DAMIAN’S IN HIS FEELINGS!
(and he can’t get out of it) chapter 1 → chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ SUMMARY .ᐟ Damian Wayne had a heart of gold. His hands were gentle, his voice soft, his arms aching to wrap around somebody. Yet, he was convinced love was something he could never have. Perhaps it was a consequence of his childhood, or maybe he was right: everyone he loved was bound to leave him eventually. His siblings seemed to have an easier time with matters of the heart, and were determined to show him it was not the minefield he imagined after he grew the courage to ask for help. Of course, despite their efforts, the only one who could make him see he is deserving of it was you.
CW → female reader; slow burn; pining longing yearning; not actually unrequited love; friends to lovers; mentions of death & violence; mental health issues; angst with a happy ending; damian has undiagnosed PTSD; damian wayne needs a hug (he gets it) </3; damian and reader are freshmen in college; jon kent and damian wayne bestfriendism!1!1!; flashbacks (written in italics); may be ooc, but this is how i characterise damian so #ToMe it’s totally right.
wc: 2.4k cross-posted on AO3 <3
Damian Wayne prided himself on being disciplined. His life was very different in Gotham than it used to be in Nanda Parbat—better, in a way. At least, in Gotham, he could afford to be a boy rather than a weapon.
It took years of violence, aggressiveness to become what he was then. He no longer had the claws of the League scratching his skin at every move, reminding him where he came from and what he was raised to be, to do. Damian Wayne had made himself grow into a gentleman. He paints, he writes poetry in a language only he understands, he was studying to take care of people for a living and he already did that every night under the mantle of Robin.
Damian Wayne had made himself a good person. He guessed that his siblings had some credit in it, but if he hadn’t wanted to be good he wouldn’t have been.
He liked having friends. He could say, maybe not out loud yet, that he appreciated his friends. Though the word “friend” was reserved for a few: Jon, Nika, and you. Damian liked his classmates, sure, and some of them seemed to enjoy conversing with him, but were they friends? Not really.
Were you?
He reckoned you were friends, and had been since Gotham Academy. Damian had read in books, or heard in movies, or maybe it was Stephanie who told him that the line between friendship and something more was on occasion blurry. He had a feeling he knew what they meant by something—the problem was, he was uncertain he wanted to know.
That kind of love was a matter he wasn’t really acquainted with. He’d seen Dick with Barbara a few times, Stephanie with Cassandra, and he’d been around Tim and his boyfriend enough to both hate them and understand what PDA meant. Context was one thing, though, standing in the centre of it was another.
Just thinking about it made him nervous. Nervous. Ridiculous. He’s fought actual demons, and what got him was a girl.
He was sure your feelings were a pale shadow of his own, anyway. Maybe if he wished hard enough, that would change, but he was smarter than that.
Every time he mulled the topic he arrived to the same conclusion: Damian Wayne was not a man suited for love.
When he walked into the 7-Eleven where you worked after his afternoon classes, he found you perched on the counter, your eyes fixed on your phone. The store was empty—you rarely had many customers, anyway. A TV Girl track drifted through the stillness, competing only with the low hum of the coolers.
“Which one is this?” he asked as a greeting, walking towards the counter until he stood right in front of you.
You didn’t look up. “Hate Yourself,” you replied. “My manager finally let me play my own playlist, only when I’m working the shift by myself.” He hummed.
It was then that you raised your head to meet his eyes, and smiled at him. He noticed you were nibbling on candy. “Stealing from your job?” He raised an eyebrow.
“No.” You huffed, amused, tucking the candy into your cheek to leave room for a grin. From behind the counter, you produced a bowl of hard candies, with wrappers of all colors.
“Is that yours?”
“The store needed to be a bit more whimsical.”
Damian smirked. “If I had to wear that hideous uniform I’d want to do that, too.”
You frowned, and looked down at your grey uniform shirt. Then, with a glare, you protested:
“Hey, I make it look cute.”
”It’s still ugly,” objected Damian.
You rolled your eyes at him, though you couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped you.
“Just grab whatever you want and leave me alone.” At his chuckle, you waved him off.
He came back with a cherry Slurpee and an Italian Sub sandwich. You eyed him while ringing his food up.
“You’re not having lunch at your house?” you asked him. “$8.39 total,” you added.
Damian shook his head while grabbing his wallet. “Exam at seven.” You grimaced. “I know, it sucks.” He sighed.
“It’s in times like these I’m grateful for not having afternoon classes.”
Once the transaction was done, you leaned over the counter again. Damian’s gaze remained anchored to your face, even as your focus retreated once more to your phone. After a beat, he leaned forward to match your stance, the sound of tearing plastic from his sandwich filling the space between you.
Usually, Damian craved the silence; in the chaotic halls of the Manor, he often found himself praying for it. Here, however, the quiet felt treacherous. It sat heavy and awkward between you, sharpened by the fact that you were smiling at your phone, lost in something that didn’t include him. Judging by that, he could assume the quiet was only awkward for him. He narrowed his eyes, an instinctive pinch that he’d sooner die than admit was jealousy.
“Are you,” he started, trying to sound uninterested, “texting someone?”
He paused, eyes focused as he scrutinised the specific curve of your mouth. He was looking for a tell. That particular, fluttering nervousness in a smile that signalled a secret. A someone.
Uncharacteristic —though lately it became quite frequent— panic began to spiral in his chest. You would tell him if you were meeting someone, wouldn’t you? He was your best friend, even if the label had started to feel short for him.
If there was someone else, the geometry of your friendship would shift. He could envision it even then—unanswered texts, less and less hangouts when both of you were free and the eventual, agonising solitude of being replaced once again.
Once again. Once again.
“Yeah, Jon,” you replied, straightening up to stretch your arms.
The tension bled from Damian’s shoulders so abruptly it was near a flinch. Before you could catch the shift in his expression, he jerked his gaze away. He retreated to his lunch, taking a jagged bite of the sandwich.
It tasted like freezer, a far cry from the food at his home. But the Manor was too far, and the comfort of Alfred’s cooking would cost him being late to his exam. More than that, the Manor didn’t have you leaning close to him, silence filled with your favourite playlist instead of his siblings’ voices.
“He says he failed his driving test,” you told him. “Again. How many times can you fail a driving test until they tell you ‘sorry, you’re banned from driving’?”
Jon’s helplessness to drive a car was a mystery to Damian, considering he had driven before. If he could drive his Batmobile —it happened once, Damian swears— how was a Ford Fiesta challenging to control?
Honestly, the guy could fly. Damian guessed birds didn’t have ‘do not overtake’ signs and he got confused. You didn’t know that. They couldn’t tell you, not yet. It would be dangerous, his father had warned. To you, Jon was stupid and Damian was an insomniac.
It wasn’t that far from the truth.
“I can keep driving you both places,” he offered. “Until you get your license, that is.”
“I’m doing way better than him on my tests, though. Will you both be my passenger princesses when I get it?” you asked, teasingly, with a beaming smile.
“You’re insufferable.”
“Aw, you love me so much.”
A sudden, traitorous heat climbed the back of his neck, prickling at the tips of his ears. He was, in all honesty, blindsided. Not by the words, per se, but the casual, effortless way you had thrown them into the air.
It wasn’t the first time you’d teased him with… the L-word, dangling it like a shiny, inconsequential lure that was nothing but that, a word. But to him, it felt like a serrated edge.
It was…
He swallowed a dry mouthful of the Italian Sub. It was whatever. You didn’t mean it that way. You never did. To you, “love” was a lighthearted currency, a scrap of affection that you very easily said to all of your close ones. To Jon, to Lian, to Roy, even to Clark when the Kents visited Gotham.
You didn’t know that to him the word was a heavy thing he’d been trying to bury under the floorboards of his heart for months. Maybe for years, but now he was aware of it completely.
“What’s the exam about?”
Your voice made his attention return to you like a moth to a flame. His body betrayed him every time as it gravitated, uncontrollably, towards you.
“Neuroscience,” he replied curtly, drumming the fingers of his free hand against the counter.
You gave one last look at your phone before clasping your hands together. “It’s 18:33,” you announced. “Maybe you should get going.”
Damian offered a mindless nod. He didn’t even finish his sandwich. Not like it saddened him or anything, but Alfred would be concerned when he arrived at the Manor and assaulted the kitchen.
“Maybe,” he echoed. “Are you busy this weekend?” he asked. The light raise of your eyebrows preceded a smile.
“No.” You shook your head. “Isn’t Jon coming this weekend? I guess you ask because of that.”
“Yes.” No. Truthfully he had forgotten Jon was going to visit them that weekend. “Yes, obviously. Grayson is still in Blüdhaven and Drake will too be out with his boyfriend,” he explained.
“It’s still funny to me that you address them by their last names.”
He blinked. “Not the point.”
You giggled softly, the sweet sound making a warm feeling settle on his chest.
“Okay, then,” you spoke again. “You’re offering to meet at your house?” He nodded. “Alright.”
“If you want to,” he added quickly. “Perhaps you… I don’t know, prefer a café? To change scenery. We’re always at the Manor when Jon comes to visit.”
You gave a noncommittal shrug. “Well it’s safe, and comfortable, and I can beat you both at Smash Bros,” you said, innocently smiling. “I can’t do that at a café.”
“Fine, fine.” His smirk mirrored the softness of your own smile. He grabbed his Slurpee from the counter. “Wish me luck.”
You straightened up, your expression shifting. He couldn’t put a finger on what changed, but it was close enough to his own when he was disappointed you’d leave. A look in your eyes that could mean ‘I wish you could stay longer’.
That wish was most likely built on friendship and nothing else—the whim to spend more time with your friend, just to fight the boredom that came with working a shift all by yourself and with no customers, to top it all.
He couldn’t afford to long for it to be something else entirely, for the heartbreak when the truth came would be greater.
“Good luck.” You waved amiably with a grin. “Text me when you’re home safe, you’ll get out late,” you called.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You be careful too.”
He’d be guarding you from the rooftops, still and all.
The door to the store closed behind him and he let out a breath that felt heavier than it was. He had to get a grip, quick. Ever since he came to terms with his feelings, and the fact that they were nowhere near platonic, he has lost all sense of self.
You were his best friend, first and foremost, he couldn’t just start acting differently and weird all of a sudden and expect you to not notice. He could in any way expect Jon not to notice, either, and that was if he hadn’t already caught on to his feelings for you. Knowing him, he had; he would keep it to himself until he noticed everything was to blow out of proportion and Damian would do something stupid, like pushing you away and cutting all contact.
The fact that the thought of himself doing that didn’t sound so unappealing was alarming.
He didn’t want to suddenly start ignoring you and leaving you to wonder why, but wouldn’t that be beneficial? Shouldn’t that make his growing feelings quell and eventually disappear until he could live with being your friend again? It surely made sense to him.
But he was new to this. He was new to everything, and he didn’t know what to do, and that frustrated him. It angered him. You deserved someone who knew what to do with what he wanted.
That someone wasn’t Damian, and he might have to just accept that and go on with his life.
Fortunately, Damian didn’t give up that easily. His stubbornness was a virtue intermittently.
Upon arriving at the Manor after his exam, he wasn’t thinking about the Circle of Willis. He was thinking about how hard it was to swallow his pride for what he was about to do.
He found the first floor’s living room empty, and so he started for the second floor. Bumping into Alfred, who claimed Stephanie and Tim were in the library, he remembered he was starving.
Saved it for later.
The door to the library opened abruptly, and even if neither of them flinched —vigilante reflexes, it was clear— Damian noticed Stephanie looked put out.
Well, reasonably. The desperation he felt was surely plastered all over his face.
They were sat at the long table set by Bruce so they could study and do their work in the library apart from their bedrooms.
“If you’re here to murder someone, at least let me finish my essay,” Tim imparted, his head bowed over his laptop and an open textbook.
“I need relationship advice,” Damian blurted out, before he could realise that it was a very bad idea and he had chosen the worse two options to be his advisors.
He expected both of them to kill themselves laughing at his request, it would’ve been the logical outcome. Instead, he was met with silence first, then:
“Finally,” Stephanie sighed.
Now he was the one put out.
“Sorry?”
Tim, then, asked if he wanted help with you, and at the sound of your name Damian stiffened.
Oh, had he been that obvious? That was embarrassing. He thought himself discreet with his emotions.
He simply nodded, feeling even the top of his head heating up in embarrassment.
“How did you—”
“It’s been obvious since you were sixteen,” Stephanie interrupted him. “Come, Dami, we know exactly what to do.” She grinned from ear to ear, teasingly using the nickname you called him by.
He was going to go into cardiac arrest.
Reluctantly, and grumbling under his breath, he sat down beside Tim, with Stephanie at the head of the table.
He sighed, as they began to speak, and as the seconds passed and his grimace deepened, he wondered more and more how their respective partners hadn’t broken up with them yet.
He should’ve waited until Dick came back from Blüdhaven.
a/n: hihihi! part one of thissss i don’t know how many chapters it will have, but i calculate around eleven or twelve + epilogue <3 aaa i wanted to write for damian again soo bad and an idea for a oneshot turned into A Whole Thing oops. better though. there is Foreshadowing for some things hehe… maybe it’s not that easy to catch but i promise it’s there and it will make sense and be resolved. i love jon with all my heart i’m so excited to write more about him too apart from this. apparently there are So Little fics for jon ??? we used to be a proper country guys lock in. i’ll also try to make this as canon compliant as possible because i don’t really like everyone’s fanon characterisation. i mean there are A Lot and they’re all … So fanon i explode. I KNOW damian is a sweetheart and A Loverboy i will die on this hill.
AnyWay maybe leave a little love and read you soon <3
Hate Yourself by TV Girl is the song referenced in this chapter!!
