A/N: Happy birthday, afrite!
(For anyone else reading this, this probably won't make much sense without reading the previous kid!John 'verse drabbles.)
In winter, the demon child turns eleven.
Barsad doesn’t wish him a happy birthday, because he and the demon child don’t actually talk to one another. They trade clues and theories about Bane’s progress across the globe, they have short discussions on where they should bunker down for the night, but they don’t converse.
However, a part of him – the part that remembers having a family, the part that remembers raising a child – says that he should. The demon child is a demon, yes, but he’s also still a child.
So today, before he returns to the motel room that’s serving as their base of operations for the week, Barsad makes an extra stop.
He sets the chocolate cake, carefully adorned with eleven candles, on the table in front of the demon child. The demon child looks up from the maps he’s surveying and blinks. “What’s this?”
“It’s a cake,” Barsad says, enunciating slowly and clearly.
The demon child scowls. “I know what it is. I mean, what’d you get it for?”
Rather than answer, Barsad pulls a lighter out of his pocket and lights the candles. He pushes the cake toward the demon child. “Go on,” he says gruffly.
“Should I make a wish?” The demon child asks, but his tone isn’t as snide as it usually is.
Barsad shrugs. “Do not tell me if you do. Wishes don’t come true if you say them out loud.”
The demon child blinks again, expression thoughtful. A smile, as bright and brief as a magnesium flame, touches his face. It’s gone in seconds, but it’s as if an afterimage lingers; Barsad can see the shadow of a dimple in one cheek.
After a beat, the demon child leans forward and blows the candles out in one long breath.
(The following week, they finally track down Bane.)
