one true heir to the mantle of the Bat

“i mean, his headquarters is in a cave,” stephanie grinned and shoveled an oreo into the jar of peanut butter until there was enough peanut butter piled on top of the cookie to topple over onto the pristine marble countertop on the precarious journey to her waiting mouth. “what else was he supposed to be? a bear?” she snorted at the image of bearman themed porn and then her expression soured as the reality of bruce fucking in a bear suit set in. “the gay community wouldn’t know what to do with themselves, and the villains would laugh in the face of a hidden hairy dad bod.”

stephanie smiled at him and cleaned her front teeth of peanut butter and chocolate cookie residue with her tongue. the softness was always far more present in his eyes than his words. she knew that she really got him when it leaked into his tone, too. “that’s just one of the many perks of rooming with steph brown.” 

she titled her chin, and her eyes went soft as her lips twitched into a slip of a smile. “childhood trauma erases a lot of bad, d. the only thing that counts is if you try to overcome it.” she understood the complexity of taking on the sins of the father (( and mother in damian’s case )). it was so easy to tell him that it wasn’t his fault; it was never his fault––but she still moved feverishly to outrun everything her father did to her and everyone else who had the misfortune of crossing his path. “oh, i’m a young soul,” stephanie hummed, lacing their fingers together and squeezing his hand lightly. “you wouldn’t know it because i’m so wise, but i haven’t been around nearly as long as you have. you have the weight of the dozens of lives you’ve lived before.” 

damian snorted. as though he could keep his headquarters in a fanciful tower in the middle of a city. wayne enterprises as a real headquarters, perhaps. “a bear at least has a greater killing reputation than a vegetarian animal. perhaps it might have intimidated the penguin. and i would ask you to refrain from using the phrase ‘dad bod’ to refer to my deseased father. i find it... gross.” somehow in his life, he’d only broken his nose twice. once knocked a kink into it that sent it in the wrong direction, and the second time pushed it back, leaving a lump in the bridge but at least it was straight. the bump served to exaggerated his wrinkled nose the same way his baby fat had when he was a child.

“if my grandfather had his way, i certainly would have lived dozens of lives, in a way. i suppose i’ll never know how many men he killed to take the form of, or if their minds persisted in any way against him and the force of the lazarus pit. perhaps my birth was just a reincarnation of a man he’d wronged before, destined to be his undoing because of my mother’s inability to let go of her twisted love for my father. then my work would be done. grandfather died. mother is who knows where. she’s been very cross with me since i had father’s body cremated and hid the ashes from her. she did make a halfhearted pass at poisoning me for it.” it wasn’t exactly romantic or deep conversation like she wanted, but it was almost easier for him to discuss his homicidal maternal line than how he thought stephanie had a destiny entwined with his because of how perfectly she always fit into his life when given the chance.

stephanie nodded her head emphatically and dunked an oreo in the jar of without fear of contamination. what? like chocolate was going to make peanut butter worse? they were the original dynamic duo. steph grinned around a mouthful of cookie at the thought of mr. peanut in bat ears. “thematic dedication is important,” she hummed, untwisting an oreo to scrape the cream off with her front teeth, “even bruce understood that. it’s all about the brand.”

all the peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth made her throat dry. it had nothing to do with the intensity reflected in the amber-flecked highlights of damian’s eyes or the honesty leaking through his words. “um,” steph started eloquently, licking the peanut butter away from her gums. she swallowed and blew tufts of her hair out of her eyes, regaining her composure. “i know; you don’t need to say it,” she grinned and shrugged her shoulders, “i know that i astonish and amaze you on a daily basis. it’s part of my stephicialty charm.”

the corner of stephanie’s mouth tugged into a soft smile as she continued to stroke damian’s hair, admiring the silkiness from superior genetics and expensive conditioner. she never would’ve guessed that it would be this soft with his signature spiked hairstyle. she liked it best like this, she decided, freshly dried and ungelled. it almost looked like duckling down. “you would make a nice cat,” steph hummed. “you already like pets.” the air felt languid, and steph felt like purring herself. she sighed quietly and rolled her shoulders back, the knots in her traps from patrol slowly relaxing. “and for the record, karma is in the air all around us. that’s why i have great skin.” 

“you have... questionable tastes. frankly, father did as well. a bat. of all things. a flying rodent that feeds on insects and rotted fruits. about as intimidating as a plush child’s bunny. and yet you both seem to have been able to puzzle out something.” he took an oreo himself and slid the cookie in half, dipping it in the peanut butter as well to try a bite of it. better than the filling. but not entirely right. very little in his life was ever entirely right, it just... came together. somehow. despite how sticky it was to his teeth and his tongue, the taste was right. he despised metaphors where they had no place being.

maybe he did need to say it. damian had never been very good with honesty. well, that wasn’t entirely true. he had never been very gifted with expressing the thing it was important to express. he lied well when he needed to. he struggled about some things, concepts he never fully mastered. family. openness. devotion to a positive thing. he scoffed. “stephanie brown, you certainly make yourself known to me on a daily basis. for better or worse.”

“i’m a real-life batarang,” stephanie grinned at him, stupidly wide to brighten the fear off of his face. “i always come back with a smidgen of criminal blood on me.” being emotionally available for any amount of time tended to take a lot of damian, so steph tried to give him an intermission of terrible jokes that he could make fun of. mocking, after all, was his comfort zone. “just call me the stephinator,” she added in her worst attempt at an austrian accent just to spite damian’s ability to articulate any dialect perfectly. she wondered, sometimes, what he sounded like before talia molded him into the heir to the demon head. there had to have been a time where he didn’t pronounce his ‘t’s so crisply. after all, he was a kid once, even if he wasn’t treated like one.

stephanie listened to him monologue patiently; though, she did watch the fondness flicker in his eyes and  swing her legs back and forth to keep herself entertained. he was so predictable, and yet he was constantly surprising her––but that was damian. he was a paradox-and-a-half, always contradicting himself without even realizing it, and she was the same. maybe, that was why she understood him so well. maybe, that was why he understood her better than he even knew. “the only point you’d prove is that you adoooore me,” she crooned, smiling up at him smugly. “why else would you take a bullet for me?”

it was rare to see him relax, like watching the northern lights glow or finding a frost flower. damian was always coiled, ready for a surprise attack that would likely never come while he donned his cashmere sweater uniform. steph scratched her blunt nails lightly against his scalp just to see if she could keep his forehead free of wrinkles. he looked like he was actually his age for once; it was nice. “don’t damn a gift, d. it’s bad karma.” she smiled at his awkward attempt at a compliment and shook her head. “a mysterious, handsome bachelor hidden away in his foggy mansion is super-duper romantic. i’m sure you read wuthering heights in assassin school––everyone loves a sad boy.” 

damian did wrinkle his nose at her, she should have some ability to imitate an accent or dialect without being so clearly false. she watched enough british television to at least do a british accent. he’s always had a posh american accent, at least since he first set foot in gotham. his mother never wanted him to sound foreign. not unless it was convenient to the mission at hand. “i think captain boomerang will be pushed onto a track of obscurity so deep, not even he would be able to come back from it, should you chose to take up crime as a themed villain with returning weaponry as your schtick.”

he wanted to protest that he’d take a bullet for anyone, but that wasn’t strictly true. he’d let drake take a bullet because if he got shot, he’s an idiot who deserved it, and he’d let jason get shot because jason is always getting shot, and at this point, he barely seemed to notice it. maybe dick he’d protect but... he was protective of him in general. he avoided running with the justice league as much as possible, but he doubted there was ever truly an occasion where he’d let himself be incapacitated before his partner was. civilians, he supposed, but that was why the police let him run around in his pointy-eared cowl and cape. “adoration is one word for what i feel for you.”

the teasing glint in stephanie’s eyes went soft as she watched damian’s allegedly impenetrable shield falter. “i did,” she admitted, voice quieting from her usual boisterous lilt. all the bats had a problem with acknowledging their mistakes, like they always had to be right to be good. normally, damian was so insufferably self-righteous, stephanie couldn’t stomach her pride long enough to let him win, but he’d grown out of a lot of his obnoxiousness while she was gone. it was terrible, but steph was half convinced part of his growth was due to bruce’s absence. most children looked up to their fathers, but damian idolized his  more than most––which would’ve been fine if his dad wasn’t an emotionally stunted energy vampire. she had worried, when she left, but he did a pretty good job on his own. she glanced up at him again and smiled slightly with a shrug of her shoulders, “but i came back.”

stephanie sighed through her nose, mouth quirking into a fond, exasperated smirk––maybe she spoke too soon. “sure, but before you said that you were going to die before me, so clearly you think that i’ve got some mad bullet-dodging ninja skills that you’re, not only jealous of, but in complete’n utter awe of.” it was probably a bit morbid to be joking about, what with bruce dead and dick in the wind, but that was part of being a bat. you couldn’t face death every night if you didn’t have a way to deal with it in the daylight. also. it was just way too tempting to goad damian into an argument that only he would engage in.

she wasn’t exactly sure why she was surprised by damian’s relative forwardness. he was so bold in everything else that he did, so it really shouldn’t be such a shock that it melded into his, dare she say, sexuality. “i dunno,” steph shrugged her shoulders and brushed her fingers through his artfully gelled hair, “you certainly look like a rom-com leading man. you definitely have the cheekbones for it.” 

“you came back.” he repeated. if he were a more emotionally available man, it might be called wonder in his voice. as it was, he tried to make it sound factual. she came back. not everyone did. dick was gone, chasing some impossible lead he should never have done on his own, maybe dead somewhere in the ocean. his father was dead and in the ground, well, ashes in the ground actually, to prevent his mother from throwing him into the lazarus pit. his mother who abandoned him on the doorstep of a stranger he was lead to believe was a god. he drove away people with his bitter and cutting attitude, he knew that. how early in life he learned that driving them off was better than being abandoned. he never could get stephanie to run off though. she always took it as a challenge.

he was so close. she still smelled like shampoo and soap and now peanut butter and her eyes were wide in the dim light. “no, i’m going to have to do some stupid maneuver to save you from some kind of assassin or thug or penguin-suit-wearing goon. leave myself exposed to protect your fragile organs since you won’t wear proper armor. it’ll probably come from a direction blocked by your insistence on having such long hair. you won’t even see it coming. then you’ll finally have to listen to me about tying it up. and i’ll die having proven a point and won an argument. irrefutably.”

 stephanie grinned wide enough to show her teeth and pink tongue sticking out between them. “i’m everyone’s favorite std. you have fun getting me, and then it’s too late. you’re stuck with me for life because there is no cure for the stephs, not even antibiotics can keep up with my strain.” she tended to be more ridiculous when she was on the verge of something serious. she was so much better at handling other people’s social lives; why must she have to deal with her own? “what would you call it, then?” she hummed with her full lips curled into a small smirk and her brows arched as if she were actually curious about his answer. “saving them? rescuing defenseless citizens? keep them out of harm’s way?”

her grin flattened into a small frown. what was it with bats and their inane need to throw their lives away for no good reason? it was like nothing they did mattered because it wasn’t even enough to make them believe that gotham could actually be saved. what was the point, steph mused, if damian didn’t even want to be around to see the happy ending. “you aren’t going to die on me, damian wayne. as your partner, i can’t allow it. it’s the biggest, most importantest dynamic duo rule.”

she paused for a minute, wondering if she should put a stop to this moment with a fling of her peanut butter or a kick to his shin, but she was nothing if not a true competitor. “i can’t tell if you’re actually a nihilistic sad boy or if you’re secretly a hopeless romantic.” steph shrugged her shoulders and grinned again, brighter than before. “so is it winning if you sideswipe the leg while i’m pulling my hair out of my face?”

“you did go, though. for a long time.” long enough he’d almost forgotten how he felt about her, why she made his heartbeat change and why he suddenly felt like he could laugh or cry and she’d actually understand him. then she came back and it all clicked right back into place with hardly a misstep to slow them down in picking up where they left off. even if he was terrible at calling her or coming by to check up on her. stalking her online was easier and she probably knew he was doing it. he was a wayne. he kept up with all the bats.

damian scoffed at her. “i’ve no intention of dying. i’m merely stating facts. even as your partner, we are both far more likely to die by a stray bullet or knife or highly trained assassin sent with our guards down than by a pedestrian accident or some disease. i expect without my protection, you won’t last the month. you’d run headlong into a common street thief and become overwhelmed with agony, knowing how much more quickly i’d subdue him than you, and die by his poorly aimed bullet.”

stephanie hummed and shrugged her shoulders, not convinced in the slightest, “yeah, i’m sure you dedicate lifelong insults to all your casual observations.” she sat back onto the palms of her hands and watched damian deny his compassion for approximately the trillionth time with an obnoxiously fond smile stretched across her lips, to her dimples, to her warm eyes. he was so stupid sometimes that her heart felt like it was going to burst from her ribcage. “and yet you’ve given up your entire life to protect them.” steph smirked and shrugged her shoulders again, “sounds like a mixed message to me.” 

“well,” she huffed, hard enough to stir the frizzes of baby hairs sticking out in various directions from her temples, “that’s just a matter of opinion, isn’t it.” she took the spoon as a peace offering, and scooped out a large dollop of peanut butter to drop into her awaiting mouth. she licked the residue from her teeth and the roof of her mouth before continuing, “none of the great artists were appreciating while they were alive. you should hang on to some of my work to sell after i die. you’ll make millions.” 

stephanie shifted under his intense gaze, and reached for the peanut butter again to give her hands something to do. damian’s bat-stare was frighteningly similar to whatever this was; it felt like he could see through every layer of skin and muscle and then straight through to the thoughts she hid from her own subconscious. suddenly, she felt a great amount of sympathy for the less sophisticated thugs they came across on patrol. “only when you cheat,” she hummed, sticking her peanut-butter-coated tongue out at him.

“you have been something of a recurring presence in my life” she got a look on her face when she had a comeback brewing or a thought she was eager to tell him because it proved him wrong. he had never made a joke about that. it felt too intimate to joke about. he knew that face. he wondered how many other people had studied stephanie’s face in thought so often they could identify when she was going to try and one up them. he scoffed when she finally got it out. “i don’t think of it as protecting them.”

he crossed his arms over his chest and let the weight of them push him back into the counter until he was almost relaxed. he was so rarely relaxed. “i already have millions. the odds that you die first are slim anyway, you hardly get into as many dangerous situations as i do and rarely work alone.” it wasn’t as though he anticipated dying soon, he just knew were he to die, it would be in the suit. damian al ghul wayne would not be dying in a bed in his sleep or of cancer or some other passive disease. he would probably get a knife to his neck or a gunshot to the chest. if he were to go any other way he’d be ashamed. 

“that’s exactly what a girl wants to hear before you fuck her: you’re continuing your father’s legacy. socialites with daddy issues want a guy who reminds them of their dad, not someone who’s obsessed with their own.” stephanie snorted rather indelicately and tried to imagine damian initiating a sexual encounter with a girl. she would bet a hundred bucks that he actually used the word intercourse––and that wasn’t chump change in the brown household. he was pretty damn lucky that he was so damnably good-looking that his face excused most social blunders. “clearly it isn’t good sex ‘cause you wouldn’t be busy criticizing my body if you were thinking about somebody else’s.” patting his arm, she grinned and winked at him obnoxiously, “i can set you up with someone from my soul pole class if you want. they’ve all got thighs that’d put tree-trunks to shame.” 

sighing, stephanie stomped her sloth-socked foot into the plush rug and placed her hands on her hips. “did picasso make his own paint? did michelangelo make his own marble? does ronald mcdonald grow his own potatoes?” this was usually about the time that damian started calling her a ridiculous woman, but she was delirious with hunger––and it wasn’t like he wasn’ equally ridiculous in his own fussy ways. “don’t question our artistic integrity with such silly details.”  

stephanie waved her hand in the air as she lead the long trek to the kitchen, making a note to look into some sort of food delivery roomba device for future snack emergencies. if lucius made the bat-mobile, he could certainly figure out how to build a robot butler. “technically, the guilty party wasn’t in high school. he dropped out to start a band in the middle of his senior year.” humming, she shrugged her shoulders and grinned, “you can’t get little paper umbrellas when you’re fighting crime. i love those things.”

damian scoffed. the very idea of bringing up brucie wayne was irritating at best and infuriating at worst. “i just mean the sex is meaningless and to maintain a cover, not out of passion for any of the women who have had the pleasure of my company.” it wasn’t exactly calling it intercourse but it was still dancing around the phrasing. “i’ve no reason to consider their bodies after the fact. i find them irritating and deplorable to be in the company of. and i’m sure i would find your friends equally as uninteresting. civilians aren’t exactly to my taste.”

he had an appreciation for a girl who could hold her own in a fight. he had particular interests. “picasso certainly did mix paints. and one cannot make marble. and i am certain the mcdonalds corperation has property for growing their own potatoes. artistry without question lacks importance.” he could actually debate the value of making art with her, though she’d likely joke her way through it and just tease him about being snooty for it.

stephanie rolled her eyes very slowly so that damian could follow every nanoscopic movement. “i thought that you would’ve grown out of the fatgirl jokes by now. i mean, when you were a kid, i knew it was the only way you could look at my boobs without popping a stiffy, but i figured you’d move on to something actually clever once you saw a girl naked.” she sat up and perched her chin on top of her knees like a little robin in one swift movement. “unless,” she blinked innocently and tilted her head, “you still haven’t seen a real-life, three-demensional girl topless.” 

she rolled her eyes again, and briefly wondered if it was possible for her face to get stuck on a continuous loop like a harry potter photograph if she repeated the same facial twitch enough times. “if you’re just going to insult my art and my, quite frankly, dynamite calf definition, you can go live in a cave with the other beasts.” she stood up with a little huff, her frizzy air-dried hair swinging behind her with just the right amount of sass. “i think i can find the peanut butter myself, thank you very much.” 

steph glanced over her shoulder and snorted, “believe me, boy wonder, i was fully developed before the conception. that was kinda the appeal.” grinning, she shrugged her shoulders, “i was an early bloomer. sucked in elementary school, but it made sneaking into clubs easier in high school.”

damian sputtered, caught off guard by her bluntness. stephanie had never been one to dance around subjects, and they’d never been shy about gore or setting bones or stitching skin. but somehow they had not extended to crude language like ‘popping a stiffy’ in his mind. it was language he expected from jason todd, not her. “i do have to maintain some semblance of the wayne name, despite my best efforts, father did make himself out to be something of a floozy. continuing that tradition at least serves to get me into locations easier as a wayne than a bat.” in other words, sex was business, not oogling three dimensional breasts.

if she hadn’t hopped out of his lap to make a point about getting her peanut butter snack, he might have pushed her out himself. “you don’t even make the pasta to create your monstrosities with, brown!” he called after her, debating if he’d get up off the sofa. he could pause the movie and follow her. she was being... flirtatious? it was hard to put a word on it.

stephanie grinned up at him as a reward for planning along with her game and felt a sudden urge to kiss him right on his stern mouth. she quickly filed that impulse away in a part of her brain she never allowed herself to visit with the alarmingly frequent reoccurring dreams she’d been having since her return to the manor. “i guess the only solution to this serious predicament is for you to carry my feeble and withered body to the kitchen. that way you can save me from malnourishment, and i can stab you in your thigh with an epipen in case of a spontaneous allergy development.”

she was very familiar with the urge to throttle talia, but she hadn’t ever felt it quite so violently before. it was hard to remember that she was a victim of her own father’s parenting (( if you could even call conditioning parenting )) when she saw how much she had damaged damian. steph smiled at him softly and pulled on the neck of the shirt he was wearing currently, “you wouldn’t like australia, anyway. your specialty would be forests.” she had thought about going in nursing for a little while, long before she met tim and her life changed forever, but she hadn’t taken to being bossed around from the moment she could talk. the more time she spent locked in a closet after talking back to her joke of a father, the more clearly she knew that she had to do something to stop all the bad guys in crime alley. “maybe,” she hummed, “i am a popsicle stick and macaroni prodigy.” 

she swallowed down the desire to kiss his nose and laughed, “gee, didn’t your assassin health class teach you that pregnancy makes you grow horizontally.” 

“carry you? you must weigh a ton. i can barely feel my legs with you laying on them. have you developed inhuman weight in your time with the aliens?” the movie was lighting her dramatically, bright blue outlining her face, her nose, her long hair. it felt like a dream to look down at her like this. he probably had dreamed it at some point but had filed it away under things not to consider because he had a working relationship with her and he had bigger goals to consider. he still had big goals. his missing brother. the fate of gotham. the state of the league of assassins. joker on the loose. restoring the manor to its former glory. kissing stephanie brown.

he tried very hard to ignore how his brain supplied that for the list. “i have so little desire to visit the country. i grew up in a diverse environment, mountains and deserts and forest. gotham was a strange concrete thing. i do miss it.” a rare moment of honesty, of something that didn’t feel tainted about his birth and his childhood, not clouded in darkness or violence. “the mountains. in the early morning. the birds. i doubt you could capture the likeness of it with elementary level art projects from washed up artists who couldn’t find a career other than explaining primary colors to six year olds.”

stephanie sighed loudly, a long-suffering sigh that almost sent her collapsing against the cushions once more, and draped her arm over her eyes to distract from the smirk curling across her lips. “you don’t need to be a world-class butler to walk into the kitchen at the request of your bestest partner in the whole multiverse.” sitting up, she grinned at him and poked his thigh with her magenta-painted toes. “my life is in your hands, d,” she poked his leg again just to make sure that he was giving her his full attention, “you could save a life.” 

it was such a damian wayne answer that stephanie had to roll her eyes. he had always struggled with imagination. he focused on the facts, and couldn’t or wouldn’t allow himself to see a reality past them. “wrong,” she hummed with a lilt in her voice and a toss of her hair, “so very wrong.” humming softly in the back of her throat, steph titled her head and studied the strong line of his profile, “you would be a zoologist, like a broodier, better-dressed steve irwin …or maybe you would start an animal shelter and hire a nice board so that you could spend all your time with the animals.” it was a nice idea; she wanted to believe that there was a universe somewhere out there where it really existed. 

“you couldn’t even reach my shoulders,” steph continued to tease in the pursuit of another nose wrinkle. “you were adorable.”

“but perhaps i do. you did put on the movie because i lacked the so called experience of watching it.” he had the urge to poke her stomach, see if she was ticklish. it was impractical for heroes to be ticklish and it was mostly a reflex of not anticipating a coming sensation. she probably would anticipate it. “perhaps i have developed an allergy to peanut butter while you were gone,” unlikely, “and if i were to procure this good for you, i could perish of a horrible reaction.”

his art teachers in school had always said he had such promise, he was so good at capturing realism. but the fact was, he was skilled. he had a good sense of reflecting reality and drawing what was real and not interrupting the lines with that which was anticipated but not real. he struggled with creating from his own mind some beautiful image. he couldn’t imagine himself as a zoologist. he liked animals. but he couldn’t imagine a world where he was not an assassin at birth. he couldn’t picture giving up his father’s mission. of knowing there was violent crime and he was capable of acting on it in a way others could not. instead of expressing any of that concern, he redirected, “i doubt a turtleneck in the australian outback would be practical. without vigilantism you’d do something horribly impractical and pointless like teaching elementary school or social services work in an underfunded district.”

“i am a complex, multi-faceted individual, damian wayne.” stephanie tapped her finger against the tip of his nose once more and narrowed her brows, “you don’t know everything about me.” she glanced at the screen and licked the front row of her teeth to check for any remnants of the brownie bits from their shared shake as augustus fell in the chocolate river like the spoiled little fool he was. she would have at least had the foresight to bring a krazy straw with her. “though…” steph looked back at damain and grinned, “now that you mention it, some sort of chocolate and peanut-butter concoction sounds pretty good right now.” sighing with her usual flair of dramatics and charming pluck, she collapsed across his lap being careful to land her head on the opposite armrest and not on his lap (( and more importantly keeping her mouth nowhere near his crotch )). “but i’m so tiiiiiiired, and i can’t seem to move my legs.” she batted her lashes at him and grinned because she hadn’t ever done damseling in distress very well. “could you perchance get the reese’s in the kitchen for me?” 

the next time damian spun into one of his dramatic monologues she was going to film it and compile some his best hits for irrefutable proof and a possible viral remix. “what would you be, then?” stephanie hummed and brushing her fingers through her damp hair, the soft smell of lavender following their wake. “if gotham didn’t need batman, who would want to be?”

“thanks. that’s almost sweet, d,” she grinned at him and dropped her head on top of his shoulder briefly. most people would make the mistake of casting damian as the veruca of the batfamily, but steph knew him better than that. “you were one of the oompa loompas,” she hummed, pinching his cheek with a bright smirk, “‘cause you were such a shrimp.” also because he was raised to be a tool, not a person, but he didn’t need her to tell him that. “you do,” stephanie noted with a soft smile. “maybe that’s why you get along with me better than he ever did.”

“no, but enough to extrapolate any information i may need to gather.” which was untrue. he found her often puzzling. he’d come to discover while information in some aspects often led to conclusive outcomes in similar aspects, knowing things about stephanie brown did not often mean he knew exactly what choices she would make in untested scenarios.

like her draping herself across his lap in her comfortable clothes, looking up at him with those big round eyes and her long damp hair. like some kind of old painting of a woman in her rooms waiting with a small dog for a trusted visitor to see her in her most fragile way. “shame i haven’t hired another butler. no one i interviewed quite stood up to alfred pennyworth. but if we had one, i’m certain a butler could fetch those things for you. seeing as i am not a butler, i shall not be doing that.”

he crossed his arms over his chest to hide some of his view of her and lean back into the cushions. who would he be without his father? well, he wouldn’t have existed. to prevent batman, father never would have gone to the league of assassins, never would have met grandfather and mother, never would have become a part of grandfather’s schemes for eternal life, and damian would never have been a result of a botched attempt. but she wasn’t looking for realism. “i’m sure some other city would have gone to shit and required another night beast themed vigilante.”

stephanie hummed and stretched her legs out and curled her toes as a knot from training unkinked in her calf. “i don’t want cookie dough, i think.” she tapped her chin and hummed once more, “but maybe a popcorn trip is in order after the boat scene.” she wasn’t hungry, but that wasn’t the point. she could eat at any point for just the sake of eating––and if damian wanted to give her a lecture, she would justify it with the amount of carbs they went through chasing down clowns every night.

“sure,” she agreed easily because there wasn’t any point in denying it after living together for so long, “but i’m not drunk now, and i’m not gonna be drunk anytime in the foreseeable future.” she shifted slightly so that she could perch her chin on top of his shoulder and poke the tip of his cute keebler elf nose. “you run around dressed like a bat every night and monologue hamlet style completely sober, so what’s your excuse?” 

steph turned back around and curled back up against his side like a cat, wondering briefly where alfred was hiding as she hummed along to ‘pure imagination.’ it shouldn’t feel so familiar, she supposed, watching tv with damian’s arm hovering just above her shoulder (( endearing really, how hesitant he was to touch her when they weren’t sparring )). they hadn’t done it before, but she hadn’t felt this at home since she lived with cass above the gotham city ballet studio. “i always wanted to be charlie,” she hummed, pulling the throw up to her chin. “i mean, the batcave was cool, but it sucks that bruce didn’t make it out of candy.” of course, he wouldn’t have ever picked her to take over his candy empire, but she already said no spoilers.

“how is there a boat in a factory?” but he should know better than to expect an answer, she’d shush him or give him a scathing look about spoilers. or just berate him for buying the unbuttered popcorn through his grocery service. it was just better when he could butter and salt it himself. reminded him of the kind alfred would make in the pan, only he had no patience for making it in the pan. “and how do you watch a movie about sweets and not crave sweets? you crave sweets if someone so much as mentions the idea of syrup.”

damian made a point to scowl as he wrinkled his nose to try and hide the sudden rise of a blush up his neck. hopefully the dim lights and already warm color of his skin would hide it better than hers would. “i do not monologue. and the bat was someone else’s idea. i’d never have put on such a costume if father had not started it.” no, he’d probably have simply dressed in the comfortable uniform of an assassin. no flourish of ears or decorative end to the cape or giant symbol on the chest. but it was another way his father had an instinct that damian lacked, some connection to other people and the understanding of fear that damian didn’t have with them. his fears were not born of being afraid of the dark as a child. from the moment he could stand he had a sharp weapon in his hand. he wouldn’t know how to symbolize his own fears on his chest. and if he said any of it to stephanie, she’d insist it was a monologue and that he was overthinking it.

“this is totally a sleepover. we’re in a pjs and watching a stupid movie at three in the morning. the only thing missing is cookie dought.” of course, most of her experience with sleepovers were strictly from observing the overlapping clichés in teen rom-coms and the few times kara stayed over at her apartment when she visited gotham. well, that and the one that got her pregnant––but she wasn’t sure if it counted as a sleepover if it happened inside of a nisan cargo van. “and i could do mental jiu-jitsu all over your discipline, one-handed and completely plastered with a red solo cup of cheap beer in my other hand. i have a blackbelt in all-nighters.”

stephanie had forgotten how exhausting boys could be. they were so frustratingly timid despite their insistence that they were the stronger sex. she glanced at his arm and shifted under it, resting her head on top of his shoulder. it was hardly the first time she had imposed movie-watching cuddles upon him; granted, last time she wrangled him into being the small spoon and squeezed his shoulder when mufasa died. “shh,” she curled her legs closer to her chest and pulled the throw she had been using as a pillow to her chest, “no spoilers. just enjoy the full spectrum of technicolor.”  

“if you wanted cookie dough you should have specified sooner. i assumed your sweet tooth was met already with the french fries and ice cream. you’ll get bloated eating any more sugar.” as though he didn’t love sweets just as much, and he couldn’t eat just as much of them at any hour because he liked them. but he knew how to chastise stephanie about it and how to deflect it all off of himself. 

“you’re a sloppy drunk, and you’re prone to tears and theatrics.” like all the feelings inside her just bubbled out over the surface. he once saw her drink too much with dick, the two of them on the sofa, watching animal planet. she cried over the baby ducks being too cute. he can’t say he disagreed that they were adorable. but it was certainly not worthy of tears.

stephanie arched her brow and glanced at him from where her head was pillowed on top of a ridiculously soft mohair throw. “you’re an arrogant little troll, damian wayne.” stretching her arm and torso, she managed to reach the remote without having to get up from her spot on the couch. she searched for the movie in netflix, spelling out the entire title (( all thirty characters of it )) to give herself time to stop thinking about if damian meant anything by, ‘you just want me to carry you,’ or if he was just being obnoxious because that was kind of his thing. “but i guess i would enjoy making you my transport bitch,” she added after he finally sat down, grinning at him upside down. “i’d make a damn good pharoa.” 

she flipped over when she pressed play so that she could get up to turn off the lights. it was necessary––nay, a rule––to watch a movie for the first time in the dark to truly to experience it, and she couldn’t count on damian to know these things. talia never added stephcialties to her baby assassin curriculum. “don’t fall asleep on me,” stephanie warned him as she hopped back onto the couch, propping herself up against the corner of the armrest. “i can’t be held responsible for what i’d do if you did. that’s the biggest sleepover rule.”

“this is watching a movie, not a sleepover. and you are far more likely to fall asleep. i have far more mental discipline training than you do, and you turned off the lights. you will be asleep before the credits roll.” he could threaten to draw a mustache on her, but he didn’t think he would really do it to her. he never really got pranks. not on her, anyway. replacing all of tim’s coffee with decaf just to watch him burn was hilarious and he stood by it and he would do it again. drawing a mustache on her because she fell asleep in her own dumb movie screening was far more... devious. it didn’t send the message he wanted it to.

there wasn’t a lot of mystery to damian wayne once your realized that he was just like every other boy with daddy issues…and mommy issues…and grandpa issues. long story short: the boy had a lot issues, and he covered them up with scowls and a loud arrogance that was mostly for show. steph had seen the vulnerability in damian the moment they met. he had gotten better at hiding it as a full-grown bat, that was for sure, but it was still there, clinging to the corners of his frown. 

stephanie finally spoke, smiling softly at the profile of his chiseled jaw, “you grew up very nicely, baby bat. i’m very impressed.” she wasn’t just talking about his back muscles (( though, gun to her head, they were pretty impressive )). really, she meant how hard he had worked to improve gotham from the ground up. he didn’t just throw on a cape and bag the bad guys; he was trying to change things as damian wayne, too. “bruce would be proud, and, more importantly, alfie would be, too.”

steph needed to clean up herself. she reeked of sweat and the powder they used to keep their suits from chafing. it was too rank to put off showering, even for her. luckily, every freakin’ bedroom in the manor had an ensuite. they also included walk-in closets, but somehow stephanie’s temporary room had more clothes littered on the floor than on hangers. she picked up a gotham u sweatshirt that seemed cleaner than the bleach-stained night shirt next to it. she pulled on a pair of running shorts after they passed the smell test and then slid down the hall in her rumpled knee socks. 

“this is gonna be the best sober trip of your life,” she hummed as she dropped herself over the arm of the couch. “forewarning, i always feel a little dizzy after i watch the boat scene, so you’re gonna have to give me a piggyback ride back to my room.”  

“i suppose. though, the dead don’t offer much in the way of gratitude or approval.” but it didn’t mean it didn’t matter to him. bruce and alfred may not be able to offer him the platitudes he so desperately craved from them in his childhood, but being told they would have sometimes seemed like enough. even if he knew they wouldn’t really say anything. father had a way of letting silence be his approval. if there wasn’t a lecture, a mere nod was the gift of a good night.

he tried not to let himself get pulled into the river of irritable melancholy it was so easy for him to get swept up into and instead focused on driving the car into the garage and getting it perfectly into the spot he liked to keep it in. his bathroom was spotless, every product kept in an exact spot, how he liked it. he scrubbed out the sweat the suit trapped and the powders and the feeling of fighting joker and tried to rinse out the stress of where dick grayson had wandered off to and the irritation that he was the only one of the three remaining brothers who seemed supremely concerned about it. by the time he got out of the shower, rubbed a towel on his hair, and had on a pair of navy sweats and plain grey shirt, stephanie had somehow managed to beat him to the theater room.

stephine laughed and parted her lips to argue that most people on earth at least knew the ‘sha la la’ part, but instead found herself saying, “well, you can impress me, then.” she shrugged off the twist of her tongue and brushed her fingers through her golden hair, working through a few wind-swept knots with an uncharacteristically practiced patience. “unless…” she pouted her bottom lip for a moment before her grin fought its way back onto her face, “you’d rather die.” hilarious, really, that people thought that she was the dramatic one with lydia deetz in a cashmere turtleneck over there.     

she skipped to the batmobile turned sport-scar just because she felt like it…and it always seemed to completely baffle damian, and his pinched brow never ceased to amuse her. “you question everything,” she blew her hair out of her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him, “i’m hardly a special case.” stephanie actually would watch a bad movie for the sole purpose of watching damian’s cute, little grimaces every time something stupid graced the home theater screen (( even thought she definitely preferred the coziness of the low light of a laptop in an unmade bed )), but he had indulged her whims enough for one night. “i wouldn’t say it’s good,” she grinned and shrugged her shoulders, “but it’s necessary.”      

damian pushed down hard on the has pedal because he preferred going fast in all vehicles. in gotham, only idiots drove slowly. but it also seemed like a good way to avoid looking at stephanie when he retorted back to her a crisp, “i thought i already had.”

the room in the manor dedicated to movies on the big screen was something of a haven to him. only safe, happy things happened in there. good moments. none of it was tainted with the old wayne melancholy that seemed to radiate through the walls of a manor full of ghosts. it was for popcorn and treats and movies he didn’t always life and people who laughed with him. he’d usually make a snide remark about how he questioned everything because he was batman but... she’d already made a point of correcting him that he was damian wayne not batman once tonight, and they were going to a place he loved.

stephanie grinned and shook her head slightly, poking the tip of her pink tongue out from between her chocolate-coated lips. “well, sure, maybe move trivia isn’t useful for b-man, but you’re a multi-faceted man, right?” the best way to win an argument against damian was to use his own words against him because there was no one he listened to better than himself. it also triggered a very cute pinched look on his face as a nice bonus. “you watch, someday you’re gonna be on a date with a very nice young lady, and she’s going to be so impressed when you know all the words to ‘kiss the girl.’”

the idea of damian dating used to be so laughable it would make for a great comedy sketch. it seemed a little less silly, what with all the leggy socialites clinging to his shirt-sleeves. woah, woah, woah was that bitterness in your inner-monologue, stephanie marie brown. she barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her extremely unhelpful conscience with the last bite of ice cream. “you learn more from practical experience, little d,” she grinned at him and balled up her napkin and threw it haphazardly at his chest. “c’mon, time for a lesson from the chocolate factory.”  

“i do believe you are the only woman on earth who would know i know all the words to a singing lobster song in a fairy tale.” granted, earth didn’t mean no woman ever. but damian preferred to acknowledge as little of the larger universe as possible. gotham was his concern first. then the global whole. and heroes like jon could worry about the whole universe. that was the point of stupid green lanterns. “i’d rather die than have it come up in casual conversation.” he stood up, tucking a few bills into the tip jar on the counter.