you’ve not told anyone else?”
Dick shuddered, clearly feeling the effects of the spell. Or maybe it was the impending dread of whatever he was about to share. He pressed his lips together in a tight white line and curled in on himself, but the resistance didn’t last long before the pain seemed overwhelming, a quiver running through him.
“I–I’m–” He swallowed harshly, tried to seal his mouth shut again. “I’m scared–” He choked. “–it’s become a habit… and it’ll keep happening, and I’ll keep letting it happen.” His head hung limply between shaking shoulders.
“Keep letting what happen?” the magician asked, curiosity glinting in his heavy gaze.
Dick sucked in harshly, let it out in one gust, shivered, clenched his fists, flexed his jaw. “Let–” He shuddered again. “Being raped,” he gasped out.
Tim drew in a sharp breath. Jason felt like his had been stolen.
───
The few times they’ve managed something like this, Tim has always been extraordinarily chatty. Now, as the episode begins to play, he’s silent.
Jason lasts five minutes.
“I don't want to talk about it,” he says after a forkful of fried rice, seeming blander and blander with each bite and errant thought in his head. His tongue is still tender from the damage he caused, and every meal breaks the wound open again to colour his food with the taste of iron.
“Talk about what?”
Jason groans, but Tim continues with his air of nonchalance as he eats and watches the scene play out on the tv.
Jason slumps back into the couch, but manages only about another three minutes and two more bites of food, which sit too heavy in his stomach, before he drops his still mostly-full plate on the coffee table.
Tim glances his way, then sighs and sets his own plate gently beside Jason’s. He waits until after the laugh track has ended to speak. “He misses you. But he thinks you don't wanna see him.”
“Good. I don't.”
“He's just worried–”
“Well, he shouldn't be,” Jason snaps, picking at cracking skin around his cuticles. “He should just fuck off and worry about himself.” He picks until his hangnail bleeds.
Tim watches him with his too perceptive detective gaze. “You–”
“I said I don't want to talk about it!” Jason surges to his feet. “No one was ever supposed to know. Nothing was ever going to come from it. I was just going to squash these wrong fucking feelings and be done with it!”
“Is it wrong–?”
Jason rounds on him, mouth twisting into a sneer. “Tim.”
Tim winces, glancing away at the floor. “Okay maybe it's considered unconventional and a little bit strange, but I feel like you're being a bit harsh on yourself here. It's not like that's something you can control.”
“Get out.”
Tim looks up to meet their eyes. “Ja–”
“Get. Out.”
Tim purses his lips, but eventually closes his eyes with a sigh. “Okay. You won’t listen if you’re not ready to hear it.” He stands. “I’ll get out of your hair for now, but–” He looks into Jason’s eyes again, gaze too knowing and heavy. “I think you should hear each other out. The only one blaming you is yourself.”
His eyes are a lighter blue than Dick’s, but Jason can so easily imagine them in Tim’s’ stead, and the judgment he’ll surely see there should he seek Dick out.
When Jason doesn’t respond, Tim leaves the way he came. His finger hasn’t stopped bleeding.
───
After a long pause, the magician chuckled a little nervously. “Well, then. They say never meet your heroes. How the mighty fall.”
“You shut the fuck up,” Jason spat out, grief threatening to swallow him.
“Wing…” Tim whispered, soft and judgeless. Dick didn’t lift his head.
Then the magician’s eyes turned onto Jason, and his mind narrowed in on itself. After Dick’s… confession, ‘sleeping’ with Talia came to mind, but really, he knew what his mind would conjure up, what his mouth would form, and Dick’s confession made him feel all the more disgusting for what he was about to say. He’d never planned to act on it. Never. He’d planned to take it to his grave, twice over. And yet–
“Now, Red Hood.” The magician drew out each word as he said, “What is your deepest, darkest secret that you’ve not told another person, that no one but you knows?” He was less than a foot away from Jason, refusing to let him get away with a whisper.
He thought of Talia, because while it’d be mortifying, Dick had done it, so why couldn’t he? (Not that it had ever been intentional. Dick had yet to look up.) He thought of how he’d word it, the most blunt version of the truth, while also not giving anything away to this villain about identities, real names: Robin’s mom fucked me while I was still half-catatonic.
Except those were not the words he felt forming in the back of his throat, and fear surged up like bile. Talia was still ‘someone who knows.’ Curse this bastard for changing the wording. Curse him for making them say any of this.
His throat worked around the confession, a vibration in his voice box, so he bit down hard on his tongue until copper exploded in his mouth. He kept his lips sealed and let the blood gather until he thought his heart might give out under the pain. The words came out then, garbled and unintelligible, blood slipping down his chin.
The rogue fisted the back of Jason’s hair and forced his head down with one hand, prying his jaw open with the other. Blood poured out in thick globs and red spit-strings. “Say it again, nice and clear. What’s your biggest secret?”
Jason tried to close his mouth, tried to let the blood well up again. His jaw unlatched, and the words spilled like the blood slipping off his swollen tongue, slimy and not meant to meet open air. “I’m in love with my brother.”
There was a pause as even the man in front of him processed his confession. Jason hadn’t meant for it to come out like that—that was so much worse, gave this villain more, gave him more about their identities, more to play with. He should’ve said a moniker, hell even his civilian name. That would have earned him a laugh. But this was about his darkest secret, and that was the part that made him so ashamed, wasn’t it?
“Well, this certainly took an unexpected turn. ‘In love.’” He didn’t remove his hands as he peered at the other two, and while Jason refused to look anywhere but the ground, the magician must have seen something because there was a smile in his voice when he asked, “Is your brother either of them?”
His throat burned fiercely. “Yes,” he rasped.
“Which is it?” He sounded excited.
Tongue throbbing, he gritted out, “Both–” Through his peripheral he saw Tim’s head reel back beside him. He amended, “Both of them are my brothers.”
Tim’s shoulders sagged an inch.
“Stop,” Dick tried, and Jason cringed. “You got what you were after.”
The magician ignored him as he pondered the vigilantes, taking his hands off Jason to take a step back. “So Red Hood is a part of the so-called Batfamily. Isn’t that a turn of events.” He tilted his head. “Hm, Red Robin seems a little young for you, though admittedly, I’ve no clue to your age,” he thought aloud. “Red Hood is notoriously known for his protection of kids, especially from those who wish to take advantage of them. Is that perhaps why? You're disgusted with yourself, so you take it out on those like you because you wanna fuck little Red over here?”
“No!” he snapped. “Fuck, no! You bastard. I'm gonna tear your fucking limbs off.”
The magician smiled, lazy and way too full of himself. Jason wished he'd choke on his ego. “Robin, then? He a brother too? He whom you're craving a taste of?”
He was seething. Each question lined up like a queue on his bloody, forsaken tongue. “Yes, no– he’s my little brother. I would never– I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
“Oh, my apologies. Too many questions at once? We wouldn’t want the truth to get misunderstood, would we?”
“Yes,” Jason unwillingly answered under his breath.
───
The next knock comes hardly two hours later when the sky is just starting to darken and the uneaten food still sits on the coffee table. Jason regrets not looking before yanking open the door because those blue eyes are the last thing he wanted to see.
“Hi,” Dick says, soft and caring in all the ways Dick Grayson is but tinged with the slightest bit of foreign hesitancy, and Jason wishes he left this fester pit city as soon as they got out of that bullshit trap.
It’s not lost on him that Dick’s covered in a hoodie and sweats. It’s eighty degrees out.
“Um,” Dick continues when Jason doesn’t respond, “could I come in?”
He wants to say no, wants to close the door without a word, wants to jump out of the window and make his escape from Gotham with nothing but the clothes on his back.
He steps aside. Dick steps in.
Dick makes his way to the couch, gets seemingly comfy in one corner, then gestures to the other side. “Wanna sit?”
Jason doesn’t. His heart feels like it might burst from his ribcage to drop down into his stomach so that he can retch it up, purge himself of this illness once and for all.
He sits anyway.
───
Jason was staring daggers into the magician’s smug grin when Tim came free of the binds holding him. Red Robin wasted no time in wrapping his arms around the man’s throat from behind, not letting him get a single spell out, scrabbling at Tim’s armoured gauntlets until he passed out from lack of oxygen.
Tim laid him on the floor then stood up and straightened out his cape. He was closest to Jason, and Jason was sure, pleaded, that Tim would help him out of his restraints first.
Then Dick grinned at him. “You admitted we're brothers!” he exclaimed, like that was the only possible thing he could take away from the confession. The only thing he wanted to take away.
Jason stopped a flinch, stomach curling into itself.
“So you do think of us as family! And you tried to deny it,” Dick continued in that familiar teasing lilt. “There's no excuse for skipping family dinners or movie nights now.”
Tim picked up the light-hearted tone, huffing out a slight laugh, then went for Dick's restraints first instead.
To Jason’s absolute dismay.
Because there was no way he had missed it. No way either of them had missed it. Jason was an only biological child, and he’d already denied it being both Tim and Damian. Even the thought made him sick.
Then again, so did the unspoken truth—an illness he’d held for years. Something even death and the Pit couldn’t cure him of. A disease of the brain, which infested every other part of him like cancerous cells.
Their disgust was surely only temporarily delayed, hidden in an attempt to make this easier on Jason, but he wouldn’t have it.
As soon as Tim helped Jason out of his own restraints, he picked up his helmet and bolted.
───
Dick shifts around. “There’s really no smooth transition here, huh? Can I ask– How long have you– When did it start?”
Jason keeps his eyes on his own hands, clutched tightly his lap. “I uh– It’s complicated, I guess, I mean obviously.” He swallows, runs his ruined tongue over the back of his teeth. What use was hiding it now? They knew the truth. He’d be betraying Dick more than he already has by keeping these details from him when he’s asked. “It probably started as hero worship… and then knowing and thinking of you as my brother. And I tried to ignore a bunch of stuff, I think, did ignore it. But after I came back, started talking with you all again, it got more confusing, but also more clear…”
Against his better judgment, he casts a glance up at Dick, certain he’ll see disgust and rejection there. Instead, Dick looks sad, mournful. Jason looks back down, chest so tight he’s sure his ribs might soon puncture holes into his lungs. If Dick’s already grieving their ruined relationship, who is Jason to hold back now?
“I fought with myself for long enough before I admitted that it wasn't entirely familial.”
“‘Entirely’? I– So you… see us as brothers?”
The confusion in Dick’s voice twists something tender between Jason’s squeezed lungs. Even though calling them family was what Dick used to lighten the mood after the big confession, he’s probably been holding onto the assumption that despite adoption papers and a shared father figure, Jason hasn’t considered Dick a brother at all.
Jason drops his head down into his palm to cover his eyes. “Yeah,” he whispers. Because that's the fucked up part about all of this, isn't it?
He’s sick. That’s the crux. He perceives Dick as his brother in the same breath that he’s attracted to him, in a way no brother is ever supposed to be. He aches to be at those movie nights Dick still invites him to, so he can make fun of Tim for falling asleep and shove at Dick when he interrupts dialogue with puns and copy Damian’s snooty way of talking to comment on plot devices and spoil foreshadowing—all in the same beat of blighted blood through his heart that he yearns to draw Dick close and know how those lips really feel in a context outside of forehead kisses when he was fourteen.
Dick’s hand rests on Jason's knee, and Jason flinches. Because he’s sick, and he’s done them all a disservice by not telling them before and letting them make contact with his contaminated skin.
The touch recedes. “Jay, I–”
“It doesn’t– didn’t matter. I wasn’t ever gonna act on it.”
“But it does matter, Little–”
“Don't. Just don’t.”
Blessedly, Dick doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Then:
“Was it something I did?” he asks quietly, something too much like remorse seeping into his voice.
Jason’s head snaps up. “No. Fuck– No, Dick.”
Dick’s gaze is loaded with guilt, like he’s already convinced himself Jason’s… fucked-up-ness is his fault.
“It wasn’t anything you did. You always treated me like a brother. This is just–” He looks at the floor, can’t bare meeting Dick’s eyes a moment longer. “This…” defect. sin. perversion. blight. “thing wrong with me, it’s on me. Not you.”
“No, Jay, please. You're not–” Jason can imagine Dick’s expression shuttering as he tries to find a way to reconcile Jason’s brokenness with something normal.
“Don’t pretend it’s something fine. I know it’s not.” He finds his voice quieting, reflecting the fragility he feels through his flaking bones. “It isn’t your responsibility to accept any of this, and you had no cause in it either.”
Dick doesn’t say anything right away, and Jason wants to see his expression just as much as he doesn’t.
He knows what Dick must be thinking, what must be on his mind after the whole event. ‘I’m scared it’s become a habit, and it’ll keep happening, and I’ll keep letting it happen.’ Jason’s seen it, the way Dick is objectified by so much of the caped community, by the people they fight, by randos on the street, by people they save. Dick has always internalized blame, and it’s not rare for survivors to… ‘I’ll keep letting it happen.’
“Dick,” he starts, a little hesitant, nausea rising. “What you said–” He sees Dick’s leg muscles stiffen. “–it wasn’t your fault.”
“Jason–”
“You didn’t ‘let’ anything happen. And this isn’t your fault either. I’m sorry. I never meant for it to affect you. I’ve always known I wasn’t supposed to feel like this, that nothing would ever come of it. I’ve never wanted anything to come of it. You gotta believe me on that. So this–” His throat tightens, imagining Dick thinking Jason might’ve one day taken advantage of him, like how many others have. “I promise I never woulda done anything– never woulda acted–” He’s losing his voice to the stone lodged in his esophagus. “Fuck, I’ve never– I never wanted to hurt you like this.” He buries his face further in both hands, elbows digging into his thighs. The wound on his tongue opens again with how hard he bites it to keep the rising pressure in his throat at bay.
Dick’s arms wrap over his back and through the gap between his arms and chest, and Jason bends further into himself as the contact cools his fevered skin.
“I know, Jay,” Dick whispers, pressing his cheek to Jason’s shoulder. “I know.”
Jason’s next breath shudders out of him, a hurt like heartburn congesting his chest. He can’t handle this, Dick’s gentleness as Jason’s mind tries to tear his own body apart. He’s the one who’s done this wrong unto Dick.
“This was my issue.” Jason’s voice hitches with each breath. “My problem to deal with, so it wouldn’t affect you. My sickness.”
Dick tenses around him. Jason wishes he bit his tongue off last night. Maybe he’ll try again.
Dick tightens his hold for a moment, then pulls back. And Jason aches with the loss he has no right to mourn; it still feels like rejection.
Then Dick is tugging at Jason's hands, prying them from where Jason’s been digging blunt nails into his skin and forcing him to look up. He knows his squinting eyes are humiliatingly wet, but he refuses to blink it away lest anything slip out.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Dick’s blurry face says, in the gentle tone he takes with Damian when the boy still fears exile for a line too-far crossed.
Jason wishes he’d just yell instead.
“You don’t fucking believe that.” All heat is lost when his voice is wet with saliva and blood. “It’s wrong, Dick. You’re my– You’re my brother,” his voice cracks.
Dick’s mouth presses into a thin line, brows curved up in the middle. He squeezes Jason’s hands between his own. “You’re not sick,” he reasserts. “Whatever you think, whatever anyone else thinks, it doesn’t make you sick, Jason. You can’t–” His jaw ticks, and Jason doesn’t want to believe he’s hiding a grimace. “You can’t control something like that.”
Except isn’t that the definition of an illness? Jason’s wrong, in a way he can’t control, in a way that betrays the very relationship Dick’s built with him, yet here Dick is claiming Jason isn’t fundamentally ill, isn’t doomed to this death-immune disease he’s failed time and time again to cure.
Jason doesn’t know if Dick really believes that, or if he solely says it for Jason’s sake. If only to avoid hurting Dick more, Jason won’t refute it. “There’s nothing wrong with you, either,” he says.
Dick smiles, remorseful. Mourning. “Okay.”
Somehow, Jason knows Dick doesn’t believe those words either.