in which an intruder interrupts your morning with dickie.
( dick grayson x fem!reader x platonic!damian | fluff )
the morning sunlight filled your room with a beautiful warm glow—casting the right amount of light to give you a picture perfect view of your boyfriend sleeping right next to you. he looked so calm, so at peace, so comfortable, he was beautiful and you loved to remind him of that fact everyday.
“you’re staring” he muttered, his eyes still closed but his hand now rubbed up and down your waist while the other tangled itself within your hair.
“im not staring, i’m admiring” you corrected. he hummed, finally opening his eyes to see you already looking up at him with that smile on your face.
“good morning pretty” no matter how many times he’s called you that it never failed to make your face burn causing you to look away all shy and flustered. “give me a kiss” he chuckled, the hand that was tangled in your hair tugging softly to force your head up towards him.
“nuh uh, morning breath”
“pfft, that never stopped me, i’ve kissed your other lips after training” he said with a smug smile on his face. your eyes widen and your mouth opened to reprimand his sleazy comment yet your voice wouldn’t be the one to speak first.
“thats absolutely disgusting grayson” the both of you sat up rather quickly, both ready to defend the other from the unexpected intruder but there wasn’t no immediate threat, just damian wayne standing at the end of the bed with his arms crossed over his chest.
“what are you doing here?!” dick shouted.
“she promised to chaperone my trip today” you gasped, rushing out of the bed and into the connecting bathroom, grabbing random pieces of clothing on the way there.
“give me five minutes!” you shouted at the boy, slightly grateful for his interruption or else you would have completely forgotten.
“after training? seriously?” damian teased, a tiny smirk on his face.
summary; headcanons of your relationship with damian. request
wc; 750
ramblings; I don't really write headcanons so this was difficult to write, but it was also pretty fun.
Damian debated his feelings for a long time before confessing. When he finally made up his mind, he wrote a letter confessing to you and used his favorite shoujo manga as inspiration for how to ask you to be his partner.
He loves using you as a muse for his drawings and paintings. He probably has a whole sketchbook of you somewhere. He won't show it to you though.
Damian would definitely teach you at least a little Arabic and Chinese. And he will gladly learn the language you speak or that of your culture, if he doesn't already know it.
He likes to keep his relationship private, but not secret. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE who knows him knows you're his partner. He shows you off at any given opportunity and he's unapologetic about it.
He genuinely thinks about your future together constantly. He would respect any preference you have: whatever it is you want to study in college (or even not going and start to work straight out of high school), having children or deciding not to, getting married or simply living without that title. He doesn't care, he will support you as long as he can stay by your side.
He's a huge yearner. If for some reason you don't see each other for a few days or more, he starts writing letters that rival a woman writing letters to her husband who went to war.
Damian always takes you to his soccer games and makes you wear his jersey/number.
When he patrols, he asks you to sleep and not wait for him, but he secretly enjoys seeing you awake when he arrives.
He takes you to galas or uses you as an excuse for not going. But when you go, he entertains you with secrets about the guests because for some reason he knows everyone's business even if he claims he doesn't care, and you judge the outfits of old socialites.
You two definitely have a playlist together. He adds music that reminds him of you. And sometimes you catch him listening to it at ungodly hours in the middle of the night, whether it's because of patrol or because he falls asleep listening to the playlist.
If you steal something from his clothes (a hoodie for example), he will also do the same with your clothes, even if they don't fit him.
This is constantly overlooked but he's a deeply wounded boy. His mental state is not the best (unless we're talking about an adult Damian), so you were one of the reasons he decided to go to therapy and finally get treated professionally. He wants to be the best version of himself for you.
In addition to that, he has recurring nightmares. At first, he didn't want to bother you about it, but when you found out, he started calling you after a nightmare so he could hear your voice and calm down.
He has a lot of nasty scars. He isn't really insecure about them, but covers them up to avoid explaining. Eventually when you saw them, he was afraid that you would stop liking him. When that didn't happen, the trust he already had in you skyrocketed to +10000. And he really loves when you trace and kiss the scars.
Damian doesn't really post anything on social media but would do it for you, only if you ask. And you two have a streak on Tiktok. He takes it very seriously. I don't make the rules.
He isn't big on PDA but he can tolerate it. Although Damian prefers to show his affection in private, when you're in public, he's always by your side.
Almost every nickname he has for you are in other languages so most of the time you don't have ANY idea what he's calling you.
When he gives you gifts, they're always not only expensive but really thoughtful. He knows you so well it's almost scary.
Adding to the point above, Damian is obsessed. He loves you a lot. On one of your anniversaries, having been a couple for some time, he handwrote a whole book about you: things he has noticed about you, drawings of you, his favourite moments and memories with you, and reasons why he's in love with you.
• {content} dick only respond to you calling him baby
The apartment was quiet for a Sunday afternoon, save for the rhythmic humming of the washing machine and the faint scent of fresh linen.
You were currently knee-deep in folding the endless mountain of laundry on the bed. You grabbed the next item from the basket, held it up, and instantly stopped, staring at it in absolute disbelief.
It was a pair of Dick’s favorite boxers—or at least, what used to be boxers. At this point, the fabric was so worn down it was almost translucent, and there were two distinct, gaping holes near the seam. They were hanging on by a single thread and sheer willpower.
"Dick, are you serious?" you called out toward the living room, where your boyfriend was currently stretched across the rug doing his afternoon mobility routine. "Dick, come look at these!"
No answer. Not even a rustle of his sweatpants.
"Dick?" you said, a little louder, peeking your head around the bedroom door.
He was flowing smoothly from a deep hamstring stretch into a cobra pose, looking entirely serene and completely oblivious to your existence.
You blinked. You knew for a fact he wasn't deaf—the man had peak-human Bat-family hearing and could spot a footstep on a roof three blocks away. You opened your mouth to yell his name again, but then the realization hit you.
You had called him 'Dick.'
In the three years you’d been together, you almost never called him by his actual name. He was "babe," "baby," "honey," or, on particularly chaotic mornings, "sweetheart." Calling him Dick was practically a foreign language to his subconscious.
A mischievous grin spread across your face. You leaned against the doorframe, crossing your arms.
"Richard?"
Silence. He shifted into a shoulder bridge.
"Grayson?"
He sighed softly, deepening the stretch, completely locked into his own world.
"Officer Grayson?"
Nothing.
You took a slow breath, held up the shredded boxers like evidence in a court trial, and dropped your voice to its usual fond, affectionate tone.
"Hey, baby?"
Dick’s head snapped up instantly. His bright blue eyes locked onto yours, a warm, easy smile instantly spreading across his face.
"Yeah, sweetcheeks? What's up?" he asked, popping off the floor with effortless agility and strolling toward the bedroom. He leaned into your space, instantly tilting his chin down for a kiss.
You held up the holy pair of boxers right between your faces like a shield, staring at him with an amused, disbelieving look. "Are you serious right now?"
Dick paused mid-lean, blinking at the ruined fabric, then up at you like a confused puppy. "What?"
"First of all, these are going in the trash. Second of all, I just called your name four times."
"No, you didn't," he said smoothly, sliding his arms around your waist anyway. "I would've heard you."
"I said Dick."
He flinched subtly, screwing up his nose as if the word tasted weird. "See? Hearing it now, it doesn't even sound like a real word. Who is he? Sounds like a stranger. I don't know him."
"It is literally your legal name!" You laughed, reaching up to tap his cheek.
Dick gently caught your wrist, tugging you a little closer until your chest was resting against his.
"My name," he corrected softly, his voice dropping into that low, warm register he saved just for you, "is baby. Or babe. I also accept 'hey handsome' if you're feeling fancy."
"You're ridiculous," you murmured, though you couldn't stop the smile tugging at your lips.
"I'm a man conditioned by love," he declared heroically, pressing a soft kiss to the tip of your nose. "If you start calling me Dick, I'm going to assume I'm in trouble, or that Bruce is standing right behind me. Neither of those options are good for my heart."
"So if I need to save you from a falling building, I just have to yell 'Look out, babe!'?"
"Precisely," Dick grinned, kissing your cheek before eyeing the ruined boxers in your hand. "And for the record, those are vintage. They're aerated. It's tactical."
"They're going in the trash, baby."
"Fair enough," he sighed dramatically, wrapping his arms around you tighter.
summary: it's your borthdayyyyy and he wakes you up for your giftsss
warnings: u guys love to bicker as a love language, u accidentally hit him but is ok, google translate Arabic, you call Damian dam-it cuz I think that’s really fucking funny, Damian dresses u but it’s not an age play thing I hate age players, Damian Al-Ghul-Wayne, Talia included, Talia appreciated, Damian is a lil overprotective of you when it comes to his mother, objectifying Damian, Damian has unfortunately heard too many times that he has a milf and a dilf, dats it
For weeks now, Damian was acting weird. He was whispering into phone calls. He was turning his phone off when you leaned your head on his shoulder. When you brought him a cup of tea to the small library, he was shutting his planner before you reached his side. Your birthday was coming up, so you assumed he was just hiding a gift from you. He had always gotten a little more tense around your birthday.
His gifts were always thoughtful. A special limited edition version of your favorite book. A replica of your favorite stuffed animal you lost as a kid. Another bottle of your favorite lotion and its matching candle. A leatherbound journal he had custom designed with his art. They always made you coo and press kisses to his cheeks. Damian would scrunch his nose at your kisses and mumble about the simplicity of his gifts. You had a feeling he was always worried that his gifts were inadequate. So you’d always make sure to mumble about how much you loved the gift for the week after.
You were pretty sure you knew what he was getting you this year. For your recent seven-year anniversary, you went on a trip to Scotland. One day you both spent an evening in a cafe, and you had the most amazing tea of your entire life. When you got home, you and Damian spent weeks drinking through boxes of tea trying to find a dupe. You never succeeded and eventually gave up. It had been a long time since you had forgone the idea of getting another sip of that tea. But you knew Damian. He would spend years chasing something down just to make you grin and kiss his face. You were entirely certain that he would hand you his beautifully wrapped present and inside would be a tea that tasted just like that evening in Scotland. You were excited to finally have the tea tomorrow after months of searching.
You sighed as you settled down into your side of the bed. Damian glanced over the edge of his phone at you. You readjusted your blankets, patting down the fluffed covers. You pulled your phone from your bedside table. You opened your alarm app. Damian pressed his cheek to your shoulder, staring down at the screen.
“What time are you planning to wake up tomorrow?” Damian muttered. You hummed. You reached a hand up, pinching at his cheek.
“I was thinking of getting up early; I have to run to the craft store and a couple other things. So probably eight.” You said. You set your alarm, double-checking the time again. Damian tilted his head, pressing a soft kiss to your shoulder. He straightened up, staring down at his phone.
“I was thinking of getting up early too. I wanted to run to the gym before making your breakfast.” You nodded at his words. He always made you your favorite breakfast for your birthday. There wasn’t a minute of your birthday that he didn’t remind you how much he cherished you. “So probably like Four.” Damian finished. You froze, your mouth falling open. You tore your eyes from your phone. You stared at the wall across the bedroom like it might offer you support. The room was silent as you wrapped your head around his words. How dare he compare your times? Four and Eight were not the same early. He was psychotic. Damian tapped at his phone, likely setting his alarm for the ass crack of dawn.
“I can’t fucking stand you.” You muttered. You set your phone down on your bedside table. You clicked your lamp off. You leaned forward, puckering your lips.
“Yes, Habibi,” Damian responded. He leaned to the side, kissing you goodnight. You tried to pull away, only for Damian’s hand to pull you back by your chin. He kissed you again before pecking the corner of your mouth. You grinned, settling down into your sheets. You pulled the blanket up. You sighed as your head hit your pillow. You closed your eyes, ignoring the glow of Damian’s lamp.
After a few minutes, his phone finally clacked to his nightstand. He turned his lamp off. The blankets and bed shuffled around as he sank to his pillow. Damian finally sighed as he lay down, his breath hitting your face. You were grateful for the mint toothpaste. You felt his hand find your cheek, his thumb rocking back and forth under your eye.
“Happy Birthday-eve, Ya Ayni,” Damian whispered. You felt a grin pulling at your lips. You surged forward, poking your tongue out of your mouth. You licked the tip of his nose. Damian groaned. His hand left your face, wiping at his nose. You giggled evilly as you lay back down.
“Thank you, Dam-it.” You muttered, tugging your blanket closer. Damian scoffed as he settled onto his back, pressing one hand to his stomach. He slept like the dead. He was always on his back, and he was a deep sleeper. He’d only wake up for his alarm and you shaking him around. You tossed and turned constantly. Early in the relationship, he tried to cuddle you in your rest. He’d try to follow your movements and curve with your tossing. It only ended up with you elbowing him and Damian getting eye bags. So he gave up on that.
Instead, he’d keep a hand on you at all times. He’d find the contact one way or another. When you flopped onto your stomach, he’d press his hand to your back. When you switched over onto another side, he’d hold your shoulder. Sometimes you’d wake up to him holding your arm to his chest. You remembered Damian’s palm warming your wrist before you slipped into your dreams.
Your brain was swirling you around in storylines that made no sense. You vaguely felt the weight of Titus joining you both in bed, wrapping around your feet.
You could smell strawberry fields more clearly. There was sun poking at your eyelids as you twirled in the greenery. Bright red, mouthwatering strawberries called to you from under the soft green leaves. You leaned down, gently tugging at one. Just as the small stem broke, a hand wrapped into your hair. Your body startled, your eyes flying open. Only to find there was a hand pressed to your scalp and a face staring at you in the dark from the floor.
Your hand shot out, smacking the stranger in the face. They howled, falling back onto the ground. They cradled their face in their hands as they cowered on the floor. You yelled in fear, reaching over to flick on your lamp. You looked back to the form, slowly recognizing the slope of the shoulders and curls.
“Damian?” You asked. Damian lifted his head from the floor, his hand still hovering over his eye.
“Yes, Habibi. Good morning to you as well.” He grumbled. He gently tapped at his skin, frowning at the sting. You winced. You smacked your partner in the face. You cooed, reaching out for him. He leaned forward, gratefully letting you cradle his head.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was you.” You gently traced over the small red hue spreading across one cheek. You were starting to worry it might bruise.
“I had this weird dream. It was dark; it’s only-” Your eyes shot to the clock on your bedside table.
“It’s only tw-” You paused, looking back to the clock to make sure you read that right. A bright 2:35 blinked at you. You furrowed your brows, the softness from your voice slipping away.
“Why the hell are you waking me up at two in the fucking morning?” You snipped. Damian closed his eyes, sighing deeply. He pulled your hands from his face, gently kissing your palms.
“It’s your birthday,” Damian explained. You scoffed, rolling your eyes.
“Fuck that.” You flopped away from him, tugging your blanket back up. You squeezed your eyes shut, hoping Damian would shut off your lamp soon. Damian’s weight pulled at the edge of the bed, making you fall back into him. You glared up at him.
“My love.” He drawled out, his tone too sweet and husky for him to be doing it accidentally. You shook your head.
“No. You know I don’t get up before the sun. It’s rude to Mother Nature.” You complained. Damian shook his head, leaning into your space. He dragged his lips across yours, giving you a whisper of a kiss.
“Please.” You scoffed at his plea.
“You know how much you love chocolate pudding?” You ventured. Damian hummed.
“You don’t need to remind me of the pudding pool metaphor. I’m well aware.” Damian responded. He tipped his head down again, capturing your lips in a slow, sensual kiss. You sighed, following the pattern of movement he created. He poked his tongue at your bottom lip. You shook your head, pulling your mouth from his.
“If we had a pool of chocolate pudding and I was like ‘Go crazy, Dam-it, you can swim however long you want in this pool,’ and then ten minutes later, you were having the time of your life, I said ‘okay, you have to get out now; we’re draining the pool,’ How would you feel?” You rambled, digging your hands into his pajama shirt. Damian groaned, tilting his head back.
“I understand. You don’t want to be woken up. You will like this. I picked out your outfit; you just have to put it on. I’m driving. You don’t have to do anything.” Damian said, pulling your fingers from his clothes. He intertwined them with his.
“You’re putting me down like a dog.” You theorized. Damian glared at you.
“You will like this.”
“Promise?” You asked, squinting your eyes at him.
“I promise, Ya Ayni,” Damian whispered. He pressed a kiss to your lips, sealing the promise. You dropped your head back, groaning loudly. Titus lifted his head from the end of the bed. You looked back to Damian.
“Fine. But you’re putting my clothes on for me. I’m not supposed to be awake at this time, and it’s your fault.” You stated. Damian grinned, stepping off the bed and peeling you up by your hands.
Damian was gentle, sliding your clothes on, but the whole time he smacked his lips in disdain. You glared at him when he finished. He held onto your hand, leading you into the car. He didn’t turn on music as he started to drive. You didn’t mind it; it was probably good to talk so you could wake up.
“Where are you taking me?” You asked, peering out at the city lights flying by.
“Secret.”
“This is kidnapping. I’ll put my head out the window and scream stranger danger.” You said, wiggling your hand over the window button threateningly.
“You will not,” Damian grumbled. You stared at his side profile as you pressed your finger to the button. Your window slowly rolled down, hitting you in the face with cold Gotham air. Damian’s eyes snapped to you before looking back to the road. He rolled your window back up with his button.
“You’re infringing on my rights.” You scoffed, staring out the window with a grumpy face.
“You’re infringing on my good attitude,” Damian whispered back. You gasped.
“Damian Al-Ghul-Wayne and good attitude in the same sentence is preposterous.” You snapped. “You get pissy breathing.”
“I do not,” Damian said, pissily.
“You’re the one smacking the shit out of me for no reason.” Damian piped back. You rolled your eyes.
“That was an accident!” You scoffed. Damian hummed, pursing his lips.
“Tell that to my bruise.” You glared at him, even though you knew he didn’t catch it.
“Asshole.” You grumbled.
“Dickhead.” Damian muttered back, pulling into the Wayne Manor.
You gave him odd looks as he led you through the dark halls. You were knowledgeable about their late-night activities. Damian refused to work on holidays, which included your birthday. Yet being walked through the quiet halls of the manor at 3 in the morning was not the norm for you.
“You are killing me.” You whispered as he walked in front of you. He split the pure darkness with his phone flashlight. His hand was pressed behind his back, like he could sense whether or not you were following with his palm. A glare was shot at you over his shoulder. He looked forward again. He sighed as he reached the closed double doors to the dining room. He turned to the side, glancing at you before pushing the door open. Damian slipped into the darkness. You followed after him. The lights flashed on, a thousand voices screaming at you. You jumped, your eyes scouring over the room.
“Happy Birthday!” They called again. Dick, Jason, Tim, Bruce, Duke, Barbara, Stephanie, Cass, and Alfred were standing around the dining table. Your mouth dropped open. Good lord, what a load of people. You turned to the side, stealing a look at Damian. He shot one shoulder up at you in a half shrug. Your eyes were pulled from him as you were tugged into a hug by Dick. He was still in his suit, the dirt creating a cloud as you fell into his hug. You laughed and pulled away. You started to notice that just about everyone was still in their suits. Who else could say they had the real Nightwing and Batman at their birthday? Jason held a party hat out at you. You gratefully took it, slipping the cheap stretchy band under your chin. Damian joined your side again.
“I don’t remember verifying party hats, Todd,” Damian grumbled, glaring at the bright, pointy cardboard on top of Jason’s head. Jason pulled another from his stack, waving it at Damian.
“Don’t be a David Downer.” Jason sang. He tipped the hat forward, tapping it to Damian’s cheek. Damian’s nose scrunched up, swatting it away.
“I would never wear such a thing,” Damian mumbled. You pulled the hat from Jason’s hands.
“Yes, you will,” you countered, pulling at the strap. Damian tilted his head to you, allowing you to snap the band under his chin. You straightened the hat on top of his head.
“You’re a pain in my ass, Ya Anyi,” Damian grumbled. His hand reached out for you, gently rubbing his thumb over your skin.
“My birthday wish is that you aren’t so fuckign annoying.” You grumbled back. Damian curled his lips up in a snarl. He mockingly rocked his head back and forth.
“Bastard.” You whispered.
“Ass,” Damian mumbled, dropping his hand into yours. You gave him a soft smile, slipping into the green of his eyes. You couldn’t be more irritated by him, but you didn’t love anyone else in the world more. You were more than happy to complain about him until your last breath because it would mean he never left.
“I am late.” A smooth voice declared from far too close to your back. You startled, letting out a small yelp. You turned around, finding Talia staring at you from down her nose. You grinned awkwardly, letting out a chuckle.
“You are quiet.” You mumbled. Talia nodded.
“Well, my training-”
“Mother, you made it,” Damian said, pulling from your side. He fell into her arms, pulling her into a hug. You held back your coo, smiling tightly. You glanced at Bruce on the other side of the room. He was staring at her with his mouth slack. Jeez, he was a lost cause. You caught eyes with Dick, finding him mumbling with a grin to Jason. Gossip hogs. You turned back to Talia. Damian pulled from her hug.
“I did not want to miss your birthday,” Talia said, meeting your eyes. You straightened your back, squaring your shoulders back. You had met Talia multiple times over the years you had been with Damian. You had already spent many holiday dinners sharing elbow space with her by the time you were moving in together. It never made it easier, though. She never seemed exactly overjoyed that you were who her son decided on. She never seemed exactly disappointed either. You were pretty sure she was perfectly neutral on you. Damian returned to your side. Talia stepped forward, looking you up and down from the floor. You suddenly felt like you should’ve checked over what Damian put you in before you left. This was a lot for a box of tea.
“I brought you this.” She held out a neatly wrapped box. It was hardly bigger than your hand. The corners were pointed, and the edges were crisp. You giggled at the wrapping.
“I see where Damian got his wrapping skills.” You chuckled. Talia did not laugh. You glanced up at her face, feeling your mouth dry at the blank look she gave you. Damian’s hand gently pressed against the small of your back. You smacked him away.
“Don’t.” You grumbled. Damian tilted his head to invade your eyeline. He gave you a mocking look, whining to mimic your tone.
“Dickhead.” You whispered, your heart stalling when you remembered who you were standing in front of.
“Asshat,” Damian mumbled back, glancing over his shoulder at his chatting family. He was acting like this was casual. You were staring at the ground, realizing you were totally dead. You lifted your eyes from the gift, searching Talia’s face. Although to your surprise, she had actually cracked what you assumed was a grin. Though it could be discomfort. You weren’t totally sure. You shot her a smile and tore off the wrapping paper. You shoved it into Damian’s chest. He fumbled to hold your trash, dropping a small piece.
“Always making a mess.” You mumbled. Damian scoffed. Without the paper was a stunningly carved wooden box. It was stained a dark red, and you hadn’t seen a more intricate design.
“Talia, this is beautiful. I haven’t seen-”
“That’s just the box; open it,” Talia ordered, pointing her finger at it. Oh okay. Damian needed to shoot you now so you never had to think about this moment again. You nodded, looking back down at the box. Damian snickered next to you.
“I’ll gut you.” You snapped. Damian only chuckled harder.
“If you wish, Ya Anyi,” Damian muttered. You slowly pulled the wood lid off. You gently held it in your hands like it might shatter if you breathed too hard. You stared down into the box. A small shining blade was staring up at you from a black velvet background. Your mouth parted as you stared at the weapon. It wasn’t very big, but there were jewels embedded in the handle that caught the light of the Wayne chandelier. It looked like a knife someone would hide in a garter. Damian peeked his head over your shoulder, staring down into the box.
“Mother.” Damian ground out. You ignored him as you pulled the blade from the velvet, passing the wooden box to him. You cradled it in your hands, tracing over every small metal detail. The handle had carved vines into it that sprouted out jewel flowers. The metal had an almost pearl shine to it that fascinated you.
“I told you in advance, no weapons. They are a civilian; there is no need-” You cut Damian’s rambling.
“Talia, this is beautiful. I’ve never seen such a stunning knife.” You gaped, tearing your eyes from the blade to look at her.
“Dagger.” She corrected. You pressed your lips tightly together. Damian was definitely hers. He would rather choke than let you make a grammar mistake.
“Habibi-”
“Well, it’s lovely. These jewels aren’t real, are they?” you asked, turning to the side. You held the dagger above your head, twisting it in the light as you stared at it. Stunning.
“They are. You deserve such jewels; no need to fight me on it.” Talia said. You raised a brow, glancing at her in question.
“Damian has written about you struggling to accept gifts you deem yourself unworthy of.” You hummed disapprovingly, shooting a glare at Damian. He was staring at you with his mouth agape. You gave him a look of questioning before staring back at the dagger.
“I love it. I’m only not sure what to do with it.” You mumbled. You probably should’ve kept it to yourself. Talia hummed.
“I can get a stand for it, decor for your home?” You nodded at her suggestion.
“This would be very pretty in our library.” You whispered. You tilted it to the side, smiling at the way the gems pointed the light back at you. Damian reached up, gently pulling the knife from your hands.
“Mother, this was very kind, but we cannot-”
“To tell you the truth, I find a younger reflection of myself in you. I mirrored the design of the dagger after the first one I received. Obviously, we have led very different lives. I am happy for it, but I still believe that a good quality dagger is useful to most people. I think you know how to appreciate the finer things, even when they come in more…” Her eyes trailed to the floor as she searched for her word. “Off putting form.” She finished. You grinned widely. You nodded quickly.
“I’m honored.” You replied, tugging Damian closer to you by his shoulder. Damian was frowning down at the box. You gently placed the knife back into its home. Damian grumbled as he closed it. Damian spun around the table, setting down the intricate box. Talia drifted away from you, greeting the rest of the family. You were excited to know if she would be talked into a party hat as well. Damian turned back to you with a tightly wrapped box. It was taller and wider than Talia’s. He had to hold it with both hands, but it wasn’t large enough to not be tea. You smiled at him as he held it out for you.
You tore through the paper, tucking it under your arm. A bland cardboard box was revealed. You pulled at the top, finding a glass jar. You gently tugged it from out of the box, turning it in your hands. It had tea leaves filled to the top. You glanced at Damian.
“Is this what I think it is?” You asked. Damian raised a brow.
“That depends on what you think it is,” Damian responded. Alfred appeared next to you, holding a small teacup out at you. You took it from his hands, raising it to your lips. The warm liquid swept into your mouth. You were snapped right back into the cafe with Damian. You could feel the leftover foam on the corner of your lips. You could see Damian’s grin as he wiped it away. You could smell the fresh rain. You handed the cup back to Alfred, quickly pulling Damian into a hug. The box squished between the two of you. He dug his arms out from between you, wrapping them over your back.
“It’s perfect. I can’t believe you found it. It must’ve taken forever.” You muttered, burying your face into his shirt. Damian loosened his hold on you. You pulled away, grinning at him brightly.
“Anything for you, Ya Anyi,” Damian whispered. You pressed a kiss to his nose. Damian scrunched his face up. You finally gave the large family your attention. You spent about two hours with them. Alfred baked a cake that was amazing. Their laughs were so loud you could swear your eyes were ringing on the ride home. You were honestly excited to go back to bed. And in the real morning, with your special breakfast, you’d drink your tea. You’d definitely have to ask Damian how he found it. You wouldn’t be surprised if he flew to Scotland just to find it.
When the car finally stopped, Damian didn’t make a move for his seatbelt. So you sat with him. When he stared out the window in silence, you waited. When he let out a huff through his nose, you didn’t respond. When he dropped his head onto his hand resting on the door, you folded your hands in your lap. When he wrung the steering wheel, you felt the urge to whistle. You instead just tucked your lips.
“I don’t like that she gave you that knife.” Damian finally whispered. You sucked in a deep breath.
“Why?” Damian kissed his teeth at your word.
“It feels like she’s saying she wants you involved in all the violence business. What civilian needs a dagger?” Damian grumbled. He pulled at his hair, making it look even more slept on than it already did. You stared at the front door of your house. You’d kill someone to keep this house. If you didn’t die in this house, you were going to drag your half-corpse body to the front doorstep.
“No, I don’t think so. I think she was giving me her blessing.” You stated. You actually could kill for some ice cream. You’ll make a note to have it next year. Damian scoffed. You tore your eyes from the house, turning in your seatbelt. You stared at Damian, begging your half-asleep mind to focus on him.
“How did you figure that out?” Damian asked.
“She was going on and on about how I can appreciate nice things even when they come in more ‘off-putting forms’. That’s you.” You explained. Damian snapped his head to you in offense.
“That is not me.” Damian snapped. You raised a brow.
“Yeah.” You grimaced.
“No, it’s not.”
“I like that you’re a little pissy and off-putting.” You tried. Damian glared at you before pointing his nose at the window. You sighed, reaching over the console to rest your hand on his forearm. He turned to look back at you.
“Really?” He mumbled. You nodded. He sighed out of his nose. His other hand landed on top of yours.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do with it,” Damian whispered. You nodded.
“I’ll figure something out. And she said I reminded her of a younger her. I think that’s a compliment, right?” You said, looking out the window. Damian stayed silent. He didn’t hum in agreement. He didn’t even sniff. You shot your face back to him.
“Right?” Damian quickly nodded.
“Oh yeah. It’s a compliment.” He declared. You hummed in acknowledgement. Okay then. You were totally winning on this whole future-in-law thing.
“Pretty sure,” Damian added. You dropped your mouth open.
“You’re not sure?”
“I’m not even positive Talia is my mother’s real name, to be truthful with you,” Damian responded. You shook your head. You dragged your hand down his arm, sandwiching your hand between both of his.
You both sat in silence as you stared forward. Talia was really stunning. You were baffled by Damian’s looks when you first met him. When you met his parents, all the pieces clicked together. Human genealogy was really something else. Bless those hot people for making your hot boyfriend. You opened your mouth to finally break it. Damian held a finger up, silencing you.
“Don’t say it,” Damian muttered. You huffed, turning away from him. He waited for you to ignore his demand. You stayed perfectly silent, the tension rolling away from his shoulders.
“I was only going to say that I’m glad your parents liked each other so much 27 years ago. I’m quite appreciative of it, in fact.” You grumbled. Damian groaned, dropping his head against the headrest.
“Get out of my car.” He demanded, unbuckling his seatbelt. You scoffed.
“Don’t tell me what to do. I’ll get out when I want to.” You snapped. Damian leaned across your lap, pulling your gift bags from the floorboard under your feet.
“So you plan to sleep in the car tonight?” Damian asked. He pushed open his car door, sticking one foot out. You crossed your arms.
“You know what, maybe I will. We’ll see how you feel about sleeping alone.” You pursed your lips, glaring at Damian. He squinted at you.
“Okay.” He left the car, shutting the door behind him. The car’s lights turned off as you sat in your seat. You watched Damian’s back as he stepped closer and closer to the front door. You could do this all night. Damian glanced over his shoulder, raising a brow at you. Fuck him, seriously. He was evil.
You dropped your hand to the seatbelt. You pushed your door open, chasing after him. He snorted as you jogged to reach his side. He held his elbow out, letting you slip your hand through it.
“I missed your stupid face.” You grumbled. Damian hummed, pushing the front door open.
You finally woke up at the appropriate time, clicking off your alarm. You didn’t bother getting dressed. You only headed straight for the kitchen in your robe. Damian wasn’t there making your breakfast. But you found a note taped to the fridge. He’d be back soon after his run. Your gifts were there.
By the time your tea finished brewing, Damian was rushing through the door covered in sweat. He entered the kitchen behind you, his breath coming out in short huffs.
“Apologies, Habibi. I’m running a little behind. I’m going to rinse off and get started on your breakfast.” You turned around from the counter, taking your tea with you. You tried your hardest to keep your eyes glued to his face. You tried really hard not to stare at his sweat-soaked muscles, looking like a glistening Thanksgiving turkey. Damian pulled at the bottom hem of his t-shirt, dragging it over his face. You stared at his abdomen, shaking your head. Fuck this guy.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a crush on me.” You said. Damian froze. He dropped his shirt, furrowing his brows.
“Yes. We are dating. That is quite the norm, Habibi.” Damian explained. You sighed.
“Joke.”
“Ah.” Damian huffed. You nodded, dropping your eyes to your tea. Damian followed your look.
“What are you doing?” He asked. You paused, the bejewelled dagger’s tip stilling in your tea. It really made quite a great utensil. You were planning to use it to cut your breakfast too. You pulled the metal from your cup. You took a gentle sip, staring at Damian over the edge. You pulled it away, dipping the dagger back into your tea.
“Enjoying my birthday presents, Dam-it.”
gosh what a man right i miss him i wish he was like a person
request kungpaochicken15 how would the batfam react if they had a partner, but dies (up to your interpretation on how), and then, a person who comes to their earth looks like them (multiverse shenanigans) and they actually experienced the inverse (so like, their batfam partner dies in their world). like the vibe is angst and I will love you in every universe type thing. am I making sense??
content damian wayne x gender neutral!reader, multiverse, alternate universe, other universe reader, major character death, you die, lol, blood/injury, on page death, vomiting, emotional breakdown, survivor's guilt, suicide ideation, discussion of resurrection/lazarus pits, funeral scene, flashbacks, disassociation, depression, hurt/comfort, angst, panic attacks
word count 7.7k
masterlist | damian masterlist
No one had ever seen Damian Wayne break.
They had seen him bleed without complaint. They had watched him stitch his own skin closed with hands steadier than most surgeons, his mouth compressed into a pale, contemptuous line as though pain were merely another enemy too unimpressive to deserve acknowledgement. They had seen him poisoned, concussed, stabbed, shot, and once dragged half-conscious from the wreckage of a burning building with enough broken bones to leave Bruce white-faced beneath the cowl.
Damian had never cried. Not where anyone could see.
As a child, he had turned suffering into silence. As a teenager, he had sharpened that silence until it became something he could wield. By adulthood, he had learned how to smile without showing too many teeth and laugh without looking startled by the sound of it, but there remained parts of him that were guarded as viciously as the Cave itself.
Then there was you.
The family watched Damian meet you and did not understand, at first, that they were witnessing the beginning of his undoing.
It happened slowly. Quietly. In fractions too small to recognise until the shape of him had already changed. Damian began returning from patrol before sunrise instead of lingering on rooftops until his muscles stiffened in the cold. He stopped treating injuries as inconveniences and allowed Alfred to examine them because you had once looked at the blood soaking through his shirt and said, very softly, You do not have to prove you can survive everything.
He began carrying snacks in his utility belt that had no nutritional efficiency whatsoever because they were your favourite. He rolled his eyes whenever anyone pointed this out, but he never removed them.
He permitted your feet in his lap while you read on the sofa. He allowed you to interrupt his work, to touch his hair, to steal the blankets, to speak to him when he was angry and remain beside him when he could not find words gentle enough to answer.
You were the only person who had seen him wake from a nightmare with his hands already shaped around an invisible throat. The only person who knew he sometimes stood in the doorway of your shared bedroom simply to assure himself you were still there. The only person who could say his name in a way that made it sound like a life rather than a legacy.
To everyone else, Damian remained composed. Dryly amused on good days, insufferably arrogant on most, and frighteningly controlled whenever something went wrong.
With you, he was different. With you, he rested his head against your chest and listened to your heartbeat as though committing it to memory. He kissed the inside of your wrist where your pulse fluttered beneath the skin. He let you hold his face between your hands, let you see the fear he had been trained to murder before it could fully form.
He told you things he had never said aloud. That sometimes he worried love was simply another weapon someone might eventually use against him. That he did not know how to be gentle without feeling exposed. That every good thing he possessed seemed temporary, and he had spent most of his life braced for the hand that would rip it away.
You had kissed the crease between his brows.
“Then we’ll be temporary together,” you whispered. “For as long as we get.”
He had hated the answer. He had held you tighter because of it.
Years later, when the universe finally came to collect, Damian remembered those words with such perfect clarity that he wondered whether some cruel part of you had always known.
The mission was supposed to be routine. That was what they always said after disasters, as though tragedy were more offensive when it arrived without proper ceremony.
There had been reports of unstable energy beneath Gotham’s east end. Strange electrical storms in cloudless skies. People vanishing from one street and appearing several blocks away with no memory of crossing the distance between. Windows reflecting rooms that did not exist. Shadows moving a heartbeat out of time with the bodies that cast them.
Tim had called it a spatial fracture. Bruce had called the entire family in.
You had insisted on coming. Damian had objected, which meant the argument lasted nearly twenty minutes and ended with you standing in the Cave in your suit, arms folded, watching him grow increasingly furious because neither of you was willing to admit the fury was fear.
“You are not invulnerable,” he snapped.
“Neither are you.”
“I possess considerably more training.”
“And I possess the specialised equipment Tim needs carried into the fracture zone.”
“Drake can carry his own equipment.”
Tim, who had been standing three feet away, wisely pretended not to hear.
You stepped closer to Damian. His jaw was tight enough to ache, and his gloved hands flexed at his sides as if he wanted to grab you, shake you, or pull you against him until the world reconsidered its plans.
“I’m going,” you told him. “You can either spend the mission fighting beside me or waste it fighting with me.”
His eyes narrowed.
You lifted a hand and pressed two fingers to the centre of his chest. “I’ll be careful.”
“You say that as though the universe has ever rewarded caution.”
“Then you’ll just have to watch my back.”
“I always do.”
The answer came too quickly. Too honestly.
Your expression softened, and Damian hated that too because tenderness made him feel as though his ribs had been pried open.
You leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth. It was brief, little more than a promise pressed into skin. “Come on, Robin.”
He followed you because he always did.
He would spend the rest of his life wishing he had locked you in the Cave.
The fracture was beneath an abandoned rail terminal, buried deep under rusted tracks and old Gotham stone. By the time the family reached its centre, the laws of reality had begun to buckle. The tunnel stretched and contracted around them. Concrete flickered into marble, then steel, then something wet and organic before snapping back into place. Their comms filled with voices that sounded like their own but spoke words no one had said.
Damian heard Bruce shout his name from somewhere behind him. Then from somewhere ahead. Then in his own voice, directly beside his ear.
He turned and saw himself standing at the end of the tunnel. Older. Bloodied. Dead-eyed.
The apparition vanished before he could raise his sword.
“Do not engage with anything you see,” Bruce ordered through the static. “Stay focused on the device.”
Tim’s stabiliser had to be anchored at four points around the fracture. Once activated, it would force the overlapping realities apart and seal the breach. Simple in theory. Catastrophic if mistimed.
Damian remained at your side as the others separated.
He could hear your breathing through the comms. Quick, but controlled.
He counted every inhale.
One.
Two.
Three.
The tunnel shook. A fissure of white light split the air in front of you, and for half a second, Damian saw another Gotham on the other side. Its skyline burned green beneath a violet sky. Wayne Tower had been cleaved in half. The Batsignal shone upside down through the clouds.
Something moved within the opening.
A figure in black and red.
Damian’s own face looked back at him. This version was smiling.
Then the fracture collapsed inward with a sound like a scream being swallowed.
“Anchor three is placed,” you said.
Damian released a breath. “Return to my position.”
“I’m ten metres away.”
“Return to my position.”
There was a pause.
Under any other circumstances, you might have teased him. Instead, you only said, “On my way.”
The stabiliser activated before you reached him.
Tim shouted something through the comms. An error. A power surge. One of the anchors had been compromised. Damian never learned which words came first because the world erupted around him.
The fracture expanded. The tunnel disappeared into white.
Damian felt the ground leave his feet. He saw pieces of other worlds overlapping one another in impossible layers: the Manor abandoned and choked by ivy; Gotham flooded to the rooftops; Bruce kneeling in an alley over the bodies of two children; Dick wearing a cowl that had never belonged to him; Jason laughing at a kitchen table with white in his hair and a baby on his knee.
Then he saw you.
A thousand versions.
You, beside him at the altar. You, holding his hand in a hospital room. You, old and silver-haired beneath a flowering tree.
You walking away. You dying. You killing him. You cradling his body and screaming.
Damian reached for you.
The stabiliser’s central core tore loose from its housing. It came towards him like a meteor, metal burning blue-white, fast enough that even his reflexes could not save him. His body twisted, but there was nowhere to go. The fractured air held him suspended.
He saw it coming. He understood, with perfect clarity, that he was about to die.
Then you hit him from the side.
Your shoulder struck his chest. The force threw him beyond the core’s path, and for one suspended, eternal second, your eyes met.
There was no time for words. Only the widening of your eyes. Only Damian reaching. Only the stabiliser core passing through the space where your body had been.
The light vanished.
Gravity returned.
Damian struck the ground hard enough to crack his shoulder. Dust filled his mouth. His ears rang. Somewhere, Tim was shouting that the fracture was closing.
Damian pushed himself upright.
You lay several metres away. Too still. There was blood beneath you.
At first, his mind rejected the sight. It sorted the details without understanding them—the angle of your arm, the ruined section of your armour, the dark pool spreading through the dust.
You could not be dead. The thought was not denial. It was fact.
You had kissed him less than an hour ago. You had promised to be careful. You were temporary together, but this was not long enough. This was not what the words had meant.
Damian crawled to you. His damaged shoulder screamed. He did not feel it.
He turned you over with shaking hands and saw the wound. “No.”
The word was quiet.
Almost calm.
Your eyes fluttered. For one delirious second, hope detonated inside him.
“Damian,” you breathed.
“I am here.” His hands moved over you, searching for pressure points, for something to bind, something to repair. There was too much blood. It slipped between his fingers, hot and impossible. “Do not move. Father is coming. Drake will stabilise you.”
You looked at him.
Not at the injury. Not at the blood.
Only him.
“Are you hurt?”
His breath caught. “You—” His voice fractured. He forced it steady. “You do not concern yourself with me.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
It was a lie. It did not matter.
Your face softened. “Good.”
“Do not.” Damian pressed both hands against the wound. “Do not speak as though— You will conserve your strength.”
You coughed, and blood touched your lips. Something primitive tore through him.
“Father!” Damian screamed.
The tunnel had gone silent around them.
Bruce was already running. Dick was behind him. Tim stumbled through the dust, mask cracked, one hand clamped around his ribs. Jason emerged from the fading light with his helmet missing.
They all saw you.
They all stopped.
Damian understood their expressions. He hated them.
“No,” he said, louder now. “Do not look at them that way.”
Bruce dropped to his knees beside you. His hands replaced Damian’s, pressing hard against the wound, but Damian would not move away. He held your face. His thumbs smeared blood across your cheeks.
“Stay awake,” Bruce ordered.
You barely seemed to hear him. Your gaze remained fixed on Damian.
“I love you,” you whispered.
His entire body went cold. “No.”
“I love you.”
“You may tell me when we return home.”
“Damian.”
“That is an order.”
You smiled. It was small. Trembling. It was the smile you used when he was being impossible and you loved him anyway.
“You never could order me around.”
“Then I am asking.” His voice shook despite everything he did to control it. “Beloved, I am asking you.”
Your fingers twitched against the floor.
Damian caught your hand and pressed it to his mouth. You breathed in.
You did not breathe out.
For several seconds, Damian continued holding your hand.
Bruce’s hands had stopped moving.
No one spoke.
The fracture sealed itself with a distant, thunderous crack, and the tunnel became only a tunnel again.
Damian stared at your face.
He waited. Your eyes remained half-open, fixed on nothing.
“Continue,” Damian said.
Bruce looked at him. “Damian.”
“Continue compressions.”
Bruce’s mouth tightened. “Damian, the damage—”
“Continue.”
“There’s nothing—”
“Do not tell me there is nothing.”
The words came out low and deadly. Bruce did not flinch.
Damian grabbed his wrist and dragged his hand back towards the wound.
“You have survived worse,” Damian said. “Todd has survived death itself. There are Lazarus Pits. There is magic. There are alien technologies capable of cellular reconstruction. We will take them to the Cave and determine—”
“Damian,” Dick whispered.
He reached towards him.
Damian struck his hand away. “Do not touch me.”
Your hand was growing colder in his.
He looked down at it. His mind supplied the biological reasons automatically. Circulation had ceased. Heat was dissipating. Muscles would slacken before stiffening. Cells were already dying from oxygen deprivation.
He knew death. He had been raised by people who dispensed it. He had watched it happen in a hundred different ways. He knew exactly what it looked like.
“No,” he said again.
This time the word collapsed. His chest seized.
He pulled you into his arms so abruptly that Bruce nearly fell forward. Your head rolled against his shoulder. Damian adjusted it with unbearable gentleness, tucking your face into the space beneath his jaw as though you had merely fallen asleep.
“Wake up.”
No response.
“Beloved.”
Your blood soaked through the front of his uniform.
“Wake up.”
His voice rose.
The sound that tore from him next did not resemble language. It was not a sob. Not yet. It was something rawer, dragged from a place beneath speech, beneath dignity, beneath everything the League had trained into him. Damian curled around your body and screamed until the tunnel threw the sound back at them.
Dick covered his mouth. Jason turned away. Tim sank to the floor.
Bruce remained beside his son with blood on his hands and helplessness hollowing his face.
Damian screamed your name. He screamed at you to wake up. He screamed at Bruce to do something. He screamed at the sealed fracture, at the universe, at God, at every dead ancestor who had ever claimed Wayne blood was destined to suffer.
His body began to shake. Not delicate tremors. Not tears slipping quietly down a composed face. His entire frame convulsed so violently that your armour rattled against his. He clutched you tighter, one hand locked behind your neck, the other fisted in the ruined fabric at your back.
“No, no, no, no—”
The words fell apart beneath his sobs.
No one had ever heard Damian sob. They had not known he could make sounds like that.
He bent over you, forehead pressed against yours, and wept with his mouth open because he could not breathe through the grief. Tears poured down his face unchecked. Saliva and blood shone at his lips. Every attempt to draw air ended in another broken cry.
Bruce reached for him. Damian tried to shove him away, but there was no strength in it.
“You were supposed to save them,” he choked out. The accusation struck Bruce like a blade. “You save everyone. You always— You were supposed to—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do not apologise.” Damian’s voice became a shriek. “Fix it!”
Bruce said nothing.
That silence was the final confirmation.
Damian looked at you again. Your face had gone slack against him.
He made a small, wounded sound, then turned abruptly and vomited onto the tunnel floor.
His body heaved until there was nothing left. He never released you. Even while choking, even while Bruce braced a hand between his shoulders, Damian kept one arm locked around your body, as though loosening his grip would permit death to take something it had not already stolen.
When the spasms stopped, he sagged over you.
His forehead rested against your chest. There was no heartbeat beneath his ear.
For years, he had listened to it in the dark.
Now there was only silence.
They had to sedate him to remove your body from his arms.
Jason was the one who finally did it.
Bruce could not. Dick could barely stand. Tim had disappeared into the Cave’s laboratory, already searching for answers no one had asked him to find.
Jason knelt in front of Damian while he rocked on the floor of the transport, your body held against his chest.
“Demon,” Jason said quietly.
Damian did not react.
Jason swallowed. “Little brother.”
Damian lifted his head. His eyes were swollen nearly shut. Blood had dried across half his face. There was vomit on his uniform and a smear of red beneath his mouth where he had kissed your forehead again and again during the journey home.
“They will be cold,” Damian whispered.
Jason’s expression crumpled. “I know.”
“They dislike the cold.”
“I know.”
“I must take them upstairs.”
“You can’t.”
Damian’s arms tightened.
Jason glanced at Bruce. Bruce looked away.
“Damian,” Jason said. “You’re hurt. Let us help.”
“I am not leaving them.”
“No one’s asking you to.”
“You are.”
The tranquiliser entered Damian’s neck so smoothly that he did not feel the needle.
His gaze flicked towards Jason’s hand. Betrayal moved over his face.
“You—”
“I’m sorry.”
Damian lunged. His body failed him halfway.
Jason caught him as the sedative took hold, absorbing the first furious strike and then the second, weaker one.
“No,” Damian slurred. “No, give them back. Give—”
His knees buckled.
Bruce caught your body. Jason caught Damian.
Damian fought even as consciousness left him, his hands clawing towards you, his mouth shaping your name.
Then he went limp in his brother’s arms.
Jason lowered his face into Damian’s hair and cried.
The funeral took place beneath a grey sky.
Damian did not cry. The family had expected him to. They had prepared themselves for another collapse, though no one knew what preparation could possibly mean. Dick remained close enough to catch him. Bruce watched every movement. Jason had removed all weapons from Damian’s room without mentioning it.
But Damian stood beside your grave perfectly still.
His face was blank. His hands were clasped behind his back. Anyone who did not know him might have called the posture dignified.
His family knew it was the stance he used when awaiting punishment.
When the service ended, everyone left except him.
Rain darkened his suit. It gathered in his hair and traced cold lines down his face. He stood before your grave until the soil became mud and the flowers bowed under the weight of the water.
Bruce returned at dusk. “Damian.”
Damian did not turn.
“You’ll become ill.”
“I am aware.”
“Come inside.”
“No.”
Bruce stood beside him.
For several minutes, there was only rain.
“I should have stopped them from coming,” Damian said.
Bruce closed his eyes. “This was not your fault.”
“They were only present because I failed to persuade them.”
“They made their own choice.”
“They chose to save me.”
“Yes.”
“I should have been faster.”
“You could not have been.”
“I should have anticipated the core’s trajectory.”
“No one did.”
“I should have died.”
Bruce’s head snapped towards him.
Damian continued staring at your name carved into stone. “They would have survived had I not been there.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I saw the path. It was intended for me.”
“They chose to push you out of it.”
“They made the incorrect choice.”
Bruce grabbed his shoulder.
Damian turned with sudden violence, knocking his hand aside. “Do not.”
“They loved you.”
“Then they should have allowed me to die.”
Bruce recoiled as though Damian had struck him.
The rage vanished from Damian’s face as quickly as it had appeared.
What remained was worse. A terrible, exhausted emptiness.
“They would have survived,” Damian whispered. “They would still be here.”
Bruce’s voice failed before he forced it steady. “And you would not.”
“That is the point.”
Grief did not make Damian kinder.
It made him precise.
He returned to patrol eleven days after your death and broke three men’s bones before Bruce ordered him back to the Cave. He dismantled criminal operations with the cold efficiency of an executioner. He stopped speaking unless information was required. He slept less than two hours a night and woke from those hours with your name tearing out of him.
He could not enter the bedroom you had shared. The first time he tried, he made it three steps past the door.
Your clothes remained folded over the chair. A mug sat on your bedside table with the faint print of your mouth still visible on its rim. Your book lay open, facedown, exactly where you had left it the morning of the mission.
Damian stood in the centre of the room. He stared at the depression your body had left in the mattress.
Then he folded to his knees.
The family found him an hour later with your pillow crushed against his face, shaking so hard he could not speak.
After that, he slept in the Cave. Sometimes in the chair beside the Batcomputer. Sometimes curled on the medical cot where Bruce had first placed your body after bringing you home. Once, Dick found him beneath the display case containing his old Robin uniform, staring into the dark.
Titus searched for you.
That nearly killed him. The dog wandered from room to room, sniffing beneath doors and whining whenever footsteps approached. He slept outside the bedroom for weeks. Alfred the cat sat on your side of the bed and hissed at anyone who attempted to move him.
Damian began leaving the bedroom door open.
“For them,” he explained when Dick noticed.
Not for himself. Never for himself.
He fed the animals. He continued your routines. He watered your plants according to the schedule on your phone. He answered the messages sent by people who did not yet know you were dead until Bruce gently took the device away.
He spoke to you when he believed no one was listening. He told you about patrol. He told you Titus had finally eaten a full meal. He complained that Drake had reorganised the computer files incorrectly.
He stood in the doorway of your room each night and said, “I have returned.” Then, after a pause, “You need not worry.”
As though you might still be somewhere, waiting. As though the dead could be reassured.
Tim became obsessed with the fracture. It was, perhaps, the only form his own grief knew how to take.
He reconstructed every energy reading. He ran simulations until the Cave’s systems overheated. He mapped the brief glimpses they had seen of other realities and theorised that the fracture had not truly sealed. It had scarred.
“A weak point,” he told Bruce. “Like tissue that heals badly. It could reopen.”
Bruce looked towards Damian.
He stood at the edge of the platform, listening. Hope was too bright a word for what appeared on his face. It was hunger stripped of all humanity.
“Can it be reopened deliberately?” Damian asked.
Tim hesitated. “Maybe.”
Bruce said, “No.”
Damian did not look at him. “What would be required?”
“Damian,” Bruce warned.
“What would be required, Drake?”
Tim’s eyes dropped. “More power than we can safely generate. A dimensional anchor. A way to select a specific reality out of an infinite number of possibilities.”
“Then begin.”
“We don’t know what opening it could do.”
“I do not care.”
“It could destroy this universe.”
Damian’s gaze sharpened. “Then improve your design.”
Bruce stepped between them. “We are not tearing reality apart.”
“You have violated the laws of nature before.”
“And paid for it.”
“You permitted Todd to return.”
“I did not bring Jason back.”
“You have worked beside magicians, gods, time travellers, and beings who rewrite existence according to whim. Do not stand there and tell me death is immutable when our lives have proven otherwise.”
Bruce’s voice softened. “They would not want you to risk the world.”
Damian laughed. The sound had no humour in it. “Do not use them against me.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“You are attempting to make my grief convenient.”
Bruce flinched.
Damian moved closer, eyes burning. “You want me to accept it. To sit quietly in a chair and discuss my emotions with a stranger until I can say their name without making you uncomfortable. You wish me to return to patrol, to attend dinners, to continue breathing as though that is not an obscene thing to ask of me.”
“No one expects you to be fine.”
“Then stop asking me to survive them.”
He turned away.
Tim watched him leave.
That night, he continued working on the fracture.
It reopened three months after your death.
Not because of Tim. Not because Damian had found some forbidden Lazarus ritual or threatened a magician into cooperation.
It opened on its own. A vertical wound of white light appeared in the middle of the Cave at 3:17 in the morning. Alarms screamed. The ground shook. Glass shattered in the trophy cases.
Damian was awake before the first siren.
He reached the central platform with his sword drawn as Bruce descended from above. Dick and Jason arrived seconds later, Tim stumbling behind them with his laptop clutched against his chest.
The fracture widened.
A figure fell through. They struck the stone floor and rolled, coming to rest beneath the Batcomputer.
The fracture sealed behind them.
Silence followed.
Damian stopped breathing.
You lay on the Cave floor.
Your hair was longer. Your suit was unfamiliar, black threaded with gold instead of the colours he remembered. A scar cut from your temple to the edge of your jaw.
But it was your face. Your hands. Your mouth.
For one impossible moment, Damian’s mind removed the differences.
You were alive.
The sword fell from his hand. It struck the floor with a ringing clang.
Your eyes opened.
You inhaled sharply and pushed yourself upright, one hand reaching for a weapon at your hip. You scanned Bruce, Dick, Jason, Tim.
Then you saw Damian.
Every part of you went still.
His name left your mouth like a prayer. “Damian?”
He crossed the distance before anyone could stop him.
You rose to meet him.
His hands closed around your shoulders, hard enough to bruise. He stared into your face as if searching for seams, for a mask, for evidence of illusion. His fingers moved to your jaw, your throat, the scar at your temple.
Warm skin. A pulse beneath his thumb.
“You are alive,” he whispered.
Your eyes filled. “So are you.”
Damian’s face twisted.
He pulled you against him.
The sound you made was strangled and desperate. Your arms locked around his neck, and you buried your face against his shoulder. Damian held you with enough force to hurt, one hand cradling the back of your skull while the other pressed flat between your shoulder blades.
His knees gave way.
You fell with him.
Damian struck the floor and did not seem to notice. He dragged you into his lap, touching your face, your hair, your wrists, unable to stop confirming you existed.
“You returned,” he breathed. “You returned to me.”
Your expression changed.
The grief within it became visible all at once.
“Oh,” you whispered.
Damian froze.
You lifted a trembling hand and touched his cheek.
It was the same gesture. The one you had used when nightmares pulled him awake. The one you had used before kissing him in the Cave on the day you died.
But something in your eyes was wrong.
Not absence.
Recognition. You knew his face, but you were looking at it like a ghost.
“You’re not mine,” you said.
The words entered him slowly.
Damian’s hands loosened.
Around them, the others remained silent.
Tim’s face had gone pale with understanding.
Damian stared at you. “What?”
Your thumb traced the edge of his cheekbone.
“My Damian had a scar here,” you whispered. “From when we were twenty. He tried to stop a blade with his face because he was showing off.”
“I did no such—”
His voice failed.
You laughed once, brokenly. “He always said that too.”
Damian looked down at your suit.
Black and gold.
Not yours. Not the one they had buried.
The scar on your face had not existed before.
He noticed the ring hanging from a chain around your neck.
His ring. A simple dark band engraved on the inside with words no one else knew.
You saw him looking and closed your fist around it.
“He died,” you said.
Damian’s body became rigid.
Your tears spilled over. “The fracture opened beneath Gotham. The core came for me.” Your breath hitched. “He pushed me away.”
No one moved.
The symmetry of it was too cruel to interrupt.
“I held him,” you continued. “I kept telling him Bruce was coming, that we had help, that he only needed to stay awake. He asked if I was hurt.”
Damian made a sound as though the air had been punched from his lungs.
You gripped the ring more tightly.
“He said, ‘Good.’ Then he—”
Your voice shattered.
Damian stared at you. You stared back.
Two survivors facing the shape of the person they had failed to keep.
Your hand slipped from his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I thought you were him.”
Damian’s face emptied.
He released you. The absence of his touch seemed to wound you both.
He moved backwards, only half a metre, but it looked like an ocean opening.
Dick stepped forward. “Damian.”
He did not respond.
Your eyes moved over him with aching hunger. You knew the angle of his shoulders. The severe line of his mouth. The tiny crease beside his right eyebrow that appeared when he was fighting not to show fear.
“You look exactly like him,” you said.
Damian’s chest rose once. Twice.
Then the air stopped reaching him.
His hand went to his mouth.
The first sob came quietly.
A small fracture in the silence.
You stared.
Damian folded in on himself.
The grief he had spent months forcing into narrower and narrower spaces exploded. He bent forward until his forehead nearly touched the floor, his fingers clawing at the stone as if the Cave had begun to tilt beneath him.
You moved without thinking.
Your arms wrapped around him.
Damian fought you for one startled second.
Then he realised how you were holding him.
One hand behind his neck. The other spread between his shoulder blades.
Exactly as you had held your Damian. Exactly as his you had held him.
He broke. His body convulsed against yours. He seized the front of your suit and screamed into your shoulder, the sound muffled by fabric but no less terrible. Months of silence poured out of him in great, tearing sobs.
“They died,” he choked.
“I know.”
“They died for me.”
“I know.”
“I could not save them.”
“I know.”
You were crying too.
Damian clung to you like a drowning man clinging to the reflection of land.
“I buried you,” he gasped.
Your hand tightened in his hair. “I buried you, too.”
That sentence destroyed what remained of him. He sagged fully into your arms. You held his weight and rocked with him on the cold stone floor while the family watched two people mourn the same love through different faces.
No one tried to separate you. No one pretended it was a reunion.
It was not.
It was something stranger. Something crueller.
Something sacred.
You stayed at the Manor because there was nowhere else for you to go. Your universe had not vanished, as far as Tim could determine, but the fracture that had brought you here could not be reopened safely. You existed in their world without documentation, without a home, without anyone who knew you except for the shape of the person they had lost.
The first few days were unbearable.
Dick cried when you entered the kitchen wearing one of Damian’s old shirts. Jason avoided looking directly at you. Bruce became so formal that every conversation sounded like an interrogation conducted at a funeral. Tim asked questions until you snapped at him, then apologised for snapping, then wept when he apologised because your voice sounded exactly like the one in his memories.
Damian disappeared.
He remained in Gotham for four nights.
On the fifth, you found him seated beside the grave.
Your grave.
The sight of your own name carved into stone stole the strength from your legs.
Damian heard your breath catch and turned.
For a long moment, neither of you spoke.
Then you sat on the wet ground beside him.
The grave was covered in flowers. Fresh ones, despite the rain.
“They hated lilies,” Damian said.
You glanced at him. “My Damian hated lilies.”
“They smell like funerals.”
“That’s what he said.”
Damian’s mouth tightened.
You looked back at the stone. Your date of death stared at you.
Three months ago.
In your world, Damian’s grave bore the same date.
“What were they like?” you asked.
His eyes sharpened.
You almost withdrew the question, but then Damian looked at the grave again.
“They sang badly,” he said.
A wet laugh escaped you. “So do I.”
“They knew. This did not deter them.”
“It never has.”
“They cheated at card games and claimed that noticing was proof I lacked commitment to the spirit of entertainment.”
You smiled through the tears. Damian’s gaze lingered on it.
“They disliked tea unless it contained enough sugar to qualify as syrup. They stole my clothing despite owning more than I did. They spoke to animals as though expecting a response.”
“I do expect one.”
“Titus encouraged this delusion.”
You touched the grass near the headstone. “My Damian pretended not to enjoy dancing. He did, when no one could see him.”
Damian looked offended. “I do not dance.”
“You do in the kitchen.”
“I have never—”
“When you’re cooking, and you think I’m reading.”
He stared at you. You stared back.
Something fragile passed between you.
Not recognition, not exactly. The echo of it.
“He drew me,” you continued. “Constantly. I used to find sketches tucked into books and case files. He acted annoyed whenever I mentioned them.”
Damian’s eyes lowered. “I drew them.”
You nodded. “I know.”
The rain began lightly, whispering against the leaves.
Damian looked at your hand resting in the grass. There was a pale band around your finger where a ring had once sat.
“You were married,” he said.
“Engaged.”
He touched the inside of his coat, where the ring he had planned to give you remained hidden in a small velvet box. He had carried it every day since your death.
The universe had almost been symmetrical.
Almost.
“I intended to ask them,” he said.
Your face crumpled. “When?”
“The night after the mission.”
You pressed your fist to your mouth.
Damian turned away, but not before you saw the tears gathering in his eyes.
“My Damian proposed two weeks before he died,” you whispered.
“Were you happy?”
“Yes.”
The answer came instantly.
Damian nodded. “So were they.”
“You know that?”
“They told me.”
He did not explain when. He did not need to.
You sat beside one another until the rain strengthened.
Before leaving, you placed your hand against the carved version of your name.
Damian watched your fingers trace the letters.
“I’m sorry I’m not them,” you said.
His brow furrowed. “You have no reason to apologise.”
“Sometimes you look at me like you’ve forgotten.”
His gaze dropped. “I know.”
“And sometimes I look at you and forget too.”
Damian’s voice was almost inaudible. “I know.”
You stood first.
After a moment, you offered him your hand.
Damian stared at it.
Then he took it.
There were rules. You created them together because grief made careless people of you both, and neither wanted to turn the other into a mausoleum.
No entering bedrooms without permission. No using private nicknames from the other universe. No asking the other to recreate memories. No pretending.
The rules lasted three weeks.
The first one broke when Damian woke screaming.
You heard him from across the hall. By the time you reached his room, he was on the floor beside the bed, breath coming in ragged bursts. His hands were pressed over his ears. Sweat soaked through his shirt.
You stopped in the doorway. “Damian.”
“Leave.”
You did not.
His eyes lifted. For a second, they were wild with hope.
Then the hope died.
You felt it die.
“I said leave.”
“I heard you.”
“Then obey me.”
“No.”
His face twisted with anger. It was so familiar that your chest ached.
“You are not them,” he spat.
You flinched. Regret struck him immediately, but Damian had always been better at drawing blood than bandaging it.
You stepped into the room. “And you’re not him.”
The words silenced him.
Your own tears rose. “I know that every time you speak. Every time you stand too far to the left because he favoured his right knee after an injury you never had. Every time you call Tim ‘Drake’ with a different inflexion. Every time you look at me and I think, for one second, that the nightmare is over.”
Damian’s anger collapsed.
You knelt several feet away.
“But you’re still in pain,” you whispered. “And so am I.”
His breathing remained too fast.
You placed your hand on the floor between you, palm up. “May I?”
Damian stared at it.
Then, slowly, he crawled forward.
He did not take your hand. He pressed his forehead into your palm.
You closed your fingers carefully against his hair.
His breath stuttered.
“You do not have to be him,” you said. “I don’t need you to be.”
Damian’s eyes closed. “And you do not have to be them.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
You looked at him.
“No,” you admitted. “Not yet.”
His hand closed around your wrist.
Neither of you pretended the touch belonged to anyone else.
Spring arrived. The flowers around your grave began to bloom. You visited Damian’s grave in your own world through photographs Tim had managed to recover from the energy residue embedded in your suit. They were distorted and incomplete, but one image showed a grey headstone beneath a cedar tree.
You kept it beside your bed. Damian kept your counterpart’s photograph on his desk.
The Manor slowly learned how to contain you both. Jason began arguing with you about books. Dick stopped going silent whenever you laughed. Tim discovered that your technological knowledge had developed along a different path than theirs and recruited you into dimensional research. Bruce began saying your name without hesitation.
Titus followed you everywhere. The dog knew. Perhaps not the details, not the impossible mathematics of parallel worlds, but he knew you had the same hands. The same voice. The same habit of scratching beneath his collar before smoothing the fur between his ears.
The first time he fell asleep with his head in your lap, Damian stood in the doorway and stared.
You looked up. “I can move.”
“No.”
Damian entered the room and sat in the chair opposite you.
For several minutes, he sketched Titus.
Then his pencil shifted.
You noticed but said nothing.
When he left, the page remained on the table.
It showed your hands resting in the dog’s fur.
Not your face.
Not yet.
But yours.
Love did not return like lightning. It did not rise from the graves fully formed and demand to be recognised.
It came quietly. Guiltily. In moments neither of you trusted.
Damian began making your tea the way you liked it in your universe, not the way his you had taken it. You learned that he preferred silence after patrol, whereas your Damian had always needed music to come down from the adrenaline.
He discovered you hated being touched unexpectedly. You discovered he needed to know where you were in crowded rooms.
You did not fit into the spaces your counterparts had left. The edges were wrong. The weight was different.
Slowly, painfully, you made new spaces.
One night, nearly a year after you fell through the fracture, you found Damian on the roof of Wayne Manor.
Gotham glowed in the distance, ugly and golden beneath the clouds.
You sat beside him. Your shoulders did not touch.
“It is the anniversary,” he said.
“I know.”
In both universes.
One year since you had died. One year since Damian had died.
You took the ring from beneath your shirt. His counterpart’s ring turned slowly between your fingers.
Damian reached into his coat and removed a small velvet box.
Your breath caught.
He opened it.
Inside was the ring he had never given you.
“I considered burying it,” he said. “It seemed dishonest. They never wore it.”
You looked down at the band. “It’s beautiful.”
“They would have complained that it was too expensive.”
“I would have.”
“You are not helping your argument.”
A laugh escaped you.
Damian’s expression softened.
The silence that followed was not empty.
That was new.
“I loved him,” you said.
Damian looked out over Gotham. “I know.”
“I still love him.”
“I know.”
You swallowed. “Sometimes I think loving anyone else would mean I’m leaving him behind.”
Damian turned the velvet box between his hands.
“I once believed grief was the final proof of love. That if I permitted it to lessen, it would mean they had mattered less than I claimed.”
“What do you believe now?”
His gaze found yours. “That grief is not love. It is merely the shape love takes when it has nowhere to go.”
Your eyes burned.
Damian looked back at the ring. “They would despise what I became after their death.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“They would say the same.”
“My Damian would be furious with me for spending a year wishing I’d died instead.”
Damian’s jaw tightened. “As he should be.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“I have never claimed not to be a hypocrite.”
You smiled. Then the smile faded. “What do we do with it?”
“With what?”
“All this love.”
Damian was quiet for so long that you thought he would refuse to answer.
Then he closed the box.
“We carry it.”
“And if it gets heavy?”
“We allow someone to help.”
Your heart beat painfully.
Damian heard the change. You knew he did from the slight shift in his posture.
You reached for him slowly, giving him time to move away.
Your fingers touched his. Damian looked down at your joined hands.
“This does not belong to them,” you whispered.
“No.”
“And it doesn’t belong to him.”
“No.”
“It’s ours.”
His fingers tightened around yours. “Yes.”
You leaned closer.
Damian’s eyes closed before your forehead touched his.
For a while, that was all it was.
Warm skin. Shared breath. Two people alive beneath an indifferent sky.
“I have loved you in another world,” you whispered.
Damian’s throat moved. “As I have loved you.”
“I think part of me always will.”
“I would not ask you to stop.”
You drew back enough to look at him. “What are you asking?”
Damian opened his eyes. There were tears in them, but he did not turn away.
“For the opportunity to know you in this one.”
Your breath shook. “That sounds suspiciously vulnerable.”
“Do not ruin it.”
You laughed, and Damian smiled.
It was not the smile your Damian had worn. There was no scar at his cheek. No old injury in his knee. His mouth tilted differently, and sorrow had carved unfamiliar lines around his eyes.
He was not the man you had buried. You were not the person whose name waited in the cemetery below. Perhaps that was why you could finally lift your hand and touch his face without pretending.
Damian leaned into your palm.
“I cannot promise this will not hurt,” he said.
“It already hurts.”
“I cannot promise I will never look at you and see them.”
“I’ll probably look at you and see him.”
His hand covered yours.
“But I will learn the difference,” he said.
“So will I.”
When he kissed you, it was not a resurrection.
The dead did not rise. The universe did not apologise.
Your Damian remained beneath a cedar tree in a world you could no longer reach. His love remained in the ring against your chest, in the memories no new touch could erase.
Damian’s beloved remained beneath spring flowers on the Wayne estate. Their laughter still lived in the Manor walls. Their unfinished book still waited beside a cold bed.
Nothing was repaired. Nothing was replaced.
But Damian kissed you with tears slipping down his face, and you kissed him back with grief trembling between every breath.
You loved the dead. You loved the living. Neither love diminished the other.
Perhaps, in another universe, there was a version of you who had grown old beside him. Perhaps somewhere beyond the fractures and branching stars, Damian was grey-haired and irritable, still stealing the blankets while accusing you of doing the same. Perhaps there were worlds where you never met, worlds where you hated one another, worlds where one of you arrived a moment too late.
There were infinite possibilities. Infinite endings. Infinite graves. But here, in this wounded world, Damian held your face between his hands as though life were something precious precisely because it could be lost.
“I found you,” he whispered.
You pressed your forehead to his.
“No,” you said softly. “We found each other.”
Below you, Gotham continued breathing. Behind you, two graves rested beneath different skies. And somewhere, across all the endless versions of existence, love bent the universe around itself and endured.
Dick, eight years old, makes silly little matching friendship bracelets for himself and Bruce. It’s basically just blue and black braided thread with a couple beads at the end where it’s tied together.
Bruce adores it. He never takes it off. Ever.
When Dick is 25, he’s helping Clark bring Bruce to the medbay in the Watchtower after a mission gone wrong. Bruce is mostly fine, but they’re going to get him hooked up to an IV for fluids until he wakes up, and at the very least, he has to stay overnight for observation.
They’re taking off the left gauntlet of the batsuit, and Dick pauses. Because Bruce is still wearing the little friendship bracelet Dick made for him over 15 years ago. The thread is fraying and the colors are a little faded, but it’s undeniably the same friendship bracelet.
Dick stays at Bruce’s side the whole night, holding his hand.
The massive backyard of the manor has been neglected for a while, due to Gotham being insane and no one having time to pay attention to it
Bruce looks out his window and grimaces at the tall grass, weeds, and vines growing out of control. He knows most of his children are adults and don’t live with him, but he can’t help but worry that they might get hurt if they go out into the backyard
There could be snakes, spiders, sharp rocks, and anything else that would range from mildly inconvenient to a sudden trip to the doctor
So, he makes the best decision in his life (according to Damian)
One day, in the early morning, a large trailer comes rolling up to the Wayne property, and Bruce opens the side gate for them to come around back
Damian watches in boredom as his father talks with the man who owns the truck, knowing nothing of what is about to happen, before watching as the back is unlatched and opened
Suddenly, there are like 40 goats spreading across the property and getting to work, chewing away leisurely, and bleeting as they explore the property
Bruce has never seen Damian's face light up so brightly, and seen him move so fast to scramble outside and pet as many goats as he could get his hands on
Damian begs his dad to let the lawn get overgrown again so he can see the goats, which he already named half, and Bruce promises to let it happen every once in a while
Tilts his head with a smirk, his muscular arms crossed over his chest when he watches you complain about something. Finding your anger - when it's not directed at him - very adorable.
Doesn't just take the food when you offer it to him. Say it's like a peeled orange or a chip, without breaking eye contact he would lean down - holding your wrist gently to keep in place. Before taking a bite of the food straight from your fingertips. His lips purposefully brushing your skin just to see you flustered - often biting down gently too.
Says your name out of nowhere to grab your attention whenever you're standing near him. Carefully, his rough, calloused hand would catch your chin. A wicked smirk on his face as he caresses your bottom lip before closing the distance to place a long, lingering kiss.
Loves it when you hug from behind him. Your arms wrapping around his waist providing a grounding presence he only gets from you.
Has secret piercings you only ever find out about when you're making out. Like just imagine, you're kissing him passionately. Your tongue sliding over his as you explore his mouth when you stumble on a slight indent on his tongue. You look up at him, breaking the kiss with a confused expression. "Jay... you had a tongue piercing? Why didn't i know about this?"
Loves carrying you like it's nothing. Carefully throwing you up over his shoulder like a potato sack and walking away with you when you get into a heated argument with someone and you need saving. (or to save the other person)
Ok that's it. I'm rusty and I don't have motivation, sorry yall :(
Lowk, every headcanon i write ends up sounding the same... Oh well
Jason having to get a suit for some fancy event and Bruce is demanding to come with him and Jason accuses Bruce of not trusting him and gets annoyed about it. Until he finds Bruce going through an old photo album and it's got pictures of Dick trying on all his suits for prom and Jason realises that Bruce never got to have a memory like that eith him and he is sitting this as an opportunity to manage something similar. So Jason agrees to let Bruce come and lets him photograph him in all the different suits and the two are just joking around and having proper father son time.
Bruce remembers the first time Dick got sick with him.
More accurately, he vividly remembers how the little squirt transferred his stomach bug over to him after he got better, and Bruce was left feeling as though he was on death’s door.
He’s been poisoned and has poisoned himself for training, but nothing felt as bad as that stomach bug.
He had heard over his peruse of the internet that kids and seen parents playfully complain that their kids always give them the strongest version of whatever virus they're dealing with. He thought it was a cute little joke
Now he couldn't breathe through his nose, and his everything hurts so fucking bad
The worst part is that he still has to be a parent while all he wants to do is curl up in bed and die immediately. Dick, unfortunately, made the speediest recovery and regained his boundless energy, and absolutely needed Bruce to play with him like usual
The next time Dick got sick, Bruce took all the precautions that he could in order not to get himself infected again (it didn’t work)
Hello friend! May I please request yandere Damian Wayne (or Al ghul if you do that) with just a little cinnamon roll for a darling. I like to imagine he meets them at the dog park and she falls in love with Titus first😂. Have a good day/night!
Yandere!Damian Wayne x cinnamon roll Reader
Oneshot / fem reader
It would probably take running into you a few times for Damian to really be interested. He’d always see you at the dog park, and by the pleasant conversations you always seemed to be having with everyone, he knew you were a regular here. You’d be doing various things, either weaving flowers into your dog’s collar, walking along the edges of a park with a furry entourage at your heels, or just basking in the sun.
Your expression was always soft and open, your body language without tension. There was something about seeing you so untouched by the cruel grip of the world that eased some of the sorrow in Damian’s heart.
Damian made trips to the park with increasing frequency, and each time, he stood closer. At this point, he had already combed through all of your social media posts, transcripts, residences, and more, and he was eager to fill in the gaps of his knowledge with real-life interaction.
Damian watched you, making sure you were facing away from him, when he pulled out one of your shirts. How had he gotten it? Snooping in your room, obviously. It would have been so disappointing to take an interest in you only to find you were actually an agent or assassin, so Damian broke into your place early on.
He held the fabric to Titus’s nose and let him get several whiffs before he shoved it back in his bag.
“Find her,” Damian said, voice only loud enough for the two of them.
Titus shot off at full speed, barreling at you with unrestrained eagerness. You looked up just in time to see a great dane’s snout inches from your face before the dog body-slammed into you. The two of you flew sideways, your back smacking the ground and ejecting all the air in your lungs.
Oh fuck. Perhaps he miscalculated—he could hear your collision from across the park.
Damian took off at full speed, leaping over park dividers and animals with the fluidity of wind. He swore at himself for the oversight, knowing he was going to have to conduct an extravagant plan in order to be on your good side again.
“Titus, down!” Damian’s voice was sharp enough to cut glass.
Titus’s head shot up and he crawled off instantly, allowing you to breathe at last. Damian was on you before you had the chance to stagger up, guiding you to your feet with a firm grip on your arms.
You were dazed and covered in dust, not making a coherent noise past “oww,” but Damian couldn’t take his eyes off you.
His heart was alive with jittery excitement so potent he feared it was written plainly on his face. Damian schooled his expression as his mother taught him, but the shaking in his fingers couldn’t be helped.
He dropped his hands from you as you gained a footing, and he was already counting the moments until he could hold you again.
“He’s,” you searched for the word, trying to laugh off the pain, “friendly?”
Damian tried to speak but his voice came out a pitch too high. He cleared his throat, feeling dizzy as your smile grew.
“He’s eager to meet people,” Damian said, looking you up and down. “Are you hurt? I can reimburse you for your outfit.”
Your eyebrows shot up. “No, I’m fine. And these are just my dog park clothes.”
Damian nodded. He knew already.
Your gaze dropped down to Titus and you made a pss-pss noise. With a slight nod of permission from Damian, Titus stood to let you let his head.
Hope wasn’t lost after all.
“Then let me take you to lunch as an apology.”
You looked unsure. He recognized the half smile you did when you were nervous, and he quickly continued.
“I promised Titus a hamburger today.”
You laughed and accepted, and Damian knew he had to spend the rest of his life with your smile directed at him.
Raise your hand if you want to be toppled over by Titus 🙋♀️ and Damian EEP
Thank you for the ask!! It was so cute and fun 💖💖💖💖💖 ask box open!
