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It’s just an intel mission, nothing fancy. Nothing that would warrant the tumultuous night Jason ends up trapped in.
He and Dick are at one of Gotham’s scumier bars, tailing a dude who’s connected to the gang they’re currently after. Word on the street is he has info on a weapons drop that’s going down soon, so Dick volunteered to “work his magic” and get the information they need, whatever that means. Jason is more than happy to sit in his booth while Dick takes the reins on this one.
“And we have karaoke night here on Fridays,” the waitress says, topping off Jason’s beer. She’s a chatty one, but Jason supposes he must be a welcome change from the other bastards who come here.
“Do I look like I do karaoke?” Jason leans to the side a bit to check on Dick. He’s doing okay—has got a wry smile and lustful eyes as he flirts with the mark, playing him like a fiddle. Personally, Jason prefers the faster method of cornering the dude in an alley and breaking fingers until he talks, but Dick doesn’t want him snitching to his compadres that they’re onto them. Whatever floats his boat.
“No,” she says, “but neither is anyone else who comes here. Fridays are our slowest nights, so I get off early. Maybe you and I can get a drink or something.”
“Thanks, but I don’t swing that way. Or any way, really. Dig the superhero-theme with the menu, though. Is it possible to get the Blue Devil hot wings with ranch dressing instead of blue cheese?”
As she tells him all about their wing specials, Jason sneaks another glance at Dick and chokes on his beer.
The snake’s utterly enthralled in Dick’s presence, talking to him closely while a hand sneaks up the inside of Dick’s thigh. Dick’s flirty grin hasn’t faltered, but Jason knows him. Jason can see how he oozes discomfort as the man leans in to nibble on his ear, but Dick doesn’t do a thing to discourage it. He lets it go on, lets himself be used.
Jason abandons his beer and slides out of the booth. “Sorry to run,” he tells the waitress, “but I’ve got something I need to do.” He pushes through the crowd of people until he gets close enough to hear the conversation between Dick and the man.
“What do you say we get out of here, baby?” he’s whispering to Dick as he bites on his neck. “I can get us a motel room for the night.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dick says. His voice is so even that it makes Jason sick.
“Get up,” Jason tells him, diverting Dick’s attention as if ripping him from a trance. “We’re leaving.”
“Jay, what—”
“You didn’t tell me you had a fucking boyfriend,” the douchenozzle says. He’s practically daring Jason to give him brain damage. He’d have already done it if he hadn’t ditched that nice waitress so rudely. She doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of her shift mopping blood and brain matter off the floor.
Jason grabs Dick by the arm and pulls him up from the bar stool. “Yup, that’s me. Now if you’d kindly fuck off before I shatter your kneecaps?” He pulls Dick out of the bar, away from that creep. As soon as they’re in the parking lot, Dick drops the tipsy act.
“What the hell is your problem?” he demands, yanking his arm back. “I was working.”
“That’s
what you call working? He had his hands all over you like a piece of meat. You should be thanking me.”
“That’s how an interrogation
works,
idiot. People give up information more freely when their inhibitions are lowered.”
“If that’s how you interrogate, then I’d hate to see your torture techniques.” Jason stalks off toward the car they arrived in, one of Bruce’s less conspicuous vehicles that they “borrowed” for the night. He opens the driver’s side door and slams it behind him. “Get in the fucking car.”
Dick does. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“The
big deal?
The big deal is I just watched you get fucking molested so you could get info from a mark. Just because people treat you like an object doesn’t mean you are one, dipshit.”
Dick keeps his gaze firmly out the windshield as they peal out of the parking lot. He crosses his arms. “I’m not an object.”
“Glad you have fucking listening retention.”
“You blew the mission, you know that?”
“So?”
“That case was
important.
We’re going to have to track that guy down again or go at it from a completely new angle now.” He shakes his head as if he’s the one dealing with a belligerent toddler and not the other way around. “You should have stayed put and let me do my job.”
“Do your
job?
What are you, a cheap hooker? You realize that if I hadn’t gotten involved, that asshole would be taking advantage of your sorry ass right now. Honestly, Dick, what did you think was going to happen? You saw his file. You know he’s got records of trafficking and assault.”
“I had it under control.”
“So, what, you were going to let him take you back to some dirty motel, service him in exchange for information? Really?”
“It’s the easiest way to get what we need without tipping him off that the bats are on his tail. The less he suspects that we’re coming after him, the better chance we have at blowing his entire operation.” He states it simply, almost robotically. As if it all somehow makes
sense
in his brain. Jason is so pissed that he doesn’t even make a blowjob joke.
“Unbelievable. Unbe-
fucking
-lievable.”
“Why are you angry about this? All
you
had to do was keep an eye on the bar and make sure none of his buddies showed up. You had the
easy
job.”
“Yeah? My ‘easy job’ was watching you walk off with some scumbag to get assaulted.”
“It wouldn’t have been assault. I was doing my job.”
“And what if it had been Cass doing that? Or Tim? Or Stephanie?”
“That’s different. They’re all minors.”
“Oh, so if I had gone and seduced a mark to get intel, that would have been fine?”
“No.”
“Why not? It’s what you were doing.”
“It’s
different.”
“How? What makes that any different from what you were doing?”
“I can handle it.”
Jason laughs without humor. “Yeah, and I’m such a fragile fucking flower.” They’re on the road now, streetlights lighting the path as they drive through the night. Too bad Jason’s the one behind the wheel. He’s really craving a cigarette right now.
“You don’t deserve to put up with that,” Dick says.
“And you do?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You fucking implied it.”
“Maybe you should mind your own business.”
“Oh, I see. So you’re allowed to grill me about whatever you want, but once I try to do it back, suddenly that’s off limits?”
“There’s nothing to
grill me
about. We needed intel, I knew how this guy operated, and I did what I had to. There’s no deeper meaning. And you’re one to talk, anyway.”
Jason slams on the brakes. If Dick weren’t wearing his seatbelt, he would be flying right through the windshield. Luckily they’re on a backroad, which is the only reason Jason doesn’t immediately get rear-ended.
“What the hell, Jay?”
Jason turns in his seat to face Dick, Lazarus water surging through his bloodstream. “What the
fuck
did you just say?”
“You stopped in the middle of the street, jackass!”
“Before that.” His voice is even somehow in spite of every cell in his body vibrating to shred, maim, kill.
“What, like you have some moral high ground when it comes to handling bad guys? You’ve killed enough people to fill a stadium.” Oh. That’s...not what he thought Dick meant. “Now will you
please
start driving before we get leveled by a truck?”
Jason takes his foot off the brake, but only enough to maneuver them onto the side of the road, out of the way of any oncoming drivers. He turns off the engine. “I’m not finished talking about this.”
“You realize how crazy you sound, right? I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t even know what you’re so hung up on.”
“I’m
hung up
on the fact that you think it’s okay to let criminals feel you up for the price of intel! And you’re calling
me
crazy?”
“It’s not like I do this every night! I needed info from
one
mark. This was the best way to get it without him questioning anything, so I weighed my options and went with what worked best. That’s what we’re trained to do.”
With a growl, Jason reaches into his jacket and pulls out his cell phone. “Fuck this. I’m calling Bruce.”
“For
what?”
“For whatever the hell is wrong with you!”
“I’m an adult, Jay. I can handle my own problems.”
“So you admit there’s a problem with this.”
“I’m just doing my job!”
“And I’m trying to keep your dumbass self from getting raped!”
Dick’s mouth snaps shut. He stiffens in his seat, and Jason is too good of a detective to not notice it. He sees it. He always sees it.
Jason pulls his thumb away from Bruce’s contact and turns off his phone. He drops it in the space between them. “Who?”
“Who what?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Who was it?”
Dick rolls his eyes. “Will you knock it off and drive already?”
“Not until you tell me what the fuck happened to you.” Jason should have seen it earlier. Trauma-induced promiscuity is a textbook coping strategy, coupled with Dick’s self-worth being tied to his effectiveness in the field. The signs were all there.
Dick doesn’t look at him. He keeps his eyes trained on the darkness outside the window, jaw stiff. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I know. But someone hurt you, right? Who was it?” Silence. “It’s just you and me right now. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Will you just drive?” Dick’s voice cracks on the last word like he’s got a lump in his throat he’s trying to force down. “Please.”
Jason sighs. He starts the engine, puts the car in drive.
Dick isn’t okay, that much is clear. But Jason already promised he won’t tell, and he’s not about to break that by going to Bruce and demanding he do something to help his eldest son. It would go against everything he stands for, all the secrets Jason has already entrusted Bruce to keep. He would be a hypocrite to tell Dick’s story when he can’t even tell his own.
They drive in silence. Lamp posts pass in a blur, lighting up the car one after the other and making shadows writhe on the dashboard. Jason doesn’t comment when Dick raises a sleeve to wipe his eye. It figured that Jason would fuck this up, just like he does everything else. No one wants the Red Hood as a confidant. He can’t even do it for himself.
“It was Tarantula,” Dick whispers when they reach Main Street, breaking the stillness. “Catalina Flores raped me.”
Jason says nothing. Doesn’t even look at him.
Catalina Flores.
His hands tighten on the steering wheel until his knuckles crack.
Several mornings later, Dick is awoken to someone knocking on the door of his apartment. The sun hasn’t even risen yet and Dick only got off patrol less than two hours ago. He debates pulling the covers over his head and going back to sleep until he hears, “I know you’re in there, Dickhead!” Damn it.
With a sigh, Dick gets up and goes for the front door. This had better be important. He opens the door to reveal Jason, panting like he flew here in a rage. “Jay? What’s wrong?” Jason pushes past him into the apartment. “Dude, what the—”
“I was raped. As a kid.” He says it so boldly that the words take a few seconds to compute in Dick’s groggy brain. Jason’s teeth are clenched, his eyes narrowed in a glare that Dick can’t tell who it’s directed towards.
“You...are you serious?”
“You think I’d lie about something like that?”
“No, of course not. You just...you never said anything.” Sure, the Red Hood is known for his habit of slaughtering sex offenders with extreme prejudice, but Dick always assumed it stemmed from the horrors he witnessed during his time on the streets. For some reason it never occurred to him that Jason could be a victim himself.
“Not to
you.”
Jason sits down on the couch, his hands clasped tightly in his lap. “My mom blew all our savings on drugs and we had no income. I needed to do something if I wanted to keep us from starving to death, so if a couple rich dudes had a fetish for scrawny kids, then I did what I had to do. Most of them hurt me. Half of them wouldn’t listen when I called a time-out. And way too many weren’t even actual clients. They’d find me on the street, do what they wanted, and throw me a couple bills when they were done.”
Dick’s stomach churns. He can picture it so clearly, a young Jason Todd weak from hunger, so desperate to stay alive that he’d do whatever it took, even if it meant sacrificing his childhood. “Did your mom know?”
Jason shakes his head. “Even when she was there, she was never really
there.
She was too high to notice the marks on me or even question where I got the money to pay for her drug shit.” His gaze is fixed on the carpet, but Dick has a feeling he’s not actually seeing it. “Look, I’m not asking you to tell me what Tarantula did to you. If you want to keep it to yourself forever and never talk about it again, that’s fine. Do what you gotta do. I just wanted to make sure you know that even when it feels like nobody in this entire stupid family knows what you went through, I do.”
Dick doesn’t know what to say. “Wow, Jay. I’m so—”
“If you fucking apologize to me right now I’m gonna deck you so hard you see unicorns.” He stands up, and only now can Dick see blood splatters staining his jacket. He was so caught up with the shocking information that he never thought to wonder where Jason came from. “I just thought you had a right to know. Don’t go and make it weird, got it?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
“Good.”
Jason goes to leave, but Dick grabs his arm, stopping him. “Jason, what did you do?” He eyes the blood splatters on Jason’s jeans and in his hair, the odd sort of pride in his eyes.
Jason yanks his arm out of Dick’s grip and opens the door. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He closes the door behind him, leaving Dick with nothing but questions.
Hours later during breakfast, Dick opens the morning newspaper and sees right there on the front page: “Catalina Flores Found Dead in Home, Single Gunshot to the Head.”
With a deep breath, Dick drops the paper into the trash and goes about the rest of his day.