Summary: Selina Kyle finally moves into Wayne Manor, and her daughter comes with.
warnings: reader is bratty baddie ofc she’s Selina’s daughter?? cursing/swearing, pettiness, sexual allusions/tensions, student doctor damian 🤤 damian is like 20-something obvs if he’s a student doctor, this is from Damian’s perspective, smutty thoughts,
so sorry i’ve been gone for ages I’m still working on stuff don’t worry! most definitely making this into a series i hope you enjoy! 💗 Slán go fóill!
Damian thought it was a terrible idea. Selina was a thief once, how can he know she’s changed? And to bring along a younger clone? How stupid of his father.
“Damian, this is the woman I love. She’s moving in whether you like it or not, her daughter is non-negotiable.” Bruce had enforced, and he didn’t see the problem; You were both the same age, you were both adults, and you both had jobs, so what was the problem? You wouldn’t be seeing much of each other.
Damian got out of the first three days of you and Selina moving in: he was working at the hospital. He tried to avoid the two women as much as possible on his day off, until Bruce had technically forced him to help set up furniture and sort through boxes. “You could have hired people to do this.” Damian grumbles, carrying quite a big IKEA box up the grand staircase, acting as if it was effortless.
“And let you rest on your day off?” Bruce returned sarcastically. “It’s a few boxes and desks, it won’t take you long.”
Damian just grumbled, rolling his eyes and carrying the box into your bedroom. You were lazing on your mattress, flicking through a magazine. He gritted his teeth. “Do you need help putting it together?”
You glanced up at him for a moment, staring at him with an unreadable expression and pursed lips. Damian just stared at you, both silent, for about a minute. “Hmmmmm, no, i’m good, thank you.”
Damian just dropped it on the floor, grumbling. “You could help.”
“I’ve been helping for three days..?” You quip back, eyes darting up and down his body incredulously. “You’ve just been at work.”
“Something you cannot relate to.” He comments as he exits your bedroom, hearing you scoff and stand from your mattress.
“I have a job!”
You had barely been living at the Manor for two weeks and Damian was already sick of you. Sick of your attitude, your loud music blasting from your bedroom, your mess. For all of the days you were decorating, you were blasting songs all day long. How didn’t you run out of songs? And the days where you weren’t decorating your new bedroom, you were out shopping, or God forbid you brought your friends over.
The thing he hates most? Those fucking shorts. Those tiny, worn fabric shorts that you wear when you’re decorating and painting, the ones that show off the bottom half of your ass, are constantly stuck up your ass, and restrict your thighs so luxuriously—
They are horrendous. And distracting. They’re about 10 years old, covered in paint and mastic and glue. It was like you were just prancing around so people could look at you, so you could have all the attention.
Like now. Jon was round playing video games in Damian’s bedroom, like usual, like most days when Damian wasn’t busy working. Though, he’d been lacking. He’d died on every round and every fight.
“Can you pay attention? We need to level up,” Damian chided, side-eyeing Jon; who was craning his neck 180 degrees to the doorway. He got a shove in the side.
“Dude!” Bickered Jon, turning back to Damian and shoving him back lightly.
“What are you even looking at?” He didn’t even get to finish his sentence before he saw your bedroom door open, watching you exit and head towards the grand stairs — not before looking into Damian’s bedroom and throwing Jon a sweet smile.
“H-Hey—” Jon’s voice cracked halfway through saying your name out loud. He turned back to Damian, face red. “She smiled at me.”
“She smiles at everyone. You are not special.” Damian interjected, eyes trained on the monitor, despite his brain overloading with images of your ass in those specific shorts. “Do not give her the light of day. She just wants attention.”
“Well, she has it.”
It wasn’t a secret that Damian didn’t trust you at all. He had reason to believe this whole marriage thing was some sort of heist you and Selina were performing. And he knew it might have been a bit over the top, a total invasion of privacy…But he snooped through your room.
He was certain you were out: some glamorous, hot pink zebra print pyjama party at your friend’s house. Damian slipped inside your room, and started with your walk-in-wardrobe. Looking through hangers and dresses and shoe boxes and bags, he couldn’t find anything incriminating or suspicious. Nor in your vanity, or your ensuite, or the padded storage ottoman at the foot of your bed.
Your bed was tidy, and he wasn’t even going to attempt to move the slightest thing.
…But would bedside tables be too far for this type of inspection?
He wasn’t going out of his way to snoop through them, not in any creepy or inappropriate way. He was trying to find cigarettes or a journal or some suspicious skeleton key, any clue that you had ill intentions against his family. So he did. Ever so quiet and careful: not that he needed to be, your bedside drawers had no discipline at all — underwear shoved inside, along with the bras and socks in the drawer underneath. He tried to ignore the lacy pairs with gems on, and the frilly thongs, even the animal print boy shorts.
Damian’s face was crimson, attempting to focus on what was at stake — not at what you would look like in them, how they smelt like fresh laundry detergent and your perfume. He tutted, moving around the bed to the next set of drawers, and finding on with swimsuits and somehow more fluffy socks, and then a drawer full of pyjamas; soft cotton two pieces, fluffy sweatpants, and satin nightdresses that came straight out of a 60’s magazine. Until his fingers knocked against something hard. Like a box. Oh-ho, had he found himself something good? A stolen piece of jewellery or one of Bruce’s Rolex watches to sell? Perhaps a box of cash from something suspicious…
With a smug grin, he pushed the pyjamas out of the way, hoping to find something bad.
Only to find a hot pink box displaying a vibrator.
It was small, shaped like a bullet, apparently it had 10 different settings and was waterproof according to the box. Damian thought his eyeballs would fall from their sockets of how wide his eyes had gotten. Just his luck. He found nothing incriminating, only invasive and incredibly inappropriate, and he had no one to blame but himself.
After putting everything back to how it was before he rudely trespassed, he ran out of your room and hid in his own. He had no idea how he faced you at dinner the next evening, how he sat opposite you talking about some world buffet you and your friends went for dinner the night before, completely single and free. He was cursing himself and imagining you using that thing.
…You’d have to be quiet, right? Yeah, the walls of Wayne Manor weren’t thin, but you seem too nice to be obnoxiously loud. Why would you — in a brand new house that wasn’t your own. How often did you even use it? Did you use it when everyone is home, or would you wait until you were home alone. Maybe you just used a pillow to cover up the noises. And as he said, Damian couldn’t help but imagine you using it. Wearing that sweet little satin nightdress he saw in your bedside, hand between your legs and the other squeezing your breasts or tangled in your hair, legs trembling and threatening to close around the buzzing object, hot pink and glistening silicone settled against your clit. Or would—
He exhaled roughly, staring down at his dinner like someone had spat in it. Well, he couldn’t really look anywhere else because you were wearing a low cut top and what he suspects is a push up bra, and they were staring right at him.
He was Damian Wayne. He was a genius who was already exceeding medical school, who had already assisted in multiple surgeries in his first month of being a medical student, and was on his way up unquestionably. He was the heir to both Wayne Enterprises and The League of Assassins.
Hi I was wondering if you could do a story about a girly reader with Damian. The reader gets insecure because she thinks Damian would do better with someone like Raven and not her. Since she is not a hero and is the type to put stickers on everything unlike raven-🌹
Stickers
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requests are open
dividers by @cafekitsune
It starts, as most things do, with something small.
A comment. Not cruel — no one is cruel, that's almost the problem, because cruelty would be easier to dismiss. It's just a moment, just a thing that happens at the Tower during a joint visit that you're present for, and it lodges somewhere it shouldn't and stays.
Raven is helping Damian with something.
A tracking calculation, you think, or maybe something mystical, something that requires her specific knowledge and his specific precision and the shorthand of two people who have fought alongside each other for years. They're at the table with maps and diagrams, and they're talking in the low, efficient way of people who understand each other without having to explain themselves.
You're on the couch.
You're bedazzling your phone case.
This is a true and accurate picture of the situation, and you are aware of how it looks, and you sit with how it looks for longer than you should.
Raven says something. Damian responds. The shorthand continues. At one point, she makes a gesture over a diagram, and he nods with the specific quality he has when he respects something, the real respect, not the performed kind.
You press a rhinestone onto your phone case.
It catches the light.
You look at Raven.
You look at your phone case.
You look at Damian.
You don't say anything for three days.
This is, in retrospect, the problem — you are not the type to say nothing for three days, you are the type to say things immediately and at full volume, and so when you go quiet Damian notices in the way Damian notices everything, which is completely and without announcement.
He doesn't ask immediately.
He waits.
He is, when it matters, patient in a way that surprises people who only know the surface of him.
On the third day he comes to your apartment and sits on your couch — the pink one, the one with the throw pillows you'd made from fabric you found at a market, the one that has a small collection of plushies at one end that he has never once commented on negatively — and he looks at you.
"Tell me," he says.
"Tell you what," you say, from the other end of the couch.
"Whatever you've been not telling me for three days."
You look at your hands.
On the coffee table in front of you is your current project — a journal you've been decorating, floral stickers and washi tape and little star-shaped pieces of gold foil that you press on with a toothpick. It's half-finished. It's very pretty.
It is also, in this moment, extremely visible evidence of who you are.
"It's nothing," you say.
"It's not nothing," he says. "You haven't been yourself. I've been waiting for you to bring it to me, and you haven't, which means it's something you think I won't want to hear."
You look at the journal.
"At the Tower," you say. "The other day. You and Raven."
Damian is quiet. Listening.
"You were — good together," you say, carefully. "Like, working together. You understood each other. The shorthand and the — she knew exactly what you needed, and you knew exactly what she was saying, and it was very — " you stop. "She's like you. She's serious, and she's capable, and she does real things that matter, and I was sitting on the couch putting rhinestones on my phone."
The words are out now.
You wait.
"I see," Damian says.
"I'm not — I know it's stupid — "
"I didn't say it was stupid."
"I'm saying it's stupid." You pick up a star sticker. Put it down. "I put stickers on things, Damian. I have a pink couch. I cried at a dog food commercial last week. I'm not — I'm not like her. I'm not like anyone in your world. And sometimes I wonder if you'd be — if someone like Raven would be better suited to — "
"No," he says.
Just that. Clean and immediate.
"Damian — "
"No," he says again, same quality. Not dismissive. Certain. "The answer is no, and I'd like you to hear it before you finish that sentence."
You look at him.
He looks back with the expression that is fully Damian — direct, no performance, the one that means he's decided something and is stating it as fact.
"Raven is a capable ally and a person I respect," he says. "What you observed was a professional dynamic that has been built over years of combat. It has nothing to do with what I want from my personal life. Those are not competing categories."
"But she's — she's more like you — "
"She is not more like me," he says, with the particular precision of someone who has considered this and knows the answer. "She's more like the version of me that existed before I began to understand what I'd been trained to value and what I actually value." He pauses. "Those are different things."
You're quiet.
"What does that mean?" you say.
Damian looks at the coffee table. In the journal. At the stickers, the washi tape, and the gold foil stars.
"I was raised to believe that the only things worth valuing were capability and strength and precision," he says. "Everything decorative was considered excess. Everything soft was considered a weakness." He says it evenly, like he's recounting a fact he's made peace with. "I spent the first fourteen years of my life in an environment where what you are — the colors and the softness and the — the stickers — would have been considered worthless."
You look at him.
"And then I met people who were none of those things," he says. "Dick. Your family. You." He meets your eyes. "And I began to understand that the things I'd been taught to dismiss were not weaknesses. They were things I didn't know how to access. Things I'd been told not to want."
"Damian — "
"You put stickers on things," he says, and his voice has shifted slightly, the way it shifts when he's saying something that costs him something. "You make everything around you look like it's worth looking at. You cried at the dog food commercial because you feel things fully, and you don't apologize for it. You have a pink couch because you wanted a pink couch, and you don't require external validation to want what you want." He holds your gaze. "Do you understand what it is to be near someone like that when you have spent your entire life being told that softness is a liability?"
You don't answer.
"It's not a deficit," he says. "What you are is not less than what Raven is. It is entirely different from what Raven is. And it is — " he stops, and this is Damian stopping because the word he needs is one that doesn't come easily, one that requires him to reach for it. "It is what I want. Specifically. Not as a consolation for something more serious. As the actual thing."
The apartment is very quiet.
You look at the journal on the table.
"I decorated your sketchbook," you say, after a moment. "The new one. I put a little star in the corner. I wasn't sure if you'd — "
"I know," he says.
"You didn't say anything."
"I didn't want to make you think you'd done something wrong." He pauses. "I kept the star."
You look at him.
"You kept it," you say.
"It's in the corner of the cover. I could remove it if — "
"Don't you dare remove it," you say.
Something in his expression. The thing that happens when he's pleased about something and doesn't know how to hold it conventionally.
"I wasn't going to," he says.
You look at each other for a moment.
Then you reach over to the coffee table and pick up a small sticker — a flower, pink and yellow, the kind you put everywhere without thinking — and you hold it out.
He looks at it.
He looks at you.
"Don't," he says.
"You just said — "
"I said I kept the star in the sketchbook. That doesn't mean you can — "
"One sticker," you say. "Very small."
"Absolutely not."
"Damian."
"I am not — "
"You literally just gave a speech about softness being a thing you value now — "
"A speech that did not include consenting to being stickered — "
"It's a flower," you say. "Very small flower."
He looks at the sticker.
He looks at you.
"If you tell anyone," he says.
"I would never," you say, which is a complete lie, and he knows it.
He holds out his hand.
You press the flower sticker onto the back of his hand with the toothpick, carefully, the way you do all of them. It's small and pink and extremely visible, and Damian looks at it with the expression of someone who has made a choice and is currently experiencing the full consequences of that choice.
"There," you say.
"This is — "
"You look great."
"I look like I've been attacked by a craft store."
"You look like someone who is loved," you say, and then you hear yourself say it, and the air goes slightly different.
Damian looks at his hand.
At the flower.
"Yes," he says, very quietly. "I suppose I do."
He doesn't remove the sticker.
Not that evening. Not when he leaves. You find out later — from Dick, who finds out from Alfred, who says nothing but whose expression said everything — that Damian wore it until it fell off on its own.
Which takes four days.
You put a new one in the front cover of his sketchbook.
Synopsis : your beloved Boyfriend, Damian Wayne, sleeps like a corpse, literally.
Your beloved boyfriend—Damian Wayne—sleeps like a fucking corpse.
No exaggeration.
The first time you had witnessed your boyfriend’s resting form, you almost called for Alfred to ready the medical station. Fully convinced that he was either dead or on his way to be dead.
It was early on in your relationship. Yet, Damian was already fed up with you taking a guest room instead of staying in his.
So when you came over to spend the night at his home, he made sure to inform Alfred not to arrange any other accommodation for you.
You didn’t even fight him on it—much to his delight. It’s not like you weren’t always on him 24/7, sleeping in the same bed was just another opportunity for a cuddle session.
But nothing—absolute nothing—could have prepared you to the horror of waking up next to Damian at three in the morning.
He didn’t toss. He didn’t turn. He didn’t snore. No twitching or shifting either. Damian laid there on his sheets, flat on his back, hands folded over his stomach like an ancient monarch forever resting in an extravagant tomb.
His breathing was silent. Even the rise and fall of his chest was so slight, you could barely make it out in the darkened room.
To make matters even stranger, he wasn’t a deep sleeper. Quite the contrary, actually.
How did you find that out, you ask?
Simple; you made the mistake of extending your arm over, letting it hover hesitantly for a second before attempting to touch Damian’s shoulder.
Keyword being; attempted.
Your wrist was seized immediately in a blur of rapid movement. Green eyes narrowed at you in confusion, still heavy with the haze of sleep.
To say you were startled would be an understatement. You would have been a perfect addition to the carpets on the floor, if it wasn’t for the boy currently holding you in place.
He noticeably relaxed upon realizing that it was you trying to touch him. “Beloved, what are you doing awake?” He inquired, loosening his grip on you, assessing you for any injuries, signs of distress or discomfort, and anything else he should pay attention to.
“Checking for pulse.” You admitted, voice a little shaky from the heart attack his reflexes almost gave you. “You were like…dead.”
He stared down, clearly confused by your statement. “Habibti, I am very much alive.” He stated, smoothing his thumb over the erratic pulse fluttering against your wrist.
“You weren’t moving!” You hissed, dropping back onto the pillows with a dramatic groan. “You were lying there like a statue! Normal people breathe, Damian.”
He clicked his tongue—an audible ‘Tt’ that lacked any bite—as he shifted to lay on his side, facing you.
“Normal people don’t possess the ability to maintain environmental awareness while sleeping.” He spoke as if he were reading you a page from an encyclopedia—at which you side eyed him. “You should be proud, beloved. That means I can efficiently protect you, even while resting.”
You turned your head to look at him, distraught by the implications of his words—of course you knew that Damian would stop at nothing to keep you safe, even if it meant permanent harm to himself, or even flinging himself to his death.
Looking in your eyes, he anticipated the lecture you would give him; you would say he wasn’t obliged to protect you. That you don’t need that protection, and how he would be stupid to face his death just to save you from a flesh wound.
But he wasn’t protective of you because he thought you incapable of doing so yourself or because he was obligated to do so as your boyfriend. It was because he loved you, and to Damian loving someone meant giving his all.
Heart, body, and soul.
There was a reason he called you hayati—which means my life in Arabic.
Before you could start your rant, his hand was on you on your waist, hauling you flush against his chest.
“You are the worst.” You mumbled into his chest, though your hands instinctively came to wrap around him anyway, soaking in his warmth. “I was two seconds away from screaming for Alfred.”
“Pennyworth is well aware of my resting heart rate,” Damian countered, fingers slowly tracing shapes on your back. “Now, hayati. Cease your dramatic monitoring and go back to sleep.”
You let out a soft hum, closing your eyes as the steady thump... thump... thump of his heart reverberated right against your cheek.
A soft, reverent brush of his lips to your temple was all you felt, before slipping back into deep sleep.
Months had passed since that peculiar sleepover, and you had gotten somewhat used to Damian’s less than normal sleeping habits.
Yet again, what exactly was normal about your darling Damian?
── ⟢ ・⸝⸝
a/n : greeting and salutations, moonbeams! (Idk just go with it) while browsing the ever so powerful Pinterest, i came across a comic panel of my beloved Dami sleeping like a literal corpse and then wrote this lol. I think it’s so funny and cute. Anyhow, I don’t think I am done with that idea tho, maybe I will write more about sleepy time intimacy because I think it’s so cute. As always, thank u for reading <3
Damian Wayne with a sleepy!reader?! You two met at school. An unusual pair but grew close quickly. He had trouble letting you in but you broke past those cold walls.
He invites you over, to watch a movie. It's an afternoon and the sun warms both of you up it slips past his curtains. He stares at you more than the computer. Enamoured by how the sun makes your skin glow. he could stay here forever except you got thirsty.
He went to go fetch you glass, shaking in the kitchen. He's never felt this way before like how you make him feel. Like he could love. he's never learnt how but for you he would do anything.
He makes his way back to see you laying on your side, with your mouth open. He rushes to your side, thinking how could he lose his beloved so early on. Just when he's promised himself to learn love.
You shift and asked him why he woke you up.
After that incident, he's become more wary that you like naps. he gave you an open invite to his bed, lap and heart. Always covers you and is prepared for when you wake up. Snacks, water and hugs if you wake up in a bad mood.
If anyone as so much as breathes next to you, he will (quietly) lose his bearings. How dare some fool disturb his loved one.
Hi would you mind doing a fic where damian and the reader have been in the league of assassins and they were supposed to be engaged after many years where damian has been living with his father she shows up with one mission... TO KILL HIM.... BUT it is only because she is being promised the legacy of the league! And so I want it to be a tension filled meeting with also with fighting so well like their bodies being in sync and being actually worthy opponents. But the moment she is defeated and she waits for the final kill he never does that and she escapes in the nights once again... waiting to meet again...
The Space Between Blade and Mercy
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requests are open
dividers by @cafekitsune
THEN
The League of Assassins, Ra's al Ghul's stronghold — eleven years ago
The first time Damian Wayne sees her she is beating three senior assassins simultaneously.
She is nine years old.
He is eight.
He watches from the upper corridor, which he is technically not supposed to be on during training hours, which he is on anyway because Damian al Ghul does not follow rules that fail to interest him and the restriction of his movements has never successfully been enforced.
Below in the training pit, the three men are trying.
She doesn't let them.
It's not that she's faster — she's not, not yet, not against men with twenty years of League training between them. It's something else. Something that Damian, who has been trained to identify tactical advantage since before he could properly read, clocks immediately.
She doesn't fight where she is.
She fights where she's going to be.
Two steps ahead, always. Constantly moving through a version of the fight that hasn't happened yet, placing herself in positions that seem wrong until suddenly they're exactly right and another man is on the ground.
Damian watches this for a long time.
When the third man goes down and she stands in the center of the pit, breathing hard, blood at her lip from a hit that had landed early and hadn't slowed her at all, she looks up.
She looks directly at the upper corridor.
At him.
He doesn't move. Doesn't retreat. Damian al Ghul does not retreat from a nine year old girl.
She holds his gaze for a long moment.
Then she bends and retrieves her blade from the floor, sheathes it, and walks out of the pit like the three men unconscious behind her are furniture.
Damian thinks about it for the rest of the day.
Her name is a thing the League has given her, which means it is not her name.
This is something Damian understands immediately, because his name is also a thing the League has shaped, and between the two of them this shared understanding exists before any words are exchanged.
She is called Sable.
He calls her that for six months before she tells him it isn't real.
They are sitting on the roof of the eastern training hall — she has found his spot, which she should not have been able to find because he has taken considerable care with that spot, and he resents this and also respects it simultaneously — and it's very late and they are both supposed to be sleeping.
"Sable," he says.
"That's not my name," she says.
He looks at her.
"What is."
She looks at the stars. The desert sky is very clear and very enormous and the League sprawls below them and she looks at all of it with an expression that Damian is beginning to learn — the one she wears when she's calculating, always calculating.
She tells him her name.
Her real one. The one from before the League, from whatever before she has that she doesn't talk about.
He says it once.
She doesn't react, outwardly. But something in her goes slightly still, the way things go still when something matters, and Damian files that.
"Damian," he says, offering the same.
"I know your name," she says.
"Not the real one."
She looks at him.
He tells her his. The one his mother has only mentioned once.
They sit on the roof for another hour and say nothing else, but something has been exchanged that isn't language, and in the morning when they pass each other in the training hall there is a difference in how she looks at him.
Marginal. Invisible to anyone not paying attention.
Damian is always paying attention.
They train together for four years.
This is not a sentimental arrangement. Ra's al Ghul does not make sentimental arrangements. It is tactical — they are the two best students the League has produced in a generation and putting them against each other produces results, produces refinement, produces the specific friction of two extraordinary things meeting and being made sharper by the contact.
What it also produces — and this Ra's also calculates, because Ra's calculates everything — is loyalty.
Not to the League.
To each other.
Damian learns her fighting style the way he learns languages, which is completely and with a particular kind of fluency that goes beyond technical understanding into something more instinctual. He knows her tells before she knows she has them. She knows his before he does.
They stop being able to properly surprise each other within the first year.
What they develop instead is something more interesting — a vocabulary of movement, a shared language of combat that operates below conscious thought. She pivots left and he is already there to cover. He drops to create space and she is already using it. They are not fighting the same fight; they are fighting two halves of one fight, seamlessly, without discussion.
Their trainers find this alarming.
Ra's finds this useful.
The engagement is announced when Damian is twelve.
The League of Assassins — nine years ago
The announcement is not a surprise, technically.
Damian has understood for some time that he is a resource as much as a person, that the choices made about his future are strategic rather than sentimental, that Ra's al Ghul views the continuation of the al Ghul line with the same long-game thinking he applies to everything.
He understands this.
He stands in the great hall while Ra's makes the announcement and he looks at her across the space between them and he does not look surprised because he is not surprised.
She does not look surprised either.
She looks — and Damian knows her face better than he knows almost anything — she looks like she is doing the calculation. Rapidly, behind her eyes, all the variables of this arrangement and what it means and where it places her.
What she does not look is unhappy.
This is the thing Damian returns to afterward.
She does not look unhappy.
Neither does he.
He's not sure what to do with that.
Three months after the announcement
He finds her in the archive room, which is her version of his roof spot — the place she goes when she needs to think, surrounded by histories and maps and the documentation of centuries of League operations.
"You've been avoiding me," he says.
"I've been studying," she says, not looking up from the manuscript.
"You've been avoiding me while studying."
She closes the manuscript. She looks at him.
In the three months since the announcement she has been — not cold, exactly. Not distant. But careful in a way she hasn't been before, maintaining a precise and deliberate amount of space that is exactly enough to make him aware of it.
"Sit down," she says.
He sits.
She looks at him for a moment with the expression she uses for things she's decided to say, which is different from her default expression in a way that only he would notice.
"I've been trying to determine," she says, "whether this is something that was decided about us or something that was allowed to happen and then decided about us."
Damian considers this.
"Does the distinction matter?" he says.
"It matters to me," she says. "I've spent my entire life having things decided about me. I want to know if this is another one."
Damian is quiet for a moment.
"I think," he says, carefully, because he is twelve and doesn't fully have the language for what he's about to say, "that it was decided about us because it was already true. That Ra's looked at what was already there and called it by a useful name."
She looks at him.
"What was already there," she says.
"I don't know the word for it," Damian says, which is honest, which from Damian at twelve is an extraordinary admission. "But it's there."
She is quiet for a long time.
"Yes," she says eventually. "It is."
She picks up the manuscript again.
But she shifts slightly on the bench.
Making room.
He sits next to her.
They sit in the archive room for another two hours and she reads and he reads and their shoulders are touching and neither of them mention it and in the morning it is something they have both filed under the category of true things that don't require discussion.
Two years later — Damian is fourteen
The message comes from Bruce Wayne.
Not in the form of a letter or a call — in the form of Batman, appearing at the League's threshold with the specific energy of a man who has been looking for a long time and has finally stopped looking, who has arrived at a door and is not leaving without what he came for.
Damian watches the confrontation from the shadows, which is where Damian watches most things.
He watches Ra's and Batman — his grandfather and his father, a sentence he has had the facts of for years and the full weight of only recently — conduct the negotiation that isn't a negotiation, the conversation that only has one outcome.
He watches his mother's face.
He watches Ra's.
He thinks about the archive room. The roof. The training pit. Four years of a vocabulary they'd built between them.
He thinks about it's there.
And then he makes a decision.
Her name, the real one — a conversation in the hour before Damian leaves
She knows before he tells her.
She's always two steps ahead, fighting where she's going to be, and she knows.
He finds her on the roof — his spot, their spot, the place that belongs to them in a way that nothing else in the League does — and she's already there, already sitting, already looking at the desert that stretches out to the horizon.
"Batman," she says. Not a question.
"Yes," he says.
"You're going."
"Yes."
She is quiet.
"Ra's will consider it a betrayal," she says.
"I know."
"It will change things between us." Still not looking at him. Still looking at the desert. "Officially. The engagement — "
"I know," he says.
"You know and you're going anyway."
"Yes."
She is quiet for a long time.
Long enough that the desert changes color the way it does just before dawn, the shift from black to deep blue to something that isn't quite either.
"You'll be different," she says, finally. "Gotham will change you."
"Probably," he says. "Hopefully."
"Hopefully," she repeats.
He sits next to her.
They watch the desert go from blue to almost-morning.
"I don't know what the League will do with me now," she says, and it's the most unguarded thing she's said to him in months, maybe ever, the calculation gone and just the thing underneath it. "The arrangement was — I was part of a future that included you. Without that — "
"You're the best student the League has produced," he says. "They know that. They'll use it."
"Use," she says.
"I know," he says, and he means it — he knows what that word means, he's lived it, he's only starting to understand the alternative. "I know. I'm sorry."
She looks at him.
In the almost-morning light, she looks young. Which she is. Which they both are, which the League has spent years making easy to forget.
"Come back," she says. It's quiet. It's not a question and it's not a command and it's not quite a plea. It's something else, something without a category.
"If I can," he says.
"That's not — "
"I know." He meets her eyes. "I'll try."
She nods, once, the way she nods when she's accepted a fact she doesn't like.
He leaves at dawn.
She watches him go from the roof.
She stays there for a long time after he's gone.
NOW
Gotham City — present day
The first sign is the grappling anchor.
Damian finds it on patrol — a League-grade anchor, the specific alloy, embedded in the stone of a building three blocks from the manor. Civilian equipment doesn't use this alloy. Wayne Industries doesn't manufacture it. There are exactly three suppliers in the world and they all answer to Ra's al Ghul.
He doesn't tell Bruce.
He doesn't know why he doesn't tell Bruce except that something about finding it feels private in a way he doesn't want examined yet.
He keeps it.
Starts paying attention differently.
The second sign is a shadow in his peripheral that moves wrong.
Three nights later, rooftop chase across the Diamond District. He's following a Triad operation that's been encroaching on territory he's claimed for protection — the kind of thing that requires Robin's attention because it's smaller than Batman but nastier than the GCPD.
He's three blocks in when he feels it.
Not a threat. Not exactly. Something adjacent to it — the particular quality of being watched by someone who is very good at not being seen, which he recognizes because he is also very good at it and knows what it feels like from this side.
He stops on a rooftop.
Scans.
Nothing.
But the feeling doesn't go away.
"Show yourself," he says, to the dark.
The dark doesn't answer.
He continues the patrol.
The feeling follows him all night.
The third sign is a note.
He finds it on his pillow.
In his room. In the manor. Through four layers of security that should be, technically, impenetrable, and which she has apparently penetrated anyway with the ease of someone for whom impenetrable is a suggestion.
The note contains three words in Arabic, in a handwriting he hasn't seen in four years but recognizes with the immediate totality of something learned young.
I found you.
He sits with it for a long time.
Then he says, to the empty room:
"I know."
One week later
Damian has been waiting for it.
That's the thing he will consider afterward — that he knew, that the three signs were a message and he read it correctly, that he has spent the last seven days in a state of heightened awareness that has nothing to do with Gotham's criminals and everything to do with the specific quality of anticipation that only one person in the world has ever produced in him.
He's on the rooftop of Wayne Tower.
He comes here sometimes, when he needs to think — it's the highest point he can access without the cave's equipment, and from up here Gotham is a map and a map is something he can read and reading things makes him feel like he understands them.
He hears nothing.
That's how he knows she's there.
She used to make sound — subtle, controlled, inaudible to anyone without his training, but there. Four years ago she still made sound. The League's training removes it over time and hers has clearly continued.
"You've improved," he says, to the dark behind him.
"You haven't lost your edge," she says, from somewhere he hasn't located yet. "I'm not sure if that's Robin or just you."
"Both," he says. "Come where I can see you."
A pause.
Then she steps out of the shadow of the access structure.
Four years.
Four years and she is — she is not the girl from the archive room, which he knew she wouldn't be, but the specifics of the difference are something he's taking inventory of in real time. Taller. Older in the way the League makes you older, which is not the same as older in the way Gotham has made him older — she carries it differently, in the posture, in the controlled quality of how she occupies space.
Her face.
Her face is still hers and that's the thing that hits him before anything else — before the League blacks she's wearing, before the weapons he can see and the ones he knows he can't, before any of the implications of why she's here.
Her face is still her.
"Hello, Damian," she says.
"Hello," he says.
They look at each other across the rooftop.
"You're here on League business," he says.
"Yes," she says.
"Ra's sent you."
"Yes."
"To kill me," he says. Because he knows. The grappling anchor and the note and the week of surveillance are not the prelude to a social call.
She doesn't answer immediately.
That tells him everything.
"The legacy," he says. "He's promised you the legacy."
Her jaw does something.
"I've earned it," she says.
"I don't doubt it," he says. "I know what you're capable of."
"Then you know I can do this."
"I know you can try," he says.
Something in her eyes.
"Draw," she says.
"I'd rather not fight you," he says.
"That's not an option you have tonight."
"There are always options," he says. "You taught me that. Two steps ahead, fighting where you're going to be. What's two steps ahead of this?"
"Don't," she says, and her voice is different for one second — the real voice, underneath the League voice — and then it's gone and she moves.
She is faster than he remembered.
That's the first thing, the immediate recalibration — she was fast at thirteen and she's faster now, four years of League training having refined something that was already extraordinary, and Damian gets his staff up in time but barely, the impact jarring up his arms in a way that tells him she's stronger too.
He doesn't let it show.
She lands six feet away, reads his face, and he knows she clocked it anyway.
"You've been training with Batman," she says, circling.
"Yes," he says, circling to match. The roof is large and well-lit by the city below and they are moving around each other with the particular quality of two people who know each other's weight distribution and are accounting for it.
"It shows," she says. "Different style."
"You've been with the League," he says. "It shows too."
"Is that a compliment."
"It's an observation."
She comes at him again — not the same angle, she never uses the same angle twice, this is something she'd had at nine and has refined to an art form — and he goes where she's going to be rather than where she is, which means they meet in the middle of the space with his forearm against hers and her blade a centimeter from his ribs.
They hold.
Face to face. Closer than the rooftop has been. He can see her eyes and she can see his and they are both doing the thing they do — reading, calculating, the fight underneath the fight.
"You knew that," she says, very quiet.
"Two steps ahead," he says.
She breaks the hold and goes low and he vaults over her and they separate and reset and it starts again.
This is the thing about fighting her — about fighting someone you know at this depth — it is not like fighting an opponent. It is like fighting yourself. Every choice he makes she has already accounted for and every choice she makes he has already accounted for and what results is not a fight in any conventional sense but something that looks more like —
A conversation.
That's the word he finds for it, in the part of his mind that runs parallel to the combat. A conversation in the language they built together over four years, the vocabulary of movement, the shorthand that exists below thought.
She knows.
He can see her knowing.
It makes her better. Makes her angrier. She comes harder after she realizes it and he responds in kind and for three minutes the rooftop of Wayne Tower contains something that the training pits of the League would have recognized — two exceptional things meeting and being made sharper by the contact.
His staff catches her knee.
She takes it without slowing and uses the momentum, spinning into an elbow that would have broken his nose if he hadn't already been moving.
He catches her wrist.
She reverses his grip.
He goes with the reversal.
They end up on the ground — him on his back, her above him, blade at his throat. Her knee on his chest. Her breath slightly elevated. Her eyes on his.
He has two options.
Neither of them is staying still.
He executes one of them — the League reversal, the one she taught him, the specific technique that she'd drilled into him at eleven years old on a morning when she was impatient with his footwork and had thrown him down and shown him how to use a ground position rather than escape it.
The irony of using her technique on her is not lost on either of them.
She sees it coming.
She almost — almost — has the counter.
Not quite.
The reversal completes and now he's above her and her blade is in his hand and his staff is at her throat and she's on her back on the rooftop of Wayne Tower looking up at him.
They are both breathing hard.
The city is below them and the night is around them and they are very close and the blade is in his hand and the staff is at her throat.
He looks at her.
She looks at him.
She is waiting.
He knows what she's waiting for. He knows the League's protocol. He knows what this position means in the language they were both taught, the language that says: it's done, finish it.
He looks at her face.
Her real face, underneath the League's training, underneath the mission, underneath the calculation.
The nine year old who looked up from the training pit.
The girl in the archive room who told him her real name.
The almost-morning on the roof when she said come back and he said I'll try.
He steps back.
He takes the blade with him, because he's not reckless, but he steps back and he raises the staff and he gives her the space.
She doesn't move immediately.
She lies there for a moment and she looks at him and the thing on her face is — complex, is layered, is something he cannot fully read which is unusual, which tells him how much she's feeling because she is very good at her face and it's not doing what she's telling it to.
Then she sits up.
They look at each other.
"Why," she says.
"You know why," he says.
"The League will consider this a failure," she says. "Both of ours."
"I know."
"Ra's will not — "
"I know what Ra's will do," he says. "I've been living with the consequences of Ra's al Ghul's displeasure for four years." He looks at her steadily. "Go. Before I change my mind."
"You won't," she says.
"No," he agrees. "But go anyway."
She stands. She is unhurt — good, he had been precise about what he allowed to land and what he hadn't, the combat had been real but there are calibrations even within real — and she stands and she is looking at him with that expression that he can't fully read.
"The blade," she says.
He looks at it in his hand.
He holds it out.
She takes it.
Their fingers don't touch.
Almost.
"You're still two steps ahead," she says, very quietly.
"So are you," he says. "You let me have that reversal."
A pause.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she says.
"Yes you do."
She looks at him for a long moment.
Then she does something she hasn't done since he was twelve years old and she was thirteen and they were sitting in the archive room.
She tells him her real name.
Not the League name.
The real one.
Like she's reminding him she still has it. Like she's reminding herself.
Then she turns.
She walks to the edge of the rooftop.
She doesn't look back.
She goes over the side and the night swallows her and he is alone on the rooftop of Wayne Tower with the city below him and four years of distance and one night of a conversation conducted in the language of blades.
He stands there for a long time.
In the archive room, the League stronghold — seven years ago
"What happens," she had asked him once, young enough that the question was genuine and not strategic, "if we want different things. From what the League wants."
He had been quiet, considering.
"I suppose," he had said, "we find out what we're made of."
She had looked at him with that expression — the calculating one, the two-steps-ahead one.
"And if what we're made of is the same thing," she had said. "If we want the same thing."
"Then it's simpler," he had said.
"Is it," she had said, not quite asking.
He had thought about it.
"No," he had admitted. "Probably not."
She had almost smiled.
"Probably not," she had agreed.
Wayne Manor — that night, after
He sits in his room.
On the desk is the note. Three words in Arabic in her handwriting.
I found you.
He picks up a pen.
He writes three words back, in Arabic, in his handwriting, on the same paper.
I know. Come back.
He puts it in the drawer.
He doesn't know when she'll find it.
She will find it.
She finds everything.
Somewhere in Gotham — the same night
She finds the highest point she can access — a water tower, three miles from Wayne Tower, the city spread out in every direction.
She sits.
She thinks about the rooftop. About the reversal she'd let him have, which he'd known, which meant he'd been watching for it, which meant he'd been two steps ahead of her in a way she should have anticipated and hadn't because —
Because it's him.
Because it has always been harder to be two steps ahead of him than anyone else and she has spent four years telling herself that was training, that was proximity, that was the natural result of two exceptional things making each other sharper.
The blade is in her hand.
He handed it back.
She thinks about that for a long time.
The League will want a report. Ra's will want to know why the mission failed. She will need an answer that is strategic, that reframes the failure as information gathered, that buys her time.
She is good at answers like that.
But underneath the answer she will give Ra's, in the part that belongs to her and not to the League, is the actual answer.
Which is that she looked up at him on that rooftop and she waited and he stepped back and she had already known he would, which means she had already known she was going to let him.
Which means she made a choice tonight.
She has not decided yet what it means.
She sheathes the blade.
She looks at Gotham — his city, the city that changed him in the ways she'd predicted and some she hadn't — and she looks at it carefully, the way she looks at maps, the way she looks at things she's going to need to understand.
She'll be back.
That decision is already made.
The rest of the decisions are still waiting to be made, which is unusual for her, which tells her something about the situation she is not entirely ready to name.
summary: Damian becomes confusingly jealous when a handsome, young vet gets too friendly with you
warnings: mentions of needles, thoughts of violence, animals vaccinations, a little smoochy smooch
Damian had never had any reason to be jealous in his life.
Having grown up as the prince of assassins and then the heir to a multi-billion dollar company, he had had everything he could ever want and need with the snap of his fingers. Was there anything in the world he could be denied?
Much to his dismay, there was.
"Oh, poor baby! It won't hurt forever, I promise. And when this is all over, I'll make your daddy get you a pup cup, mkay?"
"He's had shots before, beloved." Damian pointed out. "You're only going to spoil him if you continue in this coddling."
You stuck your tongue out, clearly displeased with his lack of sympathy towards his own dog. If there was anyone who loved his animals more than himself, it was you.
The first time Damian brought you home, you had immediately been enamored with each of his pets. It had been no time at all that most of the fur-babies were perched on or beside you, reveling in your generous pets and soft coo-ings. It had only succeeded in making Damian fall harder for you.
"How are you so calm about this? The last time I had a shot, I couldn't feel my arm for the rest of the day!" you protested, fingers scratching behind Titus' silky ears. The Great Dane eyed you adoringly, a similar expression his owner also wore around you often.
Damian put a hand on your thigh, thumb rubbing soothing circles along your knee. "You forget that it's not you who is getting these shots, but Titus."
"Still...what if he passes out and we have to carry him back to the car? He's like a hundred pounds, Dami. That's heavy."
Damian rolled his eyes in amusement. "I can carry thrice that weight, my love. Perhaps even quadruple."
"Then what if he reacts horribly to the needle or vaccine?"
"We're at the veterinary clinic. They have procedures for that very situation."
"What if-"
"No more." Damian insisted. He knew that when you could worry yourself into becoming sick and that this wasn't something you should be fretting over. "Titus has a strong constitution, he's reacted well to the medicines in the past, and he'll be fine. Do you need to step outside for some fresh air before we're called back?"
You shook your head, free fingers playing idly with his rings. A nervous habit that calmed you down. "I'm sorry for freaking out."
"You don't ever need to apologize about that." He pressed a kiss to your temple. "There are always risks but let me handle the 'what if's', yes?"
"Yes, Dami."
Normally, Damian couldn't stand people who tended to overthink. It annoyed him that they would fret over making decisions when it was obvious. Why spend so much energy fretting over something? It was pathetic.
Except for you.
Nothing about you could ever be anything but perfection. From your tendency to internalize absolutely everything, to your constant need of outside validation. Damian wanted to be the best source of comfort and reliability for you and if that meant soothing every worry or directing your hesitant actions, he would do just that. Nothing and nobody in the world mattered as much to him as you and your happiness did, a rare affection from a man so arrogant and proud as him.
A vet tech appeared from the front desk, "Titus Wayne?"
Damian stood, pulling you up with him, and guided you and Titus to the older woman.
After guiding you to a room in the back and asking for you to wait for the veterinarian, you and Damian watched Titus sniff around the room, curious from the faint smells of various animals and instruments.
Just as Damian ordered the dog to sit, the door opened and in walked a young man, a stethoscope draped over his neck and a clipboard in his hand. "Titus?"
"Yes." Damian answered. "You're not Dr. Last."
This light-haired, tan man was most definitely not the bald, pudgy doctor Damian had interacted with before.
Chuckling at the blunt observation, the man moved to the sink and methodically washed his hands. "Dr. Last is on vacation. Took his wife on a cruise around the Caribbean. I'm Dr. Bale but I promise I am just as capable."
Damian did not like this one ounce.
Firstly, he had a system and when that system was abruptly changed, it frustrated him to no end. Secondly, he had only recently trusted Dr. Last, an older gentleman whom Bruce knew and recommended to his son. Thirdly, this doctor was too young and too handsome to be anything but troublesome.
The idiot--Dr. Bale, that was--sat before you two and smiled at the Great Dane. "He's a big boy, isn't he?"
"His breed usually are." Damian replied dryly.
You elbowed him softly to encourage politeness and smiled. "He still acts like a lap dog. When you sit down, he's always attempting to climb on your lap or smother you with kisses."
"I've found that most big dogs act like babies and vice versa. I had a Chihuahua earlier this morning attempt to bite me for getting too close. We didn't even have a muzzle small enough for his snout."
Damian could empathize with that Chihuahua just about now.
You giggled. "They have to find some way to compensate for their size, don't they?"
Dr. Bale's eyes sparkled in amusement and turned to you. Damian's own eyes hardened.
"Are you Mr. Wayne's wife? I haven't heard anything on the news about any flashy weddings."
"I'm his girlfriend," you stuck out your hand to shake. "And we prefer our relationship on the down low, so if you could keep this away from any press, it would be deeply appreciated."
"Anything for a beautiful young lady," Dr. Bale said with a flash of too-white teeth.
Damian's fingers itched to knock them down his throat.
You piped up again, "Will you please be gentle with Titus? I don't want to cause him any unnecessary pain."
"Of course." The vet promised, turning back to his patient and performing a standard examination.
You took the opportunity to raise your lips to Damian's ear and whisper, "You better be nice."
"I am being nice."
"No, you're not."
"I'm not the type to fall over people, beloved. Don't expect anything uncharacteristic of me."
You sighed and took his hand to hold it.
"Well," the vet decided, "he's healthy weight and appearance. Do you want us to do any blood work today or just the vaccines?"
"Only the vaccines." The sooner they could be out of there, the happier Damian would be.
Dr. Bale called in the vet tech from before and they put everything together, pulling Titus onto a table and preparing him.
Your hand tightened around Damian's face pressing into his hard shoulder when you heard Titus give a soft whine. Damian pressed a hand to the back of your head for comfort as his eyes followed the doctor to ensure he didn't mess anything up.
A few moments later, Titus was given a treat and the doctor was removing his gloves. "That was possibly the smoothest vaccination I've ever performed."
"It's done?" you raised your head and Damian nodded, smoothing the hair back from your forehead.
"Titus is a trooper." Dr. Bale praised. "How are you feeling yourself? Are you afraid of needles?"
"I don't like seeing people or animals in pain."
Dr. Bale rolled his chair closer to you, concern etched into his brow. "Would you like a glass of water?" his hand landed on your knee, causing Damian to stiffen. "Do you need me-"
"She doesn't need anything from you." Damian intervened, voice hard. "Aren't you an animal doctor?"
The bastard's brown eyes locked onto Damian's green ones, his irritation visible which was absolutely audacious considering he was trying to hit on another man's girlfriend in front of him.
"I took multiple classes on patient handling. I think I know what I'm doing, Mr. Wayne."
"Did any of those classes involve invading personal space or flirting with your clients?" Damian growled.
Your tugging on his arm was ignored.
Dr. Bale stood, towering over Damian's seated position. "What are you trying to accuse me of?"
Damian stood, gratified to find himself several inches taller. "I'm not one to mix words. It's obvious that you're trying to hit on my girlfriend."
A scoff. "I could have you blacklisted for such an accusation."
"I have powerful connections in his city. I'm not sure you're employer would appreciate the havoc you're threatening to wreak."
Both men glared at each other, the tension in the air palpable enough you could cut through it with a knife. Damian had never felt this type of rage before. He wanted to act irrationally and hit the man or demolish his career or-
A gentle hand prodded his chin until his eyes found yours. Your cheeks were red and you looked troubled. "Please stop." You pleaded quietly enough that he barely heard it.
Having been caught up in his anger and pride, he had forgotten that you had witnessed the entire thing and that he--who had never wanted to put you in that position--was the cause of your anxiousness.
Every ounce of bitterness abandoned his body at the thought. How could he have been thick-headed enough to do that to you? How had he been unable to see past his quick feelings and need to stake claims? He was never so blind.
He looked up at Dr. Bale once again, whose chest was heaving with angry breaths. "I apologize," Damian bit out, amazed at the sincerity in his voice that was urged by that uneasy look in your eyes.
The vet considered this a moment and let out a long breath. "I shouldn't have put my hand on her. I'm sorry as well. That was completely inapropriate"
At least he wasn't as dense as Damian initially thought. "Yes. It was."
"If either of you have any complaint, you can-"
"Not necessary." You stated. "It was all just one big misunderstanding. Now, if we're all finished here..."
After having Titus cleared and the three of you were in the car, Damian turned to look at you. "I don't know what came over me, beloved."
"You were jealous," you declared, lips turning up into a satisfied smile.
"I don't get jealous." Damian retorted.
"And yet, you were." You poked, laughing.
"Why is this so hilarious to you? I made you uncomfortable and nearly assaulted a veterinarian. You shouldn't be laughing." He squirmed in his seat, unusually uncomfortable.
You grabbed his bicep and pulled his torso over the middle console and kissed his cheek loudly. "I love you, Damian. And I'm only laughing because I've never seen you lose control like that. Sure, the guy was being a bit forward, but you have always been able to control your temper."
Damian happily reluctantly let you smother him in kisses, Titus sitting in the back seat, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth as he watched his owners adore each other.
"I've never felt that way before," Damian grunted. "It was like this fire in my chest that burned hotter every time I saw him speak or look at you. And then you smiled at him and I wanted to throttle his neck. It was alien."
By now you had trapped Damian's hand in between yours, petting your cheek with his knuckles. "For your peace of mind, I was being nice. Also, I didn't find him attractive one bit. No one compares to you, my jealous boyfriend."
Damian mumbled something incoherent under his breath.
"You've really never experienced jealousy?" you inquired, bewildered.
"Everything has been handed to me on a silver platter. I've been stubborn and ostentatious but never envious. My father was always impressed by how well I took to having instant brothers."
You pointed out that he had attempted to murder each of them at least once.
"Not out of envy," he explained as if the matter of familial homicide weren't that serious.
You pressed your lips to the back of his hand and said, "Be honest..."
Damian sighed, not able to reject any request made by you. "You are a cruel woman. I cannot fathom how you've wrapped me so securely around your finger."
"Dami."
"Fine...I was jealous."
You rewarded his obviously difficult admission with a large grin and Damian knew, without a doubt, that he wasn't as ashamed as he thought he'd feel.
Yes, acknowledging vulnerability to someone was outside his comfort zone, but he would divulge every feeling and thought to you if it resulted in your being proud of him.
One hand threaded into the back of your head as he maneuvered your lips to his, nose brushing along your cheek. Your smaller fingers grasped at his collar, pulling him close. As if Damian was foolish enough to extract himself from your affection.
A moment or five later, Titus barked, returning both of your attention to the present moment, eyes locked and soft. Promising more when in private.
Damian righted himself and tugged your hand onto his lap as he reversed out of the parking lot. "Beloved?"
"Yes, Dami?"
"What is a pup cup and where do we purchase one?"
author's note: couldn't come up with names so the vet is named after my bf, Christian Bale lol
summary: an unexpected guest finds you during your shower..?
warnings: fluff, est. relationship, they’re both sappy af, arachnophobia (?), use of pet names (hayati, habibti, beloved), v short
A thud. A scream. A bang.
Is what Damian Wayne heard coming from the bathroom which you were occupying.
His heart jumped, as did he off of the couch as he ran over to the bathroom door. He quickly turned the handle, wasting no time before barging into the steamy bathroom.
He saw you, eyes wide, skin still damp from the shower as you shakily held onto the towel around your body.
“Hayati, what happened?” He said, hurrying over to you and wrapping his arms around your shoulders, trying to calm your clearly stressed form.
“Damian!” Your arms flew around him. No, not in a hug, but in an attempt to run behind him and hide.
He caught your wrist before you could head to the door.
“What are you doing?” His eyes were filled with confusion, even more so concern.
“Dami! There’s a spider in the shower!” You said with a twinge of mortification in your voice.
Damian stared at you for a moment before letting you go, his expression deadpanned.
“A…spider, habibti?”
You groaned, “Yes! A spider! Oh- don’t look at me like that, I’m not crazy!”
He couldn’t help it as a grin tugged up on his lips. “Now when did I say that, hayati? Come on, I’ll get it for you.” Damian turned around, making his way over to the shower as he pulled the glass door open.
You huffed and crossed your arms as he examined the marble tiles for any chance of an arachnid. That’s when he saw the small 8-legged creature hovering right above the shower head.
He stared at it. It stared back at him. It’s many eyes blinking at the tall specimen in front of him. Damian sighed as he reached his hands out, clasping the spider into his hands.
You watched as he turned back from the shower, eyes wandering up to yours while his palms guarded the bug. They were dangerously close to each other, threatening the spider with a fate he couldn’t possibly escape.
You stared at his palms with your eyes wide open, tracing every little twitch in his fingers. Like if you looked away even for a second it would find a way onto your skin.
“Shall I throw it away?” He tilted his head lightly.
Your eyes flew to his face as you shook your head repeatedly. “No. Don’t kill it.”
Damian raised an eyebrow, yet he knew what he had to do. He carefullly walked past you and out of the bathroom before arriving at the tall window that lead to your balcony.
The window was skilfully opened by his elbow as Damian stepped out into the cold air. His bare feet met the chilling tiles and a shiver ran up his spine.
He crouched down in front of one of the plants, placing the small arachnid on a rustling leaf.
You watched the whole scene unravel from inside of the apartment, an awestruck expression forming on your face. Damian walked back into the warm apartment when he noticed you.
“What is it belov-“ He didn’t get to finish his sentences as you enveloped him in a long hug, burying your face in the crook of his neck.
“You’re so sweet, Dami.” you sapped into his collarbone. “Love you.”
He chuckled, “All of this just because I got rid of a spider?”
You didn’t answer, just sighed further into his skin.
Damian smiled, “Love you too.” His fingers crept behind your neck, swiping a line of bubbles your body wash had left over.
“But you should get back into the shower.” He whispered and you nodded, letting him go almost hesitantly.
Damian looked around the now empty living room as he heard the shower turn back on. His eyes trailed over the wet droplets you had left on the floor from all the scurrying you did while you were still dripping wet.
He just sighed and trotted over to the kitchen to grab a mop.
a/n: idk I feel like Damian can be such a loverboy when he gets close enough to someone😙
