takes one to know one

And I will hold on to you

Somewhere in a conference room in the Watchtower an assorted group of superheroes was debriefing the last 72 hours. They had just stopped Doomsday, successfully but barely so.

Damian knew he was there in that room too. He saw his body sitting in an egg-shaped swivelling chair at the table; his arms and legs crossed and his head tilted. But Damian had not been in his body for at least 28 of those 72 hours. No, he was somewhere floating above, watching and steering himself from outside of his own body. He didn’t know exactly what he was, maybe a cloud or a speck of dust. Maybe he really was a tiny robin, with light and hollow bones, flapping its wings and moving air about.

Whatever he was, he knew that he was also a puppeteer. He could see the thin, silver strings reaching down, down, down to Damian’s limbs. And when he needed to, he could simply pull on one of them and Damian did what the cloud or the speck of dust or the robin wanted. His body was a puppet and he was the master, who could take out an army with the simple pull of a string. So maybe, Robin thought, maybe he was actually a kite.

The kite had learned to control the puppet years ago, when the puppet had been just a very small boy. In the years the boy became a young man he had learned that the kite was actually called a coping mechanism. Big, big words for naming what the boy had known even before he knew words: that the kite kept him safe. When Damian was the kite, he wasn’t the boy any longer. He was floating and dancing up somewhere high in the sky, leading the boy and his lithe body around enemies and slicing through danger. It did not matter if the boy was slain in battle; the string to the kite would simply cut off and it would be free to fly higher and higher until it was gone in the atmosphere. Before Damian was a bat or a man or a hero, he had been a kite, and sometimes he reverted to being a kite.

Down in the conference room the puppet was asked a question by his oldest brother. Despite the kite only truly hearing the rush of wind tickling his paper skin for the past day and a bit, it still managed to get the man at the end of its strings to answer something satisfactory. The kite knew it had moved the strings in the right way, it always did, yet even from up here it felt the silence that sometimes came when the kite steered the man. The kite could sense eyes on its puppet.

So it floated up higher.

The strings to the puppet were taut now and the kite strained against its tethers. It lifted the man out of his seat and towards the door, but Nightwing stepped in front of the man and stopped him from exiting the room. The kite tugged once more but the man was trapped beneath a gentle hand on his shoulder. It wished it could hear what his brother was saying but up in the air the sounds that reached it were but rustlings of the wind. The kite tugged again but the man did not move.

This was it then.

The kite had now lost control of the man. It was still bound to its marionette but what could it do from way up here?

That’s when the kite felt itself being tugged. Down below another man had grabbed the hand of its puppet. This man had many names: friend, lover, anchor. The anchor was leading them through the tower. The pair walked out of the conference room and through hallways into a bright light until it reached what the kite knew to be its family’s penthouse up on Wayne tower. The puppet’s hand was let go by the anchor, and the man and the kite stopped before a large window. From here the kite could see down below into Gotham where apparently life went on as normal. Dots made of people and cars and rain drops moved about, creating a pointillist image of the streets of the man’s youth. Most of the destruction had been done in Metropolis so why shouldn’t life go on as usual here in the Dark City?

“Dami?” The anchor’s voice cut through the sough and called from further inside the apartment. Through the clouds the sky became a Kryptonian blue flecked with specks of purple. Above, a pair of pupils like two big round abysses were staring through the air at the kite. The puppet was beckoned to follow from the sharp, blue cliffs framing the pupils into the black void of their gaze; it was now the kite that was tugged by the marionette at the end of its string. Like a dog on a leash the kite felt the puppet leading it into a large bathroom. There, the man sleepwalked up to his beloved.

“Let’s get you clean,” the lover said and carefully started unbuckling clasps and unzipping zippers on the puppet’s costume. The kite watched as the anchor dropped down to unlace the puppet’s boots, and the puppet followed the lover’s movements like a new tether had knotted itself from the marionette’s eyes onto the top of the head of the taller man. As heavy tactical gear dropped from the man’s body, the kite felt like man and itself became so light that they would flow up, and up, and up but the anchor took his hand and held him down on earth.

He led the puppet under a shower head and turned on the stream that first spurted ice cold water. The anchor cursed as he tested it with his hand outstretched past the puppet’s body. Tiny icicles of droplets hit the marionette’s chest and face as the anchor reached to turn a knob that would summon a warmer stream. Then, the puppet was placed under the shower head where grime and sweat and blood washed off his body and down the drain. Before he could focus on the vortex of effort struggling to wash away, he was swiftly lifted into the lover’s arms. Nearby, a bathtub filled with steaming, cloudy water stood ready for the man to sink into. Despite the lovers best effort to gently place the man inside, a wave of bathwater sloshed over the tub’s rim and splashed against the bathroom’s tile floor. The kite flew down past the puddle and in it saw the reflection of green eyes staring back at it.

More water crashed out of the tub as the anchor lowered himself behind the man with another self-censored curse. The kite felt the marionette’s lips tug up into the barest of smirks. Behind the man the anchor was trying to adjust his long limbs to fit around the man in the tub. His knees jutted up in an awkward angle out of the cloudy water and framed the man’s torso on each side. The lover huffed once more before he settled in as best as he could between the porcelain tub and the man’s back. Then he picked up a bottle of shampoo and squirted some on his hands before working them into the puppet’s hair. The man closed his eyes as his lover massaged the shampoo into his scalp with soft, firm circles. Round and round and round the kite felt itself being reeled in and wound up until it settled back deep in the man’s chest. The lover then cupped some water and washed the product out of his hair. A splash of shampoo dropped into the bath and landed in his lover’s eye. The man heard another hissed curse from his lover, who was now trying to rub the product out of his eye with the back of his hand.

“You’re so clumsy for someone with super strength,” the man teased as he let himself melt against his beloved, who ducked his head down to place a kiss against the man’s temple.

“There you are,” Jon said and Damian could feel him smile against his skin.

Don't read the last page | But I stay when it's hard, or it's wrong, or we're making mistakes | I want your midnights | But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day

- New Year's Day by Taylor Swift

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Jon and Damian as parents of six hc:

I was playing with the idea of making this omegaverse, however decided that Kryptonian biology is just strong like that and thus mPreg happens lol

Jon and Damian get together in their late teens but keep it a secret because in Damian’s words “It is none of anyone’s business” and in Jon’s words “I just want to have this (being with Damian) for myself for a bit”. The truth is that they are afraid that their parents will forbid them sleepovers once they know lol

Which they should have done because just a few months later Damian starts feeling bloated and nauseous and lightheaded. He keeps a detailed log of all of his symptoms and starts freaking out when they all point to one conclusion: pregnancy.

(In his defence, he did not think he had the ability to get pregnant so let’s cut him some slack)

He goes down to the batcave where they have an ultrasound machine (bc of course they do) and almost gets a heart attack when he sees the little bean shape growing in his abdomen.

He has no time to reach out to Jon, because Jon is a little creep who always listens to Damian’s heartbeat and immediately rushes into the cave at the sound of it quickening.

Once he gets there though, he gets distracted by a second heartbeat.

With the acoustic amplification of the ultrasound, the sound Jon will learn by heart is almost deafeningly loud to his Kryptonian ears.

After their initial shock is over Jon asks Damian: “What now?”

Damian’s response is instantaneous, “Clearly we need to elope.” Jon wonders what Damian means by ‘Clearly’ but instead only says, “Come on, Dami. We’re not in the 19th century.”

“Proving this child’s genetic parentage will be nearly impossible without declaring your Kryptonian identity to the entire world. This way you will receive at least some rights and recognition as its fellow father,” Damian explains. “As for the public, we can hide it. But if push comes to shove, we are in luck that I spent my early years out of the public eye. No one needs to know my assigned gender at birth.”

Damian is mentally already eighteen steps ahead, so Jon squeezes Damian’s knee to make the shorter man focus on him. “There are other solutions,” he says gently, “You don’t have to go through with this pregnancy. We don’t even know if you physically can.” He leans in and touches his forehead to Damian’s: “Besides, I know how you’ve always felt about children.”

Damian sighs. “I don’t want to repeat my parents’ mistakes and for a long time I believed that meant letting the bloodline end with me.” He takes a pause, letting himself find the right words before continuing, “When I first got an inkling of what may be going on in my body, I pictured a face that would be the perfect mix of you and me. And the more I thought of us raising a child together, the more certain I got that we could do a good job. That there’s more than one way to break a cycle. It’s the two of us after all, we’re the perfect team.”

Damian reaches up and places a hand on Jon’s face. “As for my safety: That’s the other reason we need to get married. If anything happens, I trust your decisions fully.” His stare softens as he then teases, “Even if it is just because I know you will follow my orders.”

So they elope.

Jon flies them to Vegas and once that contract is signed, it’s a rat race as to who of their families will find out and berate them first.

(Damian and Jon don’t care. They knew that they would be getting married ever since they were kids. This was inevitable to them.)

There’s mayhem. There’s chaos. There are multiple death threats. But then there is the birth of a perfect little baby daughter and no one can find it in themselves to feel anything but love and devotion for the little bundle of joy.

They name their first born daughter Alulah. The name comes from two stars in Jon’s favourite constellation and it also comes from an Arabic saying meaning ‘The First Spring’.

Alulah is sweet and kind and perfect in every way. She is an unfussy baby who loves being carried by other people and pretty quickly sleeps through the night. It’s not easy of course (she is still a baby) but they are as lucky as can be.

Unfortunately that means that the boys as young parents get a bit of a superiority complex snickering about families who “can’t control their children” and trying to dish out advice to other parents who are at their wits ends.

It is six months after the birth of Alulah when Damian, who has already returned to work, decides to finally pick up patrolling again and him and Jon go out, leaving their daughter with Auntie Kara for the evening.

What Damian is not expecting is that he spends said evening basically fighting no one but throwing up in various alleys all around Gotham. This is their second lesson in Kryptonian family planning: Hormonal contraception is not enough.

Where Damian’s pregnancy with Alulah was physically breezy and only outwardly chaotic, his second pregnancy is a nightmare. He can’t keep anything down with the exception of plain white rice and the things he is craving are all the things he is not supposed to have, like coffee and seafood.

It is a huge relief for Jon, who can do nothing to help Damian but watch him suffer, when their second child Biham is born. They name her after another star with an Arabic root (“Lucky Stars of the Young Beast”) and think that the worst is over.

But Biham has different ideas. Where Alulah was quiet and easy, Biham is constantly screaming and fussy. Unfortunately for them, when Biham wakes up crying in the middle of the night, she also wakes her sister up and so neither Jon nor Damian get any sleep. Additionally she seems to only really calm down when she is held by women, so there is a revolving door of female family members (and for some reason Jason) who have to come in and help.

Damian starts believing that his second-born must be some kind of karmic lesson. It gets so bad that one night, when no one else can help, he reaches out to his estranged mother. Ever since Alulah’s pregnancy, Damian had distanced himself from both of his parents due to reopened wounds and the wish to be better than them. It was harder to evade Bruce since they continued to live in Gotham, but Talia kept her distance upon Damian’s request.

But Damian’s desperate and he’s exhausted and he’s barely twenty at this point and he’s a father of two and he needs his mother. So he reaches out to her burner phone number that is specifically reserved for his calls and before he can know it, his mother is standing in the nursery and cooing to his baby daughter who seems to be obsessed with her grandma.

The two of them end up having a sit down and a very long talk about generational trauma (yet again) and while some wounds will take time to heal, Damian feels as if maybe they are taking steps in the right direction.

The Wayne-Kents start to find a good rhythm for themselves and for a while things calm down.

Damian becomes ‘Baba’ and Jon is ‘Dad’ for simplicity’s sake. Damian is the sterner one of the two while Jon is the one who stays home more, being able to write and work from home. However, Damian is also the more affectionate with hugs and kisses. Once they reach a certain age, Jon loves to roughhouse and throw the girls in the air and catch them.

Damian goes to med school and Jon ends up applying for a PHD in Intergalactic history and economics. It’s stressful but they have help and they love their family.

It happens while they are having breakfast just before the girls need to get ready for preschool and Jon is still half asleep focusing on the heartbeats of the people he loves. Suddenly he freezes and stares at Damian with a look of shock. It is there undoubtedly: the very faint flicker of another little drum thumping in the room; the sound coming from Damian’s abdomen.

Among the stress of raising two daughters and going to med school, Damian completely failed to pick up on the telltale signs that should have been familiar to him now.

Chara (they stuck with the star naming convention but had to go looking for one both liked) is born when both her sisters are already in elementary school. Alulah is in first grade and Biham in Kindergarten, so things are a bit less chaotic by this point. While she is nowhere as sweet as Alulah, she is definitely quieter than Biham and so the boys go slightly less insane.

However, she is a very sceptical baby. Once Jon had just changed her and was holding her with his arms stretched out and he could practically hear her saying “tt” by her facial expression alone. When she gets a little bit older she refuses to eat what she doesn’t like by simply turning her head away from the spoon. Her first words are just a full sentence: “I do not want it, thank you” (in reference to Uncle Tim trying to pick her up). Her and aunt Cass basically communicate with their eyebrows to each other.

By this point they have the whole Kryptonian contraception thing figured out, when something unexpected happens. Jon has just dropped off the girls at school and pre-school respectively when he gets a weird longing: he wants to have another baby. He misses having a tiny baby in the house.

Of course he does not bring it up to Damian. Every pregnancy is a risk, and the fact that Damian has survived three Kryptonian ones is in Jon’s eyes a miracle.

It’s Damian who says something. Jon saves a mother and her newborn from a stuck car on a collapsing bridge, and once they’ve touched safe ground, he holds on to the infant for a second longer with a wistful look in his eyes before handing her back to her mother.

Damian knows Jon, so he knows exactly what that look means and he also knows why Jon has not mentioned it yet.

The girls are at their grandparents Clark and Lois’ for the weekend when Damian brings it up. He had to have Jon alone for this conversation and Jon gives in too quickly to the idea that they should try for another baby.

It’s the first time in their life that they are actually trying to conceive. Let’s just say the two of them are very happy about this period of trying.

When they did the calculations of how child rearing, they however did not count with what ends up happening: Damian gives birth to twins.

Dubhe and Deneb (at this point the boys are kind of regretting the star naming system) are mischievous in ways none of the others were. Unlike Alulah or Chara, the only time the boys really have to worry is when the twins are completely silent. That means that the twins are definitely doing something that they should not be doing (like raiding the highest cabinets for all the sweets, or dismantling their cribs to build a racing car model)

It’s at this point that Damian makes Jon get a vasectomy.

That’s their next lesson in Kryptonian family planning: Turns out if you’re half Kryptonian a vasectomy is only half effective…

And that’s how baby Emiw, their youngest, is born!

(They then figure out the vasectomy thing (it takes Damian a year of research in the fortress of solitude (both Jon and Damian are miserable during their self imposed celibacy (it’s the longest they’ve ever gone without doing it since they got together (once they figure it out they ask Bruce to look after the girls and the rest of the family to look after Bruce and go to a hidden island resort (Damian is frankly surprised that he DOESN’T end up pregnant again with everything they do there))))))

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As for their daughters: Here is where we will find them at the beginning of the fic. (To make it easier I went with the Bridgerton-naming convention of giving the kids names in alphabetical order by age lol…)

Alula Wayne-Kent follows her Baba’s footsteps and is about to start her residency to become a paediatrician. She looks most like Talia but with a softness that is definitely Clark, so everyone immediately falls in love and trusts her. It’s good that she is such an angel because both of her dads would have completely abused this power if they had had it.

Biham Wayne-Kent is now a bisexual nonbinary icon who goes by she/they pronouns. Their personality is a mix of granny Lois but with the delivery of their great-grandpa Alfred, which means she has always been a handful. Currently getting her masters in Shakespearean theatre to piss everyone off but secretly Bruce loves them for it (and encouraged it the most) because it reminds him of Alfred. Looks most like Lois but their angular features and blue eyes remind everyone of Bruce too.

Chara Wayne-Kent has a huge brain and an affinity for astrophysics. She looks most like Damian but has Jon’s big purple eyes. Everyone is surprised when she turns out to be the new vigilante protecting Gotham (but then again maybe they shouldn’t be because she takes after her aunt Cass).

The twins Dubhe and Deneb are probably the closest to what very young super sons used to be like. They bicker constantly but are also always glued to each other. Funnily enough Dubhe looks like a female version Bruce but with Lois’ eyes and Deneb look like a female version of Clark but with Talia’s eyes. They decide to become models but mostly as a cover for why they travel so much. In the public eye they are definitely the messy successors to the Brucie persona but to the vigilante world it is clear that they are some of the most capable members of both the super and the batfam. Deneb studies engineering on the down low and does an apprenticeship with uncle JHI and Dubhe follows the footsteps of auntie Barb and learns everything she can from Oracle.

The youngest, Emiw, is close to the twins due to her being only a bit over a year younger than them. She gets treated as a baby by everyone because she is also the youngest of this generation of the batfamily. Has a temper and an affinity for running away, which is frankly quite impressive considering who her entire family is. Looks most like Jon but has Damian’s eyes and nose.

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This post is so loooooong omg lol…. I hope it makes sense and I hope you like it despite having to wait for it for so long. I had a great time thinking about all of this!

It’s the iron Damian tastes in the air first. Jon’s the one with the super senses but when droplets of blood rain from the heavens, it is hard for Damian to miss the tangy spots on his lips.

He had been aware that Jon was taking care of some perps behind his back. Damian had been ignoring blind spots he would never leave open if his partner wasn’t here after all.

Jon did that for him. Let Damian focus on exactly what was in front of him and covered his back, so that no bad surprises could fall on him. Damian knew that it was sloppy of him to have gotten used to it. In the years they had fought together and ever since Jon’s powers had properly manifested, it had become second nature for Damian to trust that there was a force larger than life listening in to his heartbeat and protecting it with fierce devotion.

Damian only realised how bad it had gotten during that month Jon had been missing. That entire time the silence behind him loomed like a panther waiting to pounce, stroking sharp shivers up and down his back. He’d gotten whiplash from how often he had turned his head to check the blind spots that were bare once more. Damian lied to himself by saying that Jon’s absence had been good for his awareness skills. It had reminded the shorter boy of the paranoia of his childhood upbringing. Reminded him that only he can keep himself safe.

It was that much worse when Jon came back. Falling into the safety of his teammate’s care was like sinking into his own bedsheets after months away on a mission. A comforting lull to conformity that Damian found harder and harder to resist with each foe Jon took out for him.

It was this that had created a blanket of super protective static behind Damian’s back. One in which Damian simply did not care what was going on in, because he knew Jon had it handled.

Of course he had heard the iron fists landing on soft tissue, snapping the bones underneath like they’re merely glow sticks. But he had ignored those sounds while he took out the threat attacking him from the front.

It is only that taste of blood and the fact that he had incapacitated the villains before him, that made him turn to check on why his partner was taking so long with one single opponent.

When Damian turns the vision beckons creation. He wonders if it is that same muse that sang in Homer and Milton before him. However, he doubts either of those men had ever encountered the sublime horror painting the evening sky before him.

Damian sees the scene wash before him as a frescoe. Jon alit by the late evening’s tangerine rays and holding on to the collar of their attacker’s shirt. His other fist drawn back stringing the bows of muscles in his upper back. His trapezius tensing to release his fist like an arrow that will not miss its mark. The gaze in his eyes is hazy. Damian knows what it means: Jon is seeing the man’s targeted face only using his x-ray vision.

And it is no surprise that he must, for the face he is aiming at is but an abstraction of human form. Flesh bubbling from the force that hit it blow the man’s skin into mounds deforming his face. His fractured jaw almost fluid in its state held together only by the tissue of his skin. If Jon is a Michelangelo, he has rendered the man beneath him a Dalí.

He aims for a spot on the disfigured jaw, and Damian wonders into how many fractals Jon plans to split the mandible apart. The soft smile on Jon’s face indicates that the Kryptonian-human hybrid is far from being done.

Which is why Damian must put a stop to this.

“Jon”, he lets the name pass his lips softly like sterile gauze cleaning a wound. The sound fulfils its purpose immediately. Awoken from a trance Jon turns to Damian, and being the sudden focus of the unearthly blue in his eyes hits Damian harder than any blow had done this entire evening.

“He’s had enough”, Damian says and Jon puffs out a breath that was holding the tension in his chest. He lets go of the form, that somehow still holds the soul of a man and smiles at Damian. It’s an awkward smile caught between shame and satisfaction.

“Yeah”, he says as if he hadn’t just beaten a man into a pulp. There’s a shadow of a frown forming on his forehead and Damian only hears some halfhearted excuse from him before Jon is flying off into the horizon.

Damian steps closer to the poor man Jon decided to disfigure. It is morbid curiosity to see what set his partner off so badly.

The man is still alive, but barely. Over the mangled jaw and between swollen flesh, Damian recognises loathsome blue eyes that had sneered at him at the beginning of this fight.

It is the leader of this gang, who lies there like a loose assembly of human. Damian recalls how he had acted as bait, letting himself be caught by the man’s henchmen to draw him out. He had found himself stuck held by two arms with the leader’s hand holding his chin to inspect Damian’s face, shortly before the man had balled up his fist and driven it squarely into Damian’s abdomen. That’s when Jon had swooped in, and the real fight had begun.

Damian looks down at the hand that had grabbed his chin before. He would only know for certain when the report came in, but by the contorted angle of each finger he assumes that every bone in that claw had been broken at least once cleanly apart. It would be a bitch to heal.