"jot down your dying wishes, hey. all of your dying wishes" based on this hc
It was rare for Dick Grayson to get a completely sane and calm week, but he can happily say that things had been going really well for him lately. He had just arrived at Wayne Manor after meeting up with his best friend, Wally West, when he came to realization that it was one, very late and two, almost abandoned.
Tim was very busy with his solo act as Red Robin, Jason was (as always) out may God know where doing God know what, Bruce had been on a business trip for a while now and Damian... Well Damian should be at the Titans Tower.
So it should be just Alfred and him. Though when he walked into the living room, he met, as suspected, Alfred, who wore a strangely concerned expression on his face. "Master Dick." The butler spoke up. "There's something you might want to see in the library. Perhaps you can deal with it."
And because of that, Dick quickly made his was over to the library, not really knowing what to expect, but it surely wasn't this.
The room was dark expect for a small yellow light of a lamp placed on the desk Damian Wayne was sitting by. He looked nothing like his usual appearence. His hair was messy, like he'd ran his hand through it about a dozen times, his brows were furrowed from stress, dark bags resting under his wide, green, but tired eyes, skin paler than the usual light brown tone of it.
Besides the concerning appearance of his younger-brother-slash-kind-of-a-son-figure, Dick also noticed the stack of books laying around everywhere. There must've been seven big, open books and thirty closed ones that definitly had been readen by the state they were left in. Some other books had simply been discared all around the place, as if they'd been useless. And Damian was probably the reason why.
Not seeming to have heard the older boy, Damian kept on reading, eyes scanning over the words on the large pages before quickly flipping it and settling on a new sentence, like he was in a hurry.
"Damian." Dick tried again. "What are you doing?"
Finally, the boy looked up, shocking his brother/father with the way he looked, now having a much better view at him then when he was looking down at his books.
"Dying?" Dick asked, eyebrows raising automatically. "What do you mean?" All Damian could do was groan a run a hand down his face. "I am sick." He explained. "Icredibly so. Painfully so."
"Do you have a fever? Do you need something?"
"I do not have a fever, Grayson. I am telling you, I am ill."
Suddenly, Dick's entire world froze, as if Doctor Manhattan had personally stopped time for him. Damian Wayne, the boy he had grown so close to during these past years, was sick and apparently dying.
This could not be happening.
Snapping out of his thoughts, Dick shook his head, refusing this information. "You must be mistaken, there has to be another explanation."
"You are not listening to me, Dick. There is no explanaiton." The boy glared down at his books like they had personally offended him. "I have looked everywhere, searched in every book in the neighbourhood as far as coming all the way to this Manor in hopes to find a book that can tell me what my condition is, but they have all failed."
"Damian, how long have you been researching this?" The older boy asked, genuinly wanting to know as this was starting to seriously worry him. "Have you even slept?"
"I cannot sleep, Dick! That is the problem! One of the many! I cannot sleep, I cannot even rest, I have tried but my mind will not let me!"
Damian's throath bupped, gulping the nerves down to calm himself and try to lay it out slowly. "There's a good possibility that I have Cardiotoxins, because of the way my heartbeat has been speding up and I find it hard to breath sometimes, but when I looked into more toxins, I also found out I could relate to Neurotoxins, which would explain the weakness I have felt in my knees and the abdominal fluttering in my stomach, which would be caused by mild nerve agent interfering with muscle control and the autonomic nervous system. Though, sometimes I feel that my mouth is really dry and it gets hard to speak, too, so that could be Anticholinergic Syndrome."
"So what you're saying is that you've been poisoned?" Dick figured, already thinking of people to ask for finding of an antidose.
"Well that is what I thought at first, but then I came across something called Anisakiasis or Internal Parasites, that could be causing the knots and the sick feeling in my stomach. Though the painful pangs in my chest could also be Splenic Infarction or Ulcers."
God, was he really in that much pain? Hearing all of this was starting to actually scare Dick, but it also confused him, because he'd been by Damian's side a lot lately, and he had never noticed him being in such trouble.
"When I came here, I found books about more serious conditions, such as Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopia. I might have a genetic, underlying heart defect that is suddenly triggering dangerous ventricular tachycardia, or, as you would call it: a dangerously fast heart rate, under specific environmental triggers." Damian continued, like Dick understood anything of what he just said (spoiler alert: he did not).
"But I am most likely to lead under a Glioma, which is an Early-Onset Brain Tumor. That would make sense, as I also have the symtoms, like zoning out, hyper-fixation, intrusive thoughts, and a loss of tactical focus. It is basically a brain fog, or a distraction as I would like to call it, as a tumor pressing on his frontal lobe."
Now Dick's world really turned upside down.
"You have a brain tumor? You have cancer?"
"That or Infective Endocarditis." He informed the man. But his concern didn't seem to easen at all, nor did he seem like he even understood the term.
The Robin stood up, walking around the table with a tired look on his face, now looking straightly at the older boy in front of him. "It's a serious bacterial infection of the heart valves. It causes shortness of breath, a rapid heart rate, and fatigue."
Yet, he still didn't seem to understand. I mean, he understands the ilness, he just doesn't understand how this could have happened. "Damian, howâwhen did this even start?" His response was a small shrug. "I do not know... I suppose I have felt it for a while, in a smaller form, without even being aware of it and... over time it has grown."
Thinking about it, Damian actually wondered if there was an exact moment it started, or just a moment when he felt something similiar to what he feels now in an early stage, even just the slightest feeling.
Yes... perhaps there was.
"I think it might've started when she hugged me for the first time."
Dick instantly blinked. "What?"
"I told you about that." Damian reminded him with a frown. "When father and I had a bad argument, and I was overstimulated after, she showed her very first act of kindness by hugging me, which she said West had informed her about. But that was when we were sixteen." And he was eighteen now.
"Wait, wait, wait." Dick shook his head, holding his hands out to stop the younger boy. "What are you talking about? What does Y/n hugging you have to do with you possibly having cancer?"
"Well," Damian started, then paused, then continued. "It started with her and it seems to only happen when she's around." But he caught himself. "No, it happens when I think of her, too. And I've been thinking about her constantly, it is becoming a problem. Or it already is. I cannot tell, because I hate it, but sometimes I find myself enjoying this."
Oh my God, Dick got it all wrong. How could he have gotten this wrong? I mean all those difficult symptoms Damian had been using, as the med student he is, were just fance terms forâ
"Damian." Dick called out. "What is it that you have been feeling exactly? And please explain it in a way I would understand."
Sighing, the Arabian boy began explaining. Again. "I am compromised. My body and brain are betraying me. My heart increases it's rating every now and then, like it's trying to break through my ribs, causing my chest to ache. I can hear it in my ears and it hurts. It provents me from breathing sometimes." He thought for a second before going on. "There's these tingelings in my stomach and my hands shake. My body never 'shakes', Grayson. Never."
"Panick attacks maybe?" He knew what Damian was talking about wasn't a panick attack, he just wanted to provoke more.
"No. I do not panick. And there's more."
"Like not being able to eat. I can't get myself to. Not at all times, at least, because there is something bothering me. And at night I lay awake, waiting for the sun to rise, because my brain will not let me fall asleep, and I am stuck staring at the ceiling with the moonlight falling right upon me, and I cannot help but let it remind me of her."
It was now Dick's heart was the one trying to break through his ribs, because hearing Damian talk like this was so foreign yet so... hearmelting. "Y/n?" He guessed, when Damian spoke the word 'her'.
"Yes." He confirmed. "It only happens with her. I'm completely normal one second and then she walks in and suddenly I get warm, like an overwhelming kind of warm, and my mind starts racing, my palms start sweating, my eyes refuse to avert themselves from her, I expierence this weird fluttery feeling in my stomach, too, if I had not already mentionned that before." He in fact did mention that already.
Though, he was not done yet. "And it is not just that." He spoke. "Last week, I woke up early and wandered through the halls of the Titans tower, heading towards the kitchen to eat breakfast so I would have enough energy for the training of the day. When I walked in, to my surprise, Y/n was already there, minding her own business, cooking breakfast. She was wearing a shirt that was too big on her, my shirt, I had lend it to her after a long fight the night before. Her skin looked soft, her hair slightly messy but just perfect. She looked so peaceful, like she belonged. I could not help but find it..." His voice trailed off, looking for the word.
"Domestic?" Dick guessed, and Damian's green eyes lit up, nodding. "Yes. Domestic."
Dick knew exactly what Damian must've felt like. He'd felt the same way when he first saw Kori all settled in after moving in together.
"She had prepared tea. Atay, to be exact. Sweet atay. But there were two glasses." Damian continued, his voice sounding distant, like he was reliving the memory in his head. "When she noticed me, she didn't widen her eyes, she didn't even blink. She just shoved the glass towards me, like she had set it there for me, like she knew I'd be there, like there weren't other people living with us. And as she spoke to me... I don't know what happened Iâmy mouth went dry, my tong got tied and I... I went mute. I could not respond, no matter how hard I tried. I found myself to be a fool, humiliating myself in front of her. And I did not know why I cared so much that it was her watching me freeze."
He took a deep breath, like it was getting harder for him to talk about it. "And then today... I was just in the living room, she, Anders and Logan went on a mission. Me and Roth had stayed behind."
Grayson had to admit, it would never get weird to hear his brother/son refer to his girlfriend by her last name, yet he listened, because his heart was melting, and his body was warming, and he was just so... happy.
"When they came back, they were wounded. Minor wounds, but still wounded. Y/n was bleeding out. She shouldn't have, she's stronger than both of them combined, but she put herself in danger to save your girlfriend. I don't know what happened, I just felt so allarmed. Scared, even. I do not get scared, I didn't know what was going on but I must admit, I had never felt as concerned for anyone but her." He stayed quiet for a second, not being able to believe he was actually saying all of this, yet he went on, because deep down, he felt like Dick was the only person he could talk to about this.
"As stubborn as she is, she ignored it, brushed it of as nothing." His jaw clenched. "I couldn't ignore it." Another confession. "I found her on the balcony, after a small dissagreement, I got her to let me take care of the wound. The cut went lower than I had expected so... I mean... I had never seen her in just a camisol before." His light brown cheeks now started to flush, a pink color covering them.
"My mind betrayed me yet again, because I could not prevent it from thinking that she was the most beautiful sight I had ever laid my eyes on."
That certainly wasn't what Dick had expected. He'd thought that Damian, like many other boys, would have thougth of it in a more... innapropriate way, but Damian looked at you and saw you for what you could not see, and somehow, that made Dick feel proud.
"I cleaned her wounds and wrapped them up, and we talked. The moon shone on her skin and I could not look away. And then, she surprised me with something I had never seen before... She smiled at me." His breath caught in his throat, like even now, he couldn't believe it. "She smiled." The boy repeated.
"I did not know she was capable of doing so. Nor did I know she was capable of becoming even more divine than she already is and always has been, but when her lips tilted up, just for me... I felt like perhaps I could die right that second and return to the death with euphoria."
Is it weird that Dick Grayson was getting a bit emotional over this? Because he couldn't lie and say his eyes were not getting glossy and his heart was not gonen malfunction from the way it was banging against his ribs.
"She left to see Wally not long after, and I... I knew then that I was compromised. I headed straight to my room and looked for all the medical books I posessed because what I felt in that moment is not normal, Grayson. My mindâmy heartâI could notâI can not breatheâ" Damian's hand met his forehead as his knees buckled, the overwhelming feeling he'd expiereneced many times hitting him like a ton of bricks now.
"I do not know what is going on with me, and I do not know why Y/n is the center of it all, nor do I not know why it hurts so much, and God strike me down, but I do not know why it feels so addictive."
Scrunching his nose, snapping out of his trance, Dick rubbed his eye, finally speaking up again. "You're not sick, Damian. And you're not dying. It's not some weird condition that is making you feel like this, it's Y/n."
The black haired boy's eyes widened. "Yes, of course. Do you think she poisened me?" His brows furrowed. "God, she is so immatuâ" "No, Damian, she didn't do anything to you. No one did. It's you! You're the one causing this."
At that, Damian paused, a puzzled look finding his face. "I do not think I understand."
"Damian." Dick said. "Don't you see?"
He certainly did not see it.
Now, remember when I said Dick felt like Doctor Manhattan had stopped the time around him and his world turned upside down when he thought that Damian might?
That is what Damian felt like right now.
"I don'tâ" "You're in love with Y/n."
His brows only furrowed more now, like he simply couldn't make any sense out of that sentence. "No. No, no, you've got it wrong. I hate Y/n. I have for years."
"There's a thin line between love and hate, Damian."
"No." He dismissed it, tone harsh. "There isn't. You either hate orâwhatever it is you wish to call that piece of propaganda. I have hated Y/n from the moment I actually knew her."
"You did. And you did for a long time. But remember what you told me about her hugging you? That was your turning point."
"Yes you are. I am the grandson of Ra's Al Ghul, heir of an elite league of assassin, trained like one from the moment I was born, I do not love!"
Noticing his sudden outburst, Damian cleared his throath, calming himself down. "I do not have 'feelings' for Y/n. I have Pheochromocytoma."
Dick raised an eyebrow. "Is that something you just came up with?" He asked, arms folded over his chest. "No. I have thought my symptomes through again and came to the realization that Pheochromocytoma is the most fitting condition for it." Damian stated, set on his conclusion.
Damian cleared his throath. "I have a rapid heartbeat.My heart cannot maintain a proper rhythm."
"That's normal. When you like or love someone, your body gets excited before your brain gets the chance to catch up. Your heart speeds up because you're emotionally invested."
"That is most unlikely. It would also not explain the trembling. I am always stable, and late I have not been anymore. My hands shake, my feet tapâ" "Because adrenaline doesn't just make your heart race, it gives you that shaky feeling too. People get it all the time when they're excited or nervous."
Damian looked offended to say the least. "I do not get nervous. It is an unecssary flaw. Nor do I get 'excited'." Before Dick could speak again, the younger boy beat him to it. "Explain the headaches. What could 'love' possibly have to do with that?"
"Well, You spend all day thinking about one person and then wonder why your head hurts. How would that be?"
"I do notâ" He stopped himself, knowing he had already admitted to thinking about you constantly, so resisting would not be very convinsing. "Shortness of breath." He instead said. "I cannot breathe normally anymore. It is either to fast or unable to come out of my lungs. Sometimes it even catches in my throat."
"It happens to people all the time. Strong feelings can make you tense up without realizing it. Then suddenly you're overthinking how breathing works. Or you forget how to do it by the intimacy ofâ"
"Breathing comes naturally. There is no need to overthink it. There is no intimacy between me and Y/n either, and one annoying person cannot make me forget how to breathe."
The boy clenched his jaw, seriously starting to get frustrated. "Anxiety." He confessed. "I feel uneasy. Perhaps... unsure sometimes."
The Nightwing could only sigh. "That's what happens when someone matters to you. You start caring about things you normally wouldn't. You start overthinking, wanting everything to be perfect, scared to mess up."
He cant't believe he's still going on with this butâ "What about the Insomnia?"
"When people are excited about somebody, their brains don't always know when to shut up. They lie there replaying conversations, imagining future ones, thinking about that person in such incredible ways, wondering what they're doing, what they like, what it would be like if they were there with them, perhaps how they would act if they were more than what they are now, if they could do everything their hearts secretly desire." His blue eyes met green ones.
"Next thing they know it's three in the morning."
And Damian fell a pang in his chest, because shamefully so, that is exactly what he has been doing. His eyes drifted away, jaw clenching again, an uneasy feeling taking over him.
Yet, he still tried, still tried to deny it. "None of that would explain my loss of appetite."
"It's not very common, but it happens."
"You cannot possibly be suggesting every symptom I list is somehow related to your absurd fictional theory."
"No. I'm just explaining everything you're lsiting because you're 'symptoms' are signs of being in love. Strong feelings can throw people off their normal routine. Sometimes they're too distracted to notice they're hungry. Sometimes they're nervous. Sometimes they're so focused on one person that everything else gets pushed into the background. And sometimes, they're just so scared that they simply cannot get themselves to eat."
"I have told you before: I do not get scared."
"Then when was the last time you finished a full meal?"
Suddenly, Damian fell still, not knowing what to say, because he himself had no idea.
Dick didn't get an answer, and that was enough of an answer to him.
"IâI have concentrating difficulities." He tried again. "My thoughts become... distracted."
"Because your brain prefers to focus on things it finds important. People in love get distracted by the person they're thinking about all the time. She is important to you, perhaps the only important thing to you. She's all you truly want to think about."
"I do not want toâ "You're probably also hyperaware of everything you do around her, because little things stand out more, your brain pays extra attention and you don't want to be seen as a fool by her."
That got him quiet. Just for a secon. Because Damian Wayne always had to have the last word. "Why?" Wow. Process. He didn't deny, he just wondered why.
"Because it thinks Y/n is important."
"Then my brain must be stupidly mistaken."
Despite Damian's stuborness, Dick smiled. "Your brain's actually way ahead of you."
"A tendency toward irrational concern."
"What you mean to say is that you care about her."
Stubborn as he is, Damian folded his arms over each other near his chest, looking away from the man in front of him. "I do not."
"Oh. So you don't care that when I was with Wally, and Y/n happened to be there too, she said her shoulder was hurting, so she went to the emergancy departement with Artemis."
And oh did Dick notice the way Damian's eyes shot back to him in an instant.
"What do you mean? Was she bleeding again."
"She's fine Damian." Be then, a mischievous thought appeared in his mind. "Surely because of the 'hot nurse' that took care of her."
Damian fully turned back to him now, an expression Dick had never seen before resting on his face. "Did she say it like that?"
"Yes. She also said that his touch was very soft and tender."
"He touched her?" The boy asked, poison laced in his tone. "Well of course, he had to take care of the wound."
"There was no need for a 'soft' touch. He just had to move quickly. Did Y/n really say that he is 'hot'? That is very unlike her, surely admitting such pathetic thing, too. She would not fall for a stranger. She is not stupid. In fact, she is the smartest person I have ever known. She doesn't know anything about him, perhaps he is too old for her, and if she were to start 'somehting' with him, he'll be a total dissapointement, like he won't know anything about Dominic Fike or he won't be into anything else she is, and he won't know how she likes her atay or her lehdes, because she doesn't like to much pepper in it, nor too much vegetables, and they have to be cut small into small pieces, not big ones, but the lehdes always needs lots of salt, which he wouldn't know nor care to ask like I did. He probably doesn't even know how to make lehdes, he'd just throw everything into the pot and let her chew on rocksâ"
The boy in question stopped. "What?" He asked, clearly annoyed. "There is no handsome nurse. A kind, old woman took care of her. She's fine."
He blinked. Genuinly blinked. "Why would you say something like that?"
"To prove that I'm right about you caring."
"Well." Damian bit the inside of his cheek. "As you can see, I do not."
"And so my diagnosis remains unchanged. A pheochromocytoma."
"No, see, that wasn't agreement."
"It sounded like agreement."
"For my medical condition?"
"I am not in denial. And with that I am ending this useless converstion with my dying wishes... Make sure my animals are taken care of. And that Y/n never meets another man again."
"You can't say that and expect me not to think you're in love with her."
He didn't get a response, just watched as Damian walked back to where his seat was, silence taking over the atmosphere of the room. Though, Damian didn't sit down, just stood there, arms folded, staring down at his book, but his angry expression was fading, and something interly else was replacing it.
"It doesn't matter if I do not hate her. She hates me. She always has."
Dick's head snapped towards the direction of the voice, eyes landing on Damian's tired face.
"Dick... You have to help me. I can't do this. Loving her. Not while I know she will never return the feelings."
Now, it was Dick's expresison that fell, stepping forward to be closer to his brother. "You don't know that."
"I have. And I know her well enough to know that she is just like you. So if you were able to hide your true feelings for so long, and if you were able to fall so deeply for a girl like her, what's stopping her from doing the same thing?"
Emerald eyes widened slightly, hope finding them. "You think so?"
Damian gulped, swallowing down the nerves. "She's everything to me, Dick." He breathed out with difficulity.
"She understands me in ways no one else does. She challenges me and she argues with me. She's cold and cruel and calm and yet she is so good to me. I have lately found myself loving it when we argue. And I love the way she sings along to Dominic Fike's music and only his music, like everything else just immediatly sucks. I love how she's the best fighter I've ever seen, and still has many other, unviolent talents. I love that she's so considerate, and she actually listens when people talk, trying to see from where they stand. Her writing is beyond anything I've ever read, and her knowledge is beyond anything I've heard of. And her eyes... They shine like stars. Like little constellations."
He knows he's rambling, he really does, and he sees why people would find this unecessary and out of the pocket for him, but he's been carrying this weight on his shoulders and bottling this up for almost two years now, and he was finally able to let it out.
"She's so perfect. I don't even know how it is possible. I just can'tâIâI don't want to mess this up, I'm just so scared, Iâ" Before he could out another word, Dick hugged him. It was out of nowhere, unexpected, but God had Damian needed this.
"If you love her, let her know." Dick muttered into Damian's shoulder. "Even if it's not immediatly by saying it, just be there for her. Every person has their own way of loving, and every person has their own way of wanting to be loved."
"How do I know how she wants to be loved?" The boy wondered.
"Trust me Damian." Dick smiled.
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ending lowkey sucks ASS like WHAT EVEN IS THIS??? but I'm getting tired and I have two exams tomorrow and I'm gonna kms so here you have the fic of the headcanon that is for some reason blowing up
song lyrics from the start is from DOMINIC FIKE'S 'What's For Dinner' (if anyone knows him from babydoll, white keys or mama's boy: get OUTTA here tiktok fakies! I'm a real fan and the biggest at that like I know EVERYTHING)
also, yes dick is like a father to damian in this so what? I personally love more them as father and son than brothers
besides dick admitted to wanting to adopt damian and wanting to be a father to him instead of letting him stay with bruce, which I thought was adorable
bro this fic is all about y/n and blud didn't even pull up
also, not proofread, sorryyyyy
OOH! ALSO! this is gonna be in my damian wayne book in like ten years or smt, it has only one chapter cause idk how to update on wattpad without my mom finding out anymore, but chapter 2 is being written and I'll figure something out so please go read đđđđâđđ and leave TONS of comments!!! (pun intended with the bat, also a dominic fike son btw)
