Pairing: mlm ;; Damian Wayne x Reader
Tags: somewhat angst, fluff, wholesome, damian opening up, established friendship, sort of a slow burn, platonic / romantic interpretation, Male reader.
(Summary: Damian's struggling with an art project where he has to define who makes him feel safe, that's when u come in the picture <3)
2.4k words.
Despite what Ra's al ghul had told him in great detail, (Damian had asked once, a product of curiosity after reading one of the many poems that mentioned such whom lined the league's expansive library) that hell was a fiery, unyielding afterlife that proved hideously torturous..
.. This art project may have, somehow, proved to be a fate worse than eternal damnation.
The prompt was laughably childish on paper. He was amused, even, listening as his teacher began to explain this next projects theme and criteria.
Oh, please, he wasn't a child anymore.
I mean, really!! Safety!! Dont make him laugh. He could do a hundred different things. Even his fellow art class acquaintances could draw something with their eyes closed!! He could take this a million different waysβways literally, metaphorically, rhetorically, emotionally, humorously..and every other possible word that ended with -ly he could think of!!
He could draw a safety cone to represent how safe he feels on the road of life (he'd turn it into something sentimental somehow) , he could draw a sword to represent literal safety behind a weapon, he could draw goliath, (because a pet dragon bat, would, logically, make anybody feel safe) for crying out loud!!
"And who is safety to you?"
It was that additional clarification that had him in the art studio during the lunch break, hunched over his blank canvas, pencils scattered across the multi-media (there was an engraved recreation of the fall of icarus on the table cornerβhe didn't even ask how or why anymore) abused table, composition sketches crumpled and tossed like scraps..
And not a single idea of what to do in sight.
He rocked, he thought, he pulled open his own sketchbook, searching for something to no avail, then came the manga, searching for inspiration, for a spark to set his creativity alightβevery artists dream chain reaction.
"Uff!" He's huffy before he even knows it. He pushes away from the table, his stool groaning against the cement floor.
His face feels hot. His lips are a thin undefined line that shiver the more he thinks of how empty his head feels right now. He paces through the studio, head in his shaking hands. Why cant he think? Why wont it make any sense? Did the universe have to choose something so obscene to challenge him with artistically and honestly?
The exposed infrastructure of the ceiling hummed rhythmically, a steady metronome to force his thoughts to succumb toβsomething to ground him before his brain began to run faster than he could emotionally manage.
The tapping of shoes outside and the noise serves as a mocking jest, a reminder that he could be doing anything else right nowβeating, at least, during lunch!βbut he was mentally bound here by his own insistence and his brain's lack of cooperation.
"You're so talented, damian! A real artist, you are!" A voice from a memory recalled to him.
Sure, what "an artist" he was.
As he returns to face his canvas again, hands dropping to his sides, they begin to ball into bunched blossoms of fists.
He feels this surge of anger, of vulnerability he cannot exactly confine to his little frame.
What was safety if not something he believed was an obligation bound, not by respect and love, but by blood and adoption papers that commanded he feel so?
Safety? What a joke. A fad. Something people say that's meant to make you feel warm, but how could you ever feel warm, when your the most outside an outsider could be?
He jumps when he feels you tap his shoulder.
He stares at you, eyes wide, his eyes shrinking then dilating, as if little stones of jade carried the pulse and turmoils of a heart. His fingers are no longer pushed into the tender flesh of his palm. The area begins to pulse, his nerves tingling with a scathing afterburn. When he glances down breifly, he notices the small halfmoons denting his flesh.
He feels hyper aware of how close you're leaning toward him, and what you just walked in on.
He feels his face flush slightly.
But you have more pressing matters to addressβ"there you are! and I thought you didn't wanna hang out anymore, dami," you find yourself laughing a little.
He never understood your gregariousness.
You straighten up, looking around. The room is empty. No surprise, its lunch. Your eyes fall back to his canvas, how hes the only occupant and sign of life in this room that isn't the intricately decorated cobweb peppered with black dots that crawled across the ceiling sometimes (legend has it that the brood mother scared the janitor of all people.)
"So, what're you up to? Productive, I see?" You tease a little, and you dont miss the way he blushes slightly before rolling his eyes and looking away.
"What's it to you?" As much as he tries to muster some bite into his tone, he is unable to around you. Where he imagined his firmness as a snap and done sort of ordeal, he sounds like a grumpy, wet cat given human form and a teenage boy's voice.
"Uh-huh, very productive," you muse as you make your way round the table, your swaying overly groggy and exaggerated before yanking a stool from under the table and sit down parallel to him.
Your eyes meet his blank canvas, and he knows you dont hide the way your eyebrows raise and your shock is perfectly visible. "Working overtime?" You muse.
He stares at the canvas again. It irks him again. His eyebrows furrow as he tries to steel his face into something that wasn't an outright scowlβscaring you off was something that made him feel uneasy.
You tilt your head, smiling a little. Damian's always been someone who was startlingly disciplined. It was almost charming, the way he was so hyper focused on such a specific task and intended on performing at the best, most effective way possible. You learned that much about him, curiously, when you were both paired together for the first time in the project that began your friendship.
You raise your legs till you sat cross legged on the stool.
When he looks back up to you, seeing you cross your legs and looking at him with that look, he isn't sure why, at first, and hes sure it's likely delirium after starving himself trying to think of a decent idea to at least put down to the canvas..
..but the image Hailey, dick's dog of all things, flashes before his eyes in your place.
And suddenly, it makes sense. The way you were so social, your wandering antics, the way people seem drawn to you, your clinginess..
The mental image of you being a litter of puppies in a trench coat became the bane of his existence.
Andβas if he were replaced with an entirely different person within a matter of secondsβHe cracks a smile, then he looks away to stop himself from laughing.
"You're.. " he stares at you, biting his inner cheek to quit stifling a joy that was so foreign it was frightening, "You're one weird guy, you know,"
You stare, bewildered. Such an odd thing to say. "Am I, now?" And suddenly, your laughing too.
And for a moment, damian feels good. Damian feels wonderful, even. The stress had shaved away, somewhat. He felt as close to normal, as acceptable for someone like him, as he could get.
When the laughter dies down slowly, you pull out your English book, plopping it firmly down. He raises an eyebrow.
"Cant leave you all alone, can I?"
He stares at the way your head bows, the way your shoulders hunch and you lean vigilantly over your copy book, already beginning to write away like he wasn't here anymore.
He stares back at his canvas. Blank. The white so luminously clean he would make out every fine little gray hair of the canvas cloth.
He sighs, burying his head in his hands again.
You glance up again, putting your pencil down. "Stuck?"
You both know the answer.
Slowly, he nods, shoulder sagging, deflating like two sad balloons. "..I.. dont know what to do."
You hum momentarily, then, the idea hits you spontaneously, and he knew so by the way your eyes seemed to capture the art studio's lights like stars (was his heart beating faster? He felt his face run red)
" 'Draw someone who reminds me of something I like?' ?" He repeats your words back at you, both of you facing each other, one on one now, his sketchbook open to a fresh, blank page on his lap and a pencil in his hands.
You nod, "uh huh. Nothing fancy, just.. someone."
He stares skeptically, lips pulled down, confused. "..this seems counterproductiveβ"
You flap your hands and gesture mindlessly. "Quit stalling! Work, man!!"
He began to sift through the people he knew, to wonder about who felt similarly to him. Who were the people who he felt closer to, because of a mutual feeling? A mutual desire? A mutual enjoyment? And not someone who he liked, no less, but someone who reminded him of said interest.
"I've always liked superman cause he reminds me of a bomb pop."
It was sudden, and it made his head snap up, looking at you with an unidentifiable expression that had a million things going through his face right now as he stared at the boy before him.
"Yup." And just like that, you elaborate. "I mean, the red reminds me of cherries, and I love cherries. Their so..tart, you know? But like, a good tart!! And sweet. The blue is the blue raspberry, that's self explanatory..."
He isn't sure why, but its helping a lot.
"And the white? Where does that go on the superman suit?" He asks, eyes trained on the paper before him.
"The lime, duh! You know, lemon juice and lime juice are practically the same."
He stifles a smile. "And is that why you like superman? No other reason?"
"Hm..I guess the saving humanity parts also cool too.." you hum jokingly. You both laugh a little at that. "Bomb pops are good for the summer, but god I couldn't even eat it fast enough before that shit starting melting."
Damian laughs a little, nodding along in accordance. He feels a little livelier, and you can see the way he sits a little closer, leans a little more forward, betraying that perfectly upright posture for something looser.
"Back when I was in Abu Dhabi, you had 2 minutes at best."
It was one of the fonder memories of the league of assassins. Whenever Ra's treated him to a trip to the nearby bodegas of the city.Β He still remembered the old wedding tune Ra's would hum when they drove anywhere. The way Abu always sulked in the backseat as a strangely comforting shadow who had to hide a smile when damian showed off his bag of treats in the summer heat..
It made him feel a little bittersweet.
He swallowed thickly. His eyes stinging? No. Just a figment of his imagination. He exhaled slowly as his hands flicked pencil lines over the figure slowly being assembled with graphite.
"And I like the janitor, he reminds me of an old beagle." You add on.
That stifles a snort. "I liken him to my father,"
That gets you. "Bruce Wayne? To our old, creaky janitor?" You sit up straight now, bewildered and alive, as if he'd dumped you in cold water.
Damian rolled his eyes, "the paparazzi know nothing," he mused. "Its a wonder they never caught baba's knees creaking on audio." The word baba slips out naturally, which he wishes to take backβbut the word pays you so little mind, as if the word that carried the world's most intimate weight to him was something you accepted instantaneously, a fact as simple as him liking ice cream, for instance.
"Your dad too?! Oh, dont get me started about how my dad's back hurts EVERY. OTHER. DAY!! How does collapsing on a recliner with popcorn pull a muscle?!"
Damian's shaking now, his pencil lines, usually pristine and delicately controlled, were now wobbly, abstractly placed wherever. Hes trembling from the newfound (not exactly newβyou've always had a tender spot in his heart) kinship that sets you both laughing like children.
"Baba's practically primordial," he adds, grinning, "dont fall for that Brucie Wayne they keep pushing to you. Hes an old, old man. Emphasis on old."
"Oh, man, if you ever meet my dad, dont let him start spewing the whole 'I was a lady killer in my day..' bull. Pure. Bull."
You both grin at each other like children.
"That reminds me of graysonβmy brotherβoh. Never, I mean, never ask him about his love life,"
Hes pleasantly surprised to find you completing his sentence. "Oh, boyβI never ask anymore. It just goes on and on and onβlike holy hell!!"
"At some point, you practically feel like you got roped into being some marriage counselor for someone who isn't even married."
"Right?! But the advice they give works like magic!!"
"The advice you get," he clarified. "The advice I get would get me sent to therapy."
"Oh please, anyone who attends this shit ass school needs therapy to graduate,"
You both start laughing again.
When he looks up to see you, that carefree smile, the way your head is thrown back as your body shivers with laughter. Maybe it's the way your laugh is so silly, so stupidly joyous and infectious in the moment that has his woes slipping away like water from cupped fingers.
He feels fuzzy. He feels something warm blooming within the confines of his ribcage, swelling like a balloon that pushes around his organs. The feeling is alienβbut he grows to enjoy it. It feels like affection. Like the soft sprinkles of daylight seeping through blackened after a heavy storm.
Was it this? Was it yearning to live in this moment forever, where everything feels like it'll be accepted without judgement? Was it finally finding solace in someone who sought his presence for legitimate friendship, and never out of what they felt was an obligation?
Because if that's what safety was, to him, then it felt right.
He feels his face flush, he stares at the notebook, then puts it aside. The face of whoever he drew mattered no longer anymore.
He didn't need anymore excercises to stimulate his brain.
He knew what safety was, he knew what he wanted to draw.
And it sat right across from him with a smile.Β
