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Damian was being weird.
Well, Jon amended mentally, weird for him. Damian had been weird pretty much since birth, from what Jon could tell, but after six years of friendship, he was used to Damian’s particular brand of weirdness. In fact, it would be accurate—though extremely embarrassing—to say that he was actively charmed by Damian’s inability to do almost anything the way a normal human being would. And after all, Jon was half alien and could fly, so he probably shouldn’t throw stones.
But come on. The guy ate his burgers with a knife and fork.
This wasn’t Damian’s usual weirdness, however. This was a whole ‘nother something, and Jon was starting to have some questions.
It had started with Damian eyeing him fairly obviously during patrol. He was wearing whiteout lenses, of course, but that didn’t matter. Jon didn’t usually use his X-ray vision to look through them—that was rude, even if he did like looking at Damian’s eyes—but he’d spent his whole life around people in whiteout lenses, and especially around Damian. He knew when he was being scrutinized.
“What?” he asked finally, because Damian wouldn’t stop until he did.
“What size are you?”
Jon blinked. “Uh, size taller than you,” he retorted, just for the fun of making Damian scowl. There had been a brief moment, when Damian was fifteen and Jon was twelve, that Damian had shot up past Jon. But he’d topped out at five foot nine, while Jon had started growing again, and kept growing, until he was over six feet, just a bit shorter than his dad. He might wind up even taller than that.
The truth was, Jon liked that Damian was so much shorter than him. Partially because teasing him about it was still as fun as it had been when they were kids, and partially because there was something about the way Damian was built, slight and lithe and powerful, that made something electric and primal in Jon’s brain go “Yes, please.”
Not that he would ever say that last part out loud.
For once, Damian didn’t take the bait. “I’m aware,” he drawled in his most unimpressed tone. “Bully for you. What actual size are you, though? Or does your mother still do all your shopping for you?”
“I don’t think it’s abnormal for my mother to shop for me when I’m still in high school,” Jon retorted, but he did know what size clothes he wore, and he told Damian. Why not? Damian already knew everything else about him, after all.
Well, except one thing. But again, he was never saying that out loud.
He’d forgotten the conversation entirely until a week later, when a uniformed courier delivered several packages from Metropolis’s most luxe department store.
“Lex trying to woo you again?” his dad asked his mom as he and Jon carried the boxes into the apartment. Jon wrinkled his nose. Lex Luthor’s intermittent crush on his mom was understandable, he guessed—she was kinda pretty and very cool, for a mom—but it was also super weird and gross.
“Not that I know of. Maybe he’s trying to woo you this time,” his mom replied, wandering over with a cup of coffee in her hand. Jon wrinkled his nose again before his mom tapped the label on the nearest box with her free hand. “Scratch that. This says ‘Jonathan S. Kent,’ Mr. Investigative Journalist. Jon?”
“Don’t look at me, I don’t talk to Lex except when he yells at me for flying in ‘his’ sky,” Jon said, and slit the tape sealing the boxes shut with his thumbnail.
The boxes contained clothes. That wasn’t a surprise, considering where they’d come from. What was a surprise was how many—basically a whole new wardrobe—and that they’d shown up at all, since Jon would never have even considered shopping at that store, and couldn’t have afforded more than one or two items there if he had.
But there were ten pairs of designer jeans dyed such a deep blue they were nearly black, and two pairs each of crisp wool slacks in charcoal and ebony. There were twenty—twenty!—pure white Oxford shirts. There was a three-piece suit, a more casual two-piece one, and a navy peacoat in a cashmere so soft Jon had to resist sticking his face in it. There were sweaters and dress shoes and low-slung leather boots and belts and Jon didn’t know what else. There were pocket squares.
He looked up to find his parents staring at him. His mom raised an eyebrow. “Something you want to tell us, mister?”
“I didn’t buy this,” he said immediately. “I didn’t—I would never spend this kind of money—”
“Jon, we know,” his dad said soothingly, putting a calming hand on his shoulder.
“We don’t give you enough allowance to spend this kind of money,” his mom added wryly.
“Do you have any idea who sent it, though?” his dad asked. “Has...has someone been giving you gifts? Because that’s not appropriate—”
“No! I have no idea!” Jon said hastily, feeling his cheeks heat up. Oh god, now his parents thought some weird rich grownup was being creepy at him. But Jon didn’t even know that many rich people, except for Lex, sort of, and obviously also—
Oh.
“Actually, I might know. Hang on,” he said. He dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed.
Damian answered on the second ring. “Yes?” he said impatiently, instead of “hello,” because he was Damian.
“Did you buy me a bunch of clothes? Is that why you were asking me about my size?” Jon asked, and saw his parents give each other alarmed looks.
“Oh, they finally arrived?” Damian said. “They were supposed to be there two days ago. I’ll be having words with the store.”
“Damian!” Jon spluttered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tension leave his parents’ shoulders. “You can’t just buy me things!”
“Of course I can. I’m rich.”
“I know you’re rich, but I already have clothes!”
“Please,” Damian sniffed. “You dress like a vagrant. All of your jeans have holes in them.”
“I like my jeans with holes in them!”
Jon’s mom clapped a hand over her mouth, as if it could hide the fact that she was clearly laughing. His dad looked more sympathetic, even if Jon was pretty sure Mr. Wayne had never bought him a whole new wardrobe for no reason.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Damian said. “Now, try everything on, and if anything needs adjustment, bring it to the store’s tailoring department. I’ve told them to accommodate you whenever you stop by, but you should be quick before you grow another seven inches—”
“Damian, I’m not keeping this stuff.”
Jon felt the weight of Damian’s pause over the phone. He could picture his surprised blink, the fall of his dark lashes. “Why not?”
“I…” Jon started, then glanced at his parents, who weren’t even pretending not to be eavesdropping. “Hang on,” he said into the phone, and headed for his room. “And don’t listen!” he added, looking pointedly at his dad, before shutting the door just firmly enough to not technically be slamming it.
His dad could still hear him through the door, of course. He could probably hear Damian in his own room, or the Cave, or wherever he was. But if Jon told him not to listen, he wouldn’t.
Once in the safety of his little bubble of privacy, he sat down on his bed. “D, I have plenty of clothes. And if I didn’t, we can actually afford to buy more.”
“But now you don’t have to,” Damian said, sounding confused. “And these are the best you can get. Well, off the rack, but I didn’t have time to take you to a bespoke tailor. We can do that over summer break, I suppose.”
“No, we can’t!” Jon said. “Where is this even coming from? I’ve always dressed like this.”
“Yes, when we were children. I think it’s time we start holding ourselves to different standards,” Damian said dismissively, as if he hadn’t been wearing tiny Brooks Brothers trousers in middle school. “If we’re going to be seen together out of costume, I can’t have you looking like you were just dropped in from Kansas by tornado.”
Jon opened his mouth to protest that his dad was the one from Kansas, not him, but then the rest of Damian’s implications hit him. “Do you not like the way I look?” he asked, hurt.
Damian was silent. Jon belatedly realized how embarrassingly needy his words had come out and flushed hot. Crap, Damian wasn’t stupid, he was going to figure it out…
“I’m talking about your clothes,” Damian said. “You, yourself, look…”
There was a long pause. Jon gnawed on his bottom lip.
“...adequate,” Damian concluded, and Jon suppressed a sigh. Well, it could have been worse.
“Thanks,” he drawled. “But seriously, where am I supposed to wear a three-piece suit?”
“It’s a requirement for most of the society functions I attend.”
“Yeah, that you attend.”
“Well, what if I need you to be my plus one?”
Jon froze. “You never invite me to those,” he said slowly. “You always try to get out of them and spend the night here.” Not as often now as when they were kids, but still—a Gotham high society event for Mr. Wayne usually meant a sleepover for Jon and Damian.
“Yes, well, it’s harder to excuse myself now that I’m eighteen, and I’d rather have someone not completely inane to talk to when I’m there.” Damian sounded...almost soft, the way he did when he talked to his pets. Fond.
Jon smiled stupidly at the floor, then caught himself and rolled his eyes. Great, now he was going all goofy because Damian talked to him like he talked to the dogs. Way to have self-respect, Kent.
“I can be your plus one,” he said. “But I can’t keep all this stuff. You know my parents are never gonna let you spend this much money on me, and besides, I like my clothes, even if you don’t.”
There was another pause. “Understood,” Damian said, his tone clipped. “I apologize if my gift was unwelcome.”
“Dami, come on, no.” Jon sighed. “Just because I can’t accept something this expensive doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate that you sent it. It’s nice that you were thinking of me.”
That was a little too needy too, but Jon would rather risk giving himself away than let Damian end the call feeling wounded. Boy, was he a sucker.
“You should at least keep the suits,” Damian said finally, but he sounded more like himself. “You may like your clothes, but the dress code for the Wayne Foundation Gala does not include flannel or anything with the Metropolis Meteors logo on it. And it’s in a month, so you won’t have time to put holes in the knees.”
Jon flopped back against the mattress, cradling the phone to his cheek, a dumb smile on his face. He knew it didn’t mean anything, but his heart didn’t care. He was going to a gala with Damian.
“I’ll keep the suits,” he said.
*
A week later, Jon was trying not to fall asleep in first period pre-calc when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at Mr. Siegel, who was writing something on the board, then took out his phone at super speed.
The buzz had been an incoming text from...Uncle Jimmy? Lose something? the notification said. Jon frowned and opened his phone to see the full text.
There was also a photo, it turned out. Of Metallo, clearly unconscious or powered down or whatever the accurate term was for him being dropped like a pile of bricks on the sidewalk. The photo didn’t show much of the building behind him, but Jon had been through those doors enough to recognize them at a glance. This had been taken in front of the Daily Planet building.
And perched on top of Metallo’s unconscious form, looking both triumphant and bored as only he could, was Damian, in full Robin costume.
Jon frowned harder. Uncle Jimmy knew that he was Superboy and that his dad was Superman, which explained why he’d texted Jon—but it didn’t explain what Damian was doing in Metropolis, fighting their rogues.
He put his phone in his pocket and raised his hand. “Mr. Siegel? Can I use the restroom?”
Thirty seconds later, he’d changed into his Superboy suit and was touching down outside of the Planet. The SCU had arrived and was trying to find a way to put the still-unconscious Metallo in the police van, but he was clearly too heavy for them to lift. Damian stood to the side, with a look on his face like he was severely disappointed in all of them but had expected no better.
Jon approached Metallo cautiously, but he didn’t feel the pain or nausea that usually indicated the presence of Kryptonite. “You’re fine,” Damian said. “I welded his chest cavity shut. Even if he wakes up, he won’t be able to expose the Kryptonite.”
“Uh, thanks,” Jon said. That didn’t answer…any of his questions, but they could wait. “May I?” he asked the SCU officers, who nodded and stepped back, letting him pick up Metallo and fly him into the van.
“Try not to let him escape this time, would you?” Damian drawled at the officers, who looked understandably annoyed at hearing something like that from a vigilante who lived in the same city as Arkham.
Jon fought the urge to bury his face in his hands. “Robin, a word?” he asked, and then scooped Damian up without waiting for permission, flying them both to the roof of the Planet and setting Damian down. “What the hell?”
“Tt. Such language,” Damian said, visibly amused.
“Damian!”
The amusement vanished. “No real names in the field,” Damian snapped.
Jon rolled his eyes. “There’s no one else up here, and I’d hear them coming if they were. What are you doing?”
Damian’s brow creased in the way that meant he was raising an eyebrow under his mask. “Fighting crime.”
“What are you doing in Metropolis?” Jon clarified. “Don’t you have class?”
“My GPA is astronomical. Excusing myself for the day won’t affect that.” Damian folded his arms. “Don’t you have class?”
“Yeah! And I was in it until Uncle Jimmy sent me a photo of you sitting on one of our rogues!” Jon said. “Mr. Siegel’s gonna figure out I’m not in the bathroom in a minute, and if I get detention it’ll be your fault.”
Damian huffed. “Why did you come, then, if you’re so worried about class? Perhaps I just wanted to bring my vanquishing of a dangerous criminal to the attention of the media.”
“Please,” Jon snorted. For someone as satisfied with himself as Damian usually was, he hated media attention, both as Robin and as the youngest Wayne heir. “If all you wanted to do was bring Metallo in, you would have brought him to MPD headquarters. You brought him to the Planet. But my dad’s in space and my mom’s on assignment, which you knew. I’m not supposed to think you’re trying to get my attention?”
“Not everything is about you, Jonathan,” Damian said.
Jon waited.
Damian huffed again. “This is not a very gracious way to accept a gift.”
Jon faltered. “A gift?”
“Metallo is a danger to you, your family, and your city,” Damian said, glowering. “That’s unacceptable, so when I checked to see which of your family’s rogues were at large and saw his name on the list, I took care of it. But if I brought him to your home or your school, that would have compromised your secret identity. Not that you apparently care about that, the way you’re shouting my name all over the place.” He glowered harder. “I would have removed his Kryptonite heart and had Djinn destroy it, but I wasn’t sure if that would kill him, and you wouldn’t have liked it if it did.”
Jon blinked as he tried to unpack all of that. “Why were you checking to see which of our rogues were loose?”
Damian opened his mouth, then shut it again. “It’s important information,” he said finally. “You’re only forty minutes away. I don’t want Parasite in Gotham. We have enough on our hands already.”
They did have enough on their hands. More than the whole family put together could deal with, some days, which was why it didn’t make sense that Damian would be scouting for problems in Metropolis, not when there were so many closer to home.
...Unless he’d lied about the order of events, Jon realized. He hadn’t been looking to see which of Metropolis’s rogues were at large in order to protect Gotham and decided to make Metallo a gift while he was already bringing him in. He’d been looking for who he could bring in for Jon.
Jon’s face and chest both grew very warm.
He told himself not to read too much into it. Damian had always been a bit protective of him, probably because he was younger. The fact that Jon was nearly half a foot taller with super strength and invulnerability didn’t seem to make a difference.
“Well. Thank you,” he said, resisting the urge to scuff his feet like a kid. “For thinking of me.”
Damian looked away, but not before Jon caught a glimpse of color rising in his cheeks. Was Damian blushing?
“It wasn’t hard,” he said. “Honestly, in Gotham he wouldn’t even merit a place among our rogues. Your father has low standards.”
Jon couldn’t help grinning. “Yeah,” he said. “Just look who his best friend is.”
“Tt,” Damian said, but he relaxed visibly, so Jon had accomplished what he was aiming for. “I sympathize with anyone who has to slum it to find a best friend.”
Jon grinned wider. “You need me to fly you back home? Or you want to go get a late breakfast or something?”
Damian shook his head. “No, I have the Redbird. You should be in class,” he said, edging toward the roof.
“So should you!” Jon pointed out.
Damian gave him a sharp little smile, silhouetted against the morning sun, and Jon’s breath caught. “What do they have left to teach me?” he asked. “Try to keep your rogues contained from now on, Superboy.”
He dropped backwards off the roof. A second later, a grapple line shot out and swung him toward the next building.
Jon shook his head and tried to wipe the stupid grin off his face. He needed to change and get back to class. He needed to come up with a plausible excuse for having been gone so long. He needed to not fail pre-calc.
But he was so capturing the Scarecrow or someone tomorrow.
*
Jon dropped into bed, so tired he could barely drag the covers over himself. It had been a miserable few days. Three nights ago, there was a series of fires across all of the S.T.A.R. Labs facilities in the city, thanks to a disgruntled former employee turned arsonist. Two nights ago, the Titans had been forced to battle Trigon—again—leaving Jon with the unfamiliar feeling of bruises and scrapes that didn’t fade in an hour, thanks to the magic that had helped inflict them. And last night, a last-minute rescue mission one star system over had required all available Kryptonians to pitch in.
He didn’t regret it—a lot of lives had been saved—but he’d gotten maybe ten hours of sleep total in the past seventy-two hours, and he was exhausted. He needed less sleep, on average, than people who weren’t half-Kryptonian, but he still needed some.
Normally his parents would’ve let him stay home from school to catch up on sleep after so many hours superheroing. They’d actually tried to insist on it, but it was finals week, and Jon couldn’t afford to miss class.
But he felt pretty good about the exams he’d already taken, and he only had three more to go. He’d get a good night’s sleep tonight, finish his finals tomorrow, and kick back and wait for summer break. Gratefully, he closed his eyes.
“Jonathan.”
Jon’s eyes flew open and he rolled onto his other side to see Damian dangling outside his window from a grapple line, fully suited up. “Damian?” he said, even though Damian probably couldn’t hear him through the glass. Whereas Jon had to be exhausted beyond belief if he hadn’t heard Damian before he spoke, especially considering how aware he usually was of Damian’s presence.
He pushed himself onto his knees and opened the window, and Damian climbed through, graceful as always. Jon bundled the sheets in his lap, wishing he’d had the energy to actually change into pajamas before falling into bed instead of just stripping down to his boxers.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’ve got a mission for us,” Damian said. “You in?”
Jon paused. “Does it have to be tonight?”
“Tt,” Damian said. “No, I’ll just call these criminals and ask if they can reschedule. Crime doesn’t wait, you know that.”
“No, I do, I just…” Jon winced. “It’s been a really long week, and I haven’t gotten much sleep, and I have finals tomorrow…”
“Oh, finals,” Damian said dismissively. “You’re more intelligent than the vast majority of your peers. You’ll be fine.”
“Uh, thanks,” Jon said, a little thrown by the unexpected compliment. “But I still need to sleep—”
“You can sleep later,” Damian said, waving his hand like he was brushing away the very concept. “This is justice. This is adventure! Come on, Superboy. Are you really going to turn me down?”
He leaned forward, bracing his hands on Jon’s knees, teeth and whiteout lenses glittering in the city lights. There were heavy tactical gloves and cotton sheets between his hands and Jon’s bare legs, but his touch was still just as electrifying as his wicked grin. It had been like this every time he showed up at Jon’s window, even when Jon was too young to understand what it was he was feeling—the breathless thrill of breaking the rules with Damian. Of being chosen.
No, Jon wasn’t going to turn him down.
“Okay,” he said, and Damian sat back, radiating satisfaction. “Let me just get changed.”
He stood up and took his suit out of the hidden compartment in his closet where he kept it in case school friends got nosy. Then he realized that Damian was still facing him. “Turn around.”
He couldn’t see Damian’s eyes, but he knew he was rolling them. “You’re going to change at super speed. It’s not like I’d be able to see anything.”
“Turn around anyway!”
Damian turned, Jon changed, and a minute later they were out the window, Damian’s warm, lean body tucked against Jon’s side. Which was...really nice, actually, even if it would have been nicer in Jon’s bed.
Jon’s eyes went wide at the thought and his face heated up. He was usually better at keeping thoughts like that suppressed, at least when he was actually with Damian. Not that he was ready for that anyway, even if Damian had wanted...if the two of them were...if…
Crap. He needed sleep.
Damian directed him to a warehouse on the outskirts of town. “So what exactly are we dealing with here?” Jon whispered as they touched down and he followed Damian around back. “Street crime? Bad science? Evil wizards?”
“Evil wizards?” Damian repeated, deftly picking a lock.
“I don’t know why you’re making it sound like we haven’t fought at least three evil wizards before. No, four,” Jon said, counting them up in his head as he followed Damian inside. “Wait, where are we?”
Because what looked like an abandoned warehouse on the outside looked more like some kind of high tech facility on the inside. In fact, Jon was pretty sure he recognized a lot of the technology. “Robin, does this place belong to the Justice League?”
“Stand over here, would you?” Damian said, tugging Jon to his side, on top of a circular disk. He was already keying something into the control panel. “I know my father’s codes.”
“For what?” Jon asked. “Robin, wait! Is this a—”
The world inverted, reversed itself, twisted into an ouroboros. Jon’s head throbbed as his molecules were dissembled, then almost instantaneously reassembled somewhere else.
“—teleporter,” he finished belatedly. “What the hell? I thought this was a mission in Metropolis!”
“When did I say that?” Damian asked, stepping off the platform. He pulled up his hood, and for the first time Jon’s tired brain realized that it was the shearling-lined version. This was Damian’s suit for extreme cold weather.
“Where are we?” Jon asked, using his X-ray vision to look outside of the small building they’d arrived in. At least it still looked like Earth. They were in the mountains, surrounded by snow, and it was light out, which meant they were on the other side of the planet from Metropolis.
“The Himalayas,” Damian said. “Nepal, to be precise. And my grandfather’s forces will be tracking the teleportation energy, so we’ll need to move fast.”
“Your grandfather’s—Damian, what are we doing here?” Jon asked, but Damian was already running out the door.
His head aching, Jon followed him out. Sure enough, a wave of at least thirty League of Assassins goons were charging towards them. Damian took a fighting position, looking as gleeful as if he were facing thirty excited puppies and not highly trained assassins ready and willing to kill him.
“How did you know they would be here?” Jon asked, hovering beside him, ready to move.
“They have a base here!” Damian shouted back over the noise of the oncoming horde. “I lived here for two years, actually!”
Jon dropped his fighting stance. “So...they weren’t here to commit any crimes? They just live here?”
“They’re assassins, Superboy. They commit crimes every day!” Damian paused. “Well, usually at night, actually.”
“But...we’re not stopping some evil plot right now? They were just having breakfast?” Jon asked, trying to force his foggy brain around it. Maybe he was missing something.
“We’re being proactive!” Damian said. “Now get ready!”
He clenched his fists and grinned wider. The assassins were nearly upon them.
And Jon lost his temper.
He blew out a blast of air big and strong enough to knock the whole wave of assassins off their feet and back several yards. Before any of them could regain their equilibrium, he zipped through them at super speed, tapping each of them on the head just hard enough to knock them out. Switching to infrared and telescopic vision, he scanned the mountain range until he found their underground lair, which wasn’t far. He scooped them up two at a time and piled them up outside the “hidden” entrance. Someone would find them soon enough and they wouldn’t freeze to death from lying unconscious in the snow.
Then he returned to Damian. He’d taken care of things in just under two minutes, but the burst of super speed had taken the last of his ability to cope. He was practically seeing double.
“You didn’t save any for me,” Damian said, sounding disappointed.
“What is wrong with you?” Jon demanded.
Damian looked taken aback. “Excuse me?”
“I told you I was tired. I told you I had finals. I asked if it was urgent,” Jon pointed out. “And you still teleported me to the other side of the planet for a fight we didn’t even need to have!”
“They’re assassins!” Damian said.
“They were assassins yesterday, too!” Jon snapped back. “They’ll be assassins tomorrow! We could have done this on the weekend, after I was done with finals.”
“Silly high school exams don’t matter—”
“They matter to me!” Jon shouted. “My parents aren’t billionaires! I can’t pay my way into any college I want. I want to get into a good school, and that means I need good grades! And I’m not a Bat, Damian. I need sleep sometimes.”
“No real names in the field—”
“There’s no one here!” Jon said. “Except the assassins who know who you are anyway, just like they always have. We could have done this any time, Damian. Why did it have to be the one night I asked you not to?”
Damian went very still. “I thought it would be fun,” he said in an uncharacteristically small voice. “To fight the League together. The two of us.”
“Fun,” Jon repeated. “You thought it would be...oh my god.” He shook his head. “Can you program that thing to take you back to Gotham? Because I think I want to fly home by myself.”
Damian didn’t speak for a moment. Then he drew himself upright, letting his hood fall forward to hide his face more. “I understand,” he said, his tone very formal. “I respect your decision. I hope we can remain allies and teammates in the future despite my...error in judgment.”
Jon had been about to take off, but he sank his full weight back into the ground, frowning. “Do you mean friends?” he asked. “Of course we’re still friends. I’m mad at you, but I’ll get over it. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“No. You’re exceedingly forgiving,” Damian said, like it was a flaw. “But I am aware that friendship can be awkward after an unsuccessful courtship. I would prefer it if that didn’t happen, but I will understand if it does.”
For a second, the word “courtship” made Jon go hot and panicked. Of course Damian had figured out how Jon felt, he was a detective and Jon was a terrible liar, of course he knew…
But wait. Jon hadn’t been courting Damian. He’d never courted anyone, because it wasn’t the seventeenth century or whenever the hell people did that.
“What do you mean, an unsuccessful courtship?”
Damian winced. “There’s no need to rub it in,” he said. “I thought perhaps that you and I...it doesn’t matter.”
Jon’s heart started pounding so hard he would have been concerned if he’d heard it in a regular human’s chest. “Are you saying that you’ve been courting me?”
Damian’s brow furrowed. “Yes, obviously.”
“Obviously?” Jon echoed. “When did...how? What was the courtship part?” And how had he missed it? This was so unfair.
“It seemed like a logical next step,” Damian said, looking deeply uncomfortable. “We’ve had an effective partnership for years, so we’re clearly compatible, and lately you’ve been...you’ve become very...that is, you’re old enough now that I thought it was time. That we were ready. So I attempted to send you a small token of my...my regard.”
Jon desperately wanted to know what it was he’d become, but Damian looked so squirmy he didn’t think he’d get a straight answer out of him, so he focused on the last part. “The clothes?” Only a Wayne would think an entire new wardrobe that cost thousands of dollars was “a small token.”
“The clothes,” Damian agreed. “Which you rejected, but you still agreed to go to the gala with me, so I thought that maybe…” He shrugged. “And then I brought you Metallo, and you accepted that gift. So I assumed the next step was an outing together.”
Jon looked around at the lonely mountaintop, the snow disturbed by all the assassins he had knocked around. “This was the outing?”
“This was the outing.”
Meaning a date. This was a date. Jon felt giddy.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “That you were trying to...that that was what you meant.”
“Yes, that’s evident to me now, thank you,” Damian snapped, his cheeks darkening. Jon wanted to kiss them. He always wanted to kiss them, but maybe now he was allowed.
“Normal people do things like coffee dates,” he pointed out. “Going to the movies. Flowers.” Although if Damian had brought him flowers, he might have expired right on the spot. “Or even just, you know. Asking.”
“You’re not normal!” Damian said. “I’m not normal! I didn’t want to do something small, or trite, or…” He cut himself off. “It doesn’t matter. You should go home. Get some sleep.”
He turned and started to walk back toward the building they’d emerged from. Jon resisted the urge to reach out and snag his cape like a child.
“Damian,” he said. “I would have said yes.”
Damian stopped. He didn’t turn around, but Jon could hear his heartbeat speed up. Because of Jon.
“In the interest of avoiding further miscommunication,” Damian said, “what exactly is it that you would have said yes to?”
“Anything,” Jon said before he could stop himself, and now it was his turn to have his cheeks heat up. “Dating, courting, whatever. If I had known what you were trying to do… I like you so much, Damian. I always have.”
Damian turned around and tilted his head, scrutinizing Jon. “Not just as a friend.”
Jon shook his head. “You are my best friend, and that’s important. That matters to me. But I also like you...” Oh god, why was this so hard to say? No wonder Damian had chosen to beat up a robot instead. “...You know. Romantically.”
“Oh,” Damian said. His heartbeat got even faster. “Well. That’s good.”
He didn’t seem to know what to do any more than Jon did, and Jon fought back a semi-hysterical laugh. “What was the next step?” he asked. “In the courtship.”
“We were slated to attend the Wayne Foundation Gala next week,” Damian said. “I assume you’re still amenable?” Jon nodded. He was extremely amenable to just about anything Damian might suggest right now. “I thought if the evening went well, I might, um.” Damian coughed. “Ask to kiss you.”
Jon kept his feet on the ground by sheer force of will. “Can I suggest an edit to the plan?”
Damian huffed. “I don’t know why you’re asking. You’ve always changed my plans whenever you felt like it before,” he said, sounding much more like himself, and Jon bit back another laugh.
“Just the order of operations,” he said. “I think you should ask to kiss me sooner than that. Like, right now.”
And because he was weak, he cheated and used X-ray vision to watch Damian’s surprised blink behind his whiteout lenses. “Oh,” Damian said. “Um. Jon, can I—”
Jon flew across the gap between them and kissed him.
Damian made a startled noise; then his hands came up to clutch at Jon’s back and his lips were soft against Jon’s mouth and had Jon been complaining about being here? That was stupid, the Himalayas in what was the middle of the night back home was his favorite place in the world. As long as Damian was there.
Damian let out another soft noise when Jon pulled back, a reluctant one. “I suppose this edit was acceptable,” he murmured, his voice lower than usual, and Jon shivered.
“Maybe we should make it an addition and not a reversal of the sequence of events,” Jon suggested. “You should definitely still ask to kiss me after the gala.” He couldn’t resist teasing. “Even if I only show up looking ‘adequate.’”
Damian bit his lip. Oh god, he was going to kill Jon like that. “That was the wrong word. You always look…” He paused, searching for the word, and Jon braced himself for something hilariously underwhelming.
“Devastating,” Damian finally concluded, and Jon had to kiss him again, kiss him until his lips tingled and he’d accidentally lifted both of them a few inches off the ground.
“You’re levitating,” Damian murmured a minute later. He sounded awfully smug. Jon couldn’t bring himself to mind.
“Oops,” Jon said, and didn’t set them back down.
Damian actually laughed. “You should get some sleep,” he said. “I’m told you have finals tomorrow.”
“Silly high school exams don’t matter,” Jon mumbled, chasing Damian’s lips again.
Damian let himself be caught for two, three minutes, then pulled back, his gloved hand on Jon’s cheek. “They matter to you.” He paused. “And I’m freezing.”
Jon grinned. “Ah, so the truth comes out,” he said, wrapping his cape around Damian. Damian pressed close to him, and he might have felt cold, but he was all heat and strength tucked up against Jon like this. It was dizzying. It always had been, being close to Damian, but especially now.
Forcing himself back on track, Jon flew them the short distance to the building that housed the teleporter. Damian keyed in their destination, and Jon felt that disorientation again as his molecules resituated themselves, leaving them back in the supposed warehouse in Metropolis.
It was much warmer back home. Damian still stayed where he was, wrapped in Jon’s cape.
“Want me to fly you home?” Jon asked.
Damian shook his head. “You need sleep.”
“It’ll take, like, thirty seconds to fly to Gotham.”
“And then you’ll leave right away?” Damian asked, arching a brow.
Well, no. Jon would probably spend another half hour at least hanging out of Damian’s window kissing him goodbye. “Okay, fine,” Jon said. “But I’ve wanted to kiss you for years. There’s a backlog stored up.”
Damian smiled, and Jon cheated again and looked through the mask so that he could see the way the smile reached Damian’s eyes. “I take full responsibility,” he said, and touched Jon’s cheek again. “Go home. Sleep. Take your exams. And then maybe we can edit the plan again.” His mouth quirked. “I hear Friday night dates are traditional.”
Jon grinned. “Are we going to be fighting assassins again?”
“I guess you’ll just have to come to Gotham to find out.” Damian kissed him again. “Good night, Jon.”
“Night, Dami.”
Jon pulled himself away and slipped out of the warehouse, then took off. As he headed for home, he heard the faint crackle of the teleporter powering up again.
Thirty seconds later, he hit the mattress, smiling into his pillow. It was too late to get a full night’s sleep, but he’d do his best. He’d get through his finals. And then…
Well, then they’d do whatever Damian had in mind, whether it was fighting assassins or digging into some random Gotham cold case or infiltrating a Satanic cult or just...hanging out on the couch. It could wind up being any of the four, or something even stranger that Jon couldn’t begin to predict. That was what happened when your best friend—maybe your boyfriend?—was weird, and Damian was about as weird as they came.
Jon wouldn’t have him any other way.