#alien!reader

The last thing you remember is screaming. And it was you, obviously. Mark would never make a peep, no matter how terrified he truly felt. Perks of Viltrumite training, I guess.

Wait—Where is he, anyway?

Wiping off dust from your spacesuit, you explore the area, looking for your mate. But he's nowhere to be seen. So you get into the air and fly away, eyes flicking around in search for the heir.

It's not like you're worried. Not for him, at least. Mark can fend for himself, and so can you. And together you're indestructible, but on your own—not as much. And since you have absolutely zero idea what planet did you land on, it's best to find him and get out of here.

You might encounter absolutely anything and anyone here; there's no way of knowing if this planet is home to creatures aggressive and vile like the Ragnars, or rather peaceful and kind like the Thraxans. It's also quite possibly not a Viltrum colony, since no one greeted you the moment you hit the ground like a meteorite, struck down like a rookie by some damned satellite.

Calling for him is pointless; if he's near, he will hear you, or find you by your scent. Otherwise, you're risking outing yourself as vulnerable on an alien planet. And if anything hurts you, Mark will wipe any and every species off the surface of this place.

Tall buildings start popping on the horizon line, smaller settlements with tiny houses below you. The area looks calm, peaceful and quiet. But you know you can't trust it, not until—

"Mark!" You yelp happily and glide down at your maximum speed, tackling him to the ground. He lands on his back, arms covering his face as you straddle him with your legs. "I am so happy I've found you—" you mumble between peppering his arms with kisses, and that's when you realize he looks different.

"What are you wearing?" You lean back, resting your weight on all four hands bracketing his head and shoulders. "Or, never mind. Better tell me where the hell are we—stop covering your face!" You groan, forcibly trying to remove his arms, but to no avail. "What is wrong with you?"

"Leave me alone!" Mark shouts and pushes you off him, much gentler than you expected. Something's off, and it settles heavy in your chest, both of your hearts dropping low.

"Hey…" You crawl back to him and try to cradle his face, but he sits up, his back facing you. "It's me," your voice trembles now, as you slowly move closer to him, "your mate."

"I don't know you!"

The words hit you like a thousand daggers. He must be hurt, there's no other explanation for this odd behavior.

"Mark…" you whisper and rest your right hands on his back, smoothing them down the line of the rigid muscles you know so well. When he tenses at your touch like a cornered animal, you gasp. What has this planet done to him?

"You don't remember me?" You question, inching closer, your breath warming his neck. Then, an idea pops up in your head. And so you snake on your right arms around his torso, with one of your left hands threading through his silky, black hair. "I think you need a little reminder," you coo, your lips grazing the back of his ear.

Mark's body is softer than you remember, but as warm as always. His skin prickles when you slide your hand under the weird top he's wearing. You smirk; your plan working just as you wished it would.

"Look at me," you purr and not waiting for his reply, you take his chin and turn his head towards you, until your lips meet his in the softest, gentlest kiss you two ever shared.

It doesn't last long until you're suddenly airborne, Mark left on the ground with eyes open wide like the full moon, shock and terror written all over his face. You want to turn, see who has this steel hold on all four of your hands, until the familiar smell hits your scent glands.

"I'm taking you back home. Now," your Mark growls and flies off with the speed of light, leading you to a glowing, purple portal.

Before you know it, you're back on Viltrum—familiar shade of gray stretching everywhere your eyes can reach. Then, in a blink of an eye, you're in your shared quarters, your back hitting the wall so forcefully all air is kicked out of you.

"You've betrayed me." Mark spits slowly, his fingers curled tight around your neck. With your legs above the ground, you scrape them against the smooth wall for some purchase, but he only pushes you more against the surface.

"I—I thought—it was—you—" You rasp, all four of your hands holding his arm. But that explanation only makes him more furious, as he furrows his brows over his dark, soulless eyes.

"You've mistaken me for some pathetic copy?"

"He—he smelled—" you gulp, very close to running out of oxygen, "—exactly the same—"

"Liar!" He loses it completely and screams, then throws you across the room until you hit the bed with your ass up. Before you get a chance to move, Mark's rough, claiming hands are on you, ripping the bottom of your Viltrumite colony suit into pieces.

"That man you allegedly thought was me," Mark pants, pressing on your bare ass with his already hard cock, "reeked of weakness, and fear."

You whine when he rolls his hips against you and shouts, "And I'm no coward! Say it!"

"You're—" you choke on a sob at his rough fingers sliding up into both of your holes, "—not a coward."

Mark takes away his hand from your already wet folds and smears the slick on your cheeks, before lowering himself, his voice getting low and dangerous as he whispers against your cheek, "Need I remind you, who's your one and only owner?"

With tears streaming down your face, you nod vigorously, but he only grabs your mouth forcefully, making you look at him. "Answer me, now."

"Yes—please, I want—" you yelp as he smacks your ass, correcting your choice of words, "—need a reminder."

"Thought so," he replies, his voice gravelly and laced with heat.

You don't have to wait long, as he grabs both of your lower arms with one hand at the small of your back, his other hand busy with breaking free from the confines of his suit. He hisses when cool air lick his hardened length, only to soothe it seconds later, gliding the tip along your folds.

It only takes him one clean thrust to bury himself up to the hilt, and then he immediately starts rocking his hips with relentless speed and force. You barely have time to adjust to his size, whines and whimper spilling out of you, when Mark pushes his thumb inside your puckered hole.

'I should—execute you—for that," he groans, not slowing down despite your two free arms grabbing at him. "To dishonor me—nhgf—the heir, is treason."

"Please…" you manage between uncontrollable cries, as his cock hits that perfect spot inside you over and over again. With addition of his thumb going in and out your ass, you're pitifully close to your orgasm, the whole dynamic getting you there insanely fast.

"If you're begging for forgiveness—" his voice goes down an octave, laced with effort as hips hit against yours even faster, bed frame squeaking and threatening to break, "—do it properly."

"Forgive me! Please!"

"So pathetic." You can almost hear the faintest smirk in his voice, but it doesn't worry you, because Mark snakes his hand around your waist to your clit, and presses it with the perfect pressure, sending you right over the edge.

You grab and twist your fingers around the plain bedding, your body shaking like a leaf on the wind and coat his length and suit with your slick.

This brings him closer too, as after only a few more thrusts, he still against you and spills hot, white ropes inside you, with quiet groans leaving his cold, plush lips.

For a moment, his chamber is quiet if not for your ragged breaths. When he pulls out, you tremble, feeling his cum trickling down your pussy. Mark throws a wet rag at you with disgust, but you know him well enough to see there's silent praise in his judging look, too.

"Clean yourself. You stink of that pitiful knock-off version of me."

You get up from the bed and wipe away whatever you can, before picking up the shredded pieces of your suit from the ground. When you look up, Mark is already naked—and hard, again.

"Why are you still dressed? You look ridiculous." He raises a brow, staring at the offending remnants of fabric clinging to your chest. Without a peep you free yourself of your top and come up closer to him, risking resting all of your hands on his chest and abdomen.

"On your knees," Mark commands calmly, "you're not forgiven yet."

🪐👽⭐️💜

Mark Grayson, a regular human teenage boy, was still sitting on the ground after someone who looked exactly like him dragged away a green and pink, four-armed alien girl—who kissed him like she knew him—through a purple, glowing portal.

He stared at the sky, were the two of them just vanished, still bewildered. Not with the existence of dimension portals, aliens or his doppelgangers—when your dad's a Viltrumite, you're fully aware of such things.

No, he was terrified with the fact that he liked it—liked her kissing him, and that he was enamored by her smell of all things. And the worst part is, he's probably never going to see her again.

main m.list | mark grayson m.list | join the taglist

taglist: @mimikie @halloween666lover @cheeyan @queen-of-gotham

- Strangely enough, Blonde Blazer introduces herself as soon as she hears about you. She understands how hard it might be to take in everything, remembers some of the difficulties with miscommunication and culture clashed she'd witness with Phenomaman.

- Blonde Blazer would try to become friends with you, even gives her contact details in case there's anything you need.

- You do correct people a lot at first when they call him Phenomaman, saying his name is Katon-Ur. But drop it when it seems he's chill with it.

- If Reader is his childhood that use to defend him, there are definitely moments where you get defensive of him. If someone were to comment on how Phenomaman looks, you wouldn't hesitate to snap at them. He has had to stop you from throwing a few people into orbit a few times because of it.

- The combination of his recent break up, the excitement of someone he knows, as well as no longer feeling so alien would likely lead to Phenomaman catching feelings for you.

- He is straight forward with it, but also tries to utilise what he's learnt on this planet, such as giving you a gift before telling you of his feelings.

- If you accept him, gives you a hug that could crush a lesser man to death.

- If you reject him, is a little pouty but eventually gets over it. Is mainly still happy to have a close friend around.

NSFW:

- The benefits of Phenomaman and you dating is 100% the fact that you have compatible genitals.

- Another fact is that he doesn't have to worry about accidentally hurting you during sex.

- Personally, I believe Phenomaman is a service top or a bottom. Enjoys letting the other person take the lead, doesn't mind not cumming either.

- Now that he has a partner that can do real damage to him, loves having scratches and even bites on him. Views it as a badge of honour.

Robert Robertson thinks of you like a warm bright looming ray of never ending sunshine. Bubbly and sweet, entirely foreign to the human design of restless misery and ragged imperfections molded over the course of time. The fundamental reason for why humans look to the leading sky with wonder and longing, gazing at the distant swell of black and speckling light in distant night skies, was standing right in front of him.

The first time Robert ever met you it was as if you were basked in rivers of sunlight. Golden light dripped off the surface of your skin, air swishing around your weightless body as you flew through the air—wind tangled into your hair as you enthusiastically introduced yourself to SDN’s newest dispatcher. Even the shadows that followed you splintered with light, an aura that melded your ever present glow. Your sentences were broken, fixed up with an achingly wide smile, and followed with easy found high lilted laughs. Earth customs were foreign to you—still are—but that nativity was braced with an appetite for knowledge.

To Robert's surprise, you liked learning about humans, a sub-species much less interesting than your people in his opinion. He imagined a planet full of you’s often. All the colors are too bright, pollen-green and cerulean blues, like a warm bright tapestry. He liked it. He liked you. How easily trusting you were, how kind you were, how undoubtful you were of humans—less than innocent—intentions. Traits that he learns are too often taken advantage of.

“Wait, wait, wait a second. Your first job when you got to earth…was a go-go dancer?” Your eyes beam brightly at him as you nod, the incredulous look on his face doing nothing to displace you. “Why?”

“Why not? A girl can’t like to dance?” Prism pipes up, your wide smile accompanying her question.

“Not really what I’m getting at.”

“Then what are you getting at? No, seriously, no one knows what you’re talking about,” Flambae helpfully interjects.

“Your tone suggests that you’re confused—you do know what the ‘go-go’ dancing is, Robert?”

“No, no, I got it.”

You smiled brightly. “I was very good.”

Malevola nodded. “She was.”

“I’m…sure you were,” he swallowed, bringing his drink to his lips. Reserving the question of how Malevola knew that for later.

“Think he’s just trying to picture it,” Visi laughs. A sheepish scoff leaves Robert’s lips, eyes rolling as you continue.

“I could demonstrate—” you reply, a chorus of answers thrown into the busy air.

“Yes!”

“No.”

The pounding music of the club is easily drowned out by the cluttered sounds of the street, the brick of the back alley cracking under the strength of which you push Robert up against it, lips locked clumsily in a tangle of tongue and teeth. Your hands wound into the messy locks of Roberts hair, out of place from where you had been tugging and running your hands through it, your lips pressing him open, tongue smoothing against his own. You always kissed like you wanted everything out of him, masterful in your own right, messy with spit slick lips, unyielding strength pressing jagged brick into his spine, “Gotta be gentle with me, remember?” he mutters, coy grin curling up his lips as you tug his lip between your teeth, “Fragile cargo here.”

You nod quickly, enthusiasm seeping through your eager hands, running down over his shoulders, tugging at his dress shirt. You loomed over him as your feet barely graced the ground, the sweet bite of your fruity drinks and the sweet lipgloss you loved the slather on coating his lips in shine. His hand cups the back of your neck to pull you back down to him, firmly held against your nape to keep you in place, lips prying yours open. Your tongues swirl together, spit seeping down the corners of your mouths, heavy pants passed between your open mouths.

You press into him even further, easily excited by these sorts of things. ‘Passion’ as you called it. Though your kind of passion often led to broken furniture, “Gonna put a hole through the wall if you press any harder,” Robert murmurs, hands winding around the curve of your waist, tugging you down. Still, your hair falls over him like a curtain, feet a foot higher off the ground than they were meant to be. Your smile was radiant.

“You do not wish to break the wall?”

“I wish to not pay for the damages.”

“Oh,” your head tilted. You hummed, lips pressing against his jaw and sweeping across his skin as your voice lowered, “Why?”

Robert exhaled, long and slow, fingers digging into the plush of your hips, “You know, that question is getting a lot harder for me to answer.”

“We could still dance.”

“Oh, could we?” he replied coarsely, tugging against the back of your knee to bring it around his waist, “Wanna show me your moves?”

“I think you’ve seen my more interesting moves,” you murmured, lips grazing the shell of Robert's ear. “Some of them, at least.”

You are standing in the Batcave under the cold white lights, still damp from Gotham rain, all huge dark insectile eyes and twitching antennae. No nose. Spiracles fluttering along your skin. Multiple arms held half-ready, half-defensive, like you cannot decide whether the room is a threat or a cage.

Bruce is speaking to you carefully. Duke is watching Bruce carefully. Jason is watching everyone like he is hoping someone makes a bad decision so he can feel morally justified about being annoying.

And Tim? Tim is staring.

Not with fear. Not with disgust.

With fascination. Which somehow feels worse.

His gaze moves over you too quickly. Too precisely. Eyes. Antennae. Hands. Shoulders. Spiracles. Posture. Muscle density. Breathing rhythm. Flight balance. Threat response. Unknown species markers. Viltrumite traits mixed with insectoid anatomy. Potential weaknesses. Potential strengths. Potential—

“Your respiration is distributed,” he says suddenly.

Everyone stops.

Your antennae stiffen.

Tim takes one step closer, eyes bright in a way that immediately makes your skin prickle.

“Do the spiracles work independently, or is airflow regulated through a central nervous response? Also, your antennae—are they sensory, communicative, balance-based, or all three? Wait, do they respond to electromagnetic fields? Because if they do, that changes—”

“Tim,” Bruce says.

Tim does not hear him. This is, unfortunately, very Tim.

He is not trying to be cruel. He is not trying to make you feel small. But that does not matter much when you are standing in an unfamiliar cave in an unfamiliar city, surrounded by humans in armour, and one of them is verbally dissecting you like a mystery he cannot wait to solve.

You go very still. A dangerous stillness.

The kind even Jason notices.

Your spiracles close halfway. Your extra arms draw inward.

“You speak as if I am not here.”

Tim stops. Finally.

His expression flickers, but the damage is already breathing between you. “I didn’t mean—”

“You are cataloguing me.”

Tim’s mouth opens. Closes.

He should say no.

He does not. Because Tim is honest in the worst possible moments.

“I’m trying to understand.”

Your antennae flatten. “You are trying to classify.”

Duke mutters, “Oh boy.”

Tim’s face tightens. Defensive now. Embarrassed, which makes him sharper. “You dropped into Gotham with meta-level strength, alien physiology, and lethal combat instincts. Understanding matters.”

“And does your understanding require staring at every part of my body?”

Tim flinches. Then, because he is tired and has sixteen bad coping mechanisms in a trench coat, he says the wrong thing. “If I don’t know what you are, I can’t know how dangerous you are.”

The Cave goes silent. Even Bruce looks like he wants to rewind the last ten seconds and delete them from the timeline.

Your huge eyes fix on Tim. No pupils he can read. No expression he knows how to translate. Just your antennae, rigid and low.

“What I am,” you say quietly, “is standing in front of you.”

Then you turn and leave.

You avoid Tim after that.

Not dramatically. Not loudly.

You just become very good at not being where he is.

If Tim enters the Cave, you leave through the upper platform. If he joins a briefing, you stand behind Jason or Duke, far enough back that his gaze cannot catch on your spiracles or the strange movement of your extra hands. If he speaks to you, you answer with brutal efficiency.

“Pass the med gel.” You pass it.

“Did you see which way the suspect ran?”

“North.”

“Are you injured?”

“No.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Then your question was unnecessary.”

Jason absolutely loves that one.

Tim does not.

Tim tries to apologise twice. Both times are disasters.

The first time, he finds you in the training room and starts with, “I’ve been reviewing my notes.”

Your antennae lift like knives.

Tim hears himself. Regrets being alive.

You walk out.

The second time, he says, “I think I understand where the miscommunication happened.”

You stare at him for four full seconds.

Then say, “You are very bad at this.” And leave again.

Tim stands there holding a peace offering protein bar like an idiot.

It becomes a whole thing.

Not enemies, exactly. You are never enemies.

Enemies are simple. Enemies are targets. Enemies can be fought, defeated, understood.

This is worse. This is awkward. This is charged. This is Tim glancing at you across the Cave and you immediately saying, “Stop studying me.”

And Tim, because he is incapable of shutting up when flustered, muttering, “I’m not.”

“You are staring.”

“I was thinking.”

“At me.”

“You were in the direction of the thought.”

“You are a terrible liar.”

“I know.”

It would be funny if it did not hurt.

Because you assume the staring is judgment. 

Of course you do. Humans stare at you all the time. At your eyes. Your lack of nose. Your antennae. Your arms. Your breathing holes. The shape of you. The not-human wrongness of you.

You assumed Tim’s staring was the same thing wearing smarter clothes. Analysis as distance. Curiosity as cruelty. Fascination as another word for disgust.

And Tim never denies it correctly. Because he is studying you. He is always studying you.

Just not in the way you think.

After that first fight, Tim cannot stop thinking about it. About your words.

You speak as if I am not here.

It keeps him awake. Not that Tim needed help with that.

He replays the moment over and over, each time finding some new way he messed it up. His tone. His posture. The way he moved closer without asking. The way he turned your body into information before he treated you like a person.

Tim knows what it feels like to be overlooked. He knows what it feels like to be reduced to usefulness.

Detective. Robin. Replacement. The smart one. The one who figures it out. The one who does not get to fall apart because someone needs to keep the case moving.

And somehow, with you, he did the same thing.

So he starts researching. Quietly. Obsessively.

Not because Bruce asks him to. Not because there is a mission file.

Because Tim needs to understand how to do better.

He digs through Justice League databases, alien contact archives, old Titan reports, off-world medical references, anything he can access without tripping twelve separate alarms. He learns what little there is about Viltrumite physiology. Even less about your insectoid half.

So he starts building from observation.

Carefully this time. Not touching. Not asking invasive questions. Watching from a distance and hating himself because even his attempt not to study you has, technically, become studying you.

But the focus changes.

Less what are they? More what hurts them? What helps?

He notices you avoid bright Cave lights, so he adjusts the settings in the rooms you use most. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just enough that your eyes stop narrowing when you enter. He notices smoke clings badly to your spiracles after patrol, so he designs filters thin enough to sit beneath your armour without blocking airflow.

He notices your extra arms never seem comfortable in standard chairs, so he modifies one in the Cave with a wider back and adjustable side space.

He notices you linger near warm vents after long nights, so he installs radiant heating in the corner of the training room you pretend not to favour.

He notices that certain frequencies make your antennae twitch in distress, so he rewrites part of the comm system to dampen the sound.

And because Tim is Tim, he does not tell you. Because telling you would mean admitting he is trying. And also because some part of him thinks you would reject it if you knew it was from him.

So the gifts appear like ghosts.

A new chair. Softer lighting. Gear attachments. A small, heated perch-like seat near the Batcomputer that no one comments on, because Bruce has weaponised silence and the whole family learned from the worst.

You notice, obviously. You notice everything.

At first, you assume Bruce did it. Bruce does not correct you, because Bruce is also emotionally impossible.

Then one night, you find Tim in the Cave at 3:17 a.m., hunched over a workbench, soldering something delicate beneath a magnifying lamp.

You almost leave. Then you see your name written on the side of the project file.

Not your species. Not “alien subject.” Not “bug meta.”

Your name.

You go still.

Tim does not notice you at first.

He is muttering to himself, hair a disaster, coffee untouched beside him, fingers moving with careful precision.

“Needs to flex more around the lower joint. Can’t restrict the spiracles. Maybe if the mesh anchors here…”

You step closer. “What is that?”

Tim startles so hard he nearly drops the tool. “Jesus—don’t do that.”

“I am not Jesus.”

“I know, it’s an expression.”

“What is that?”

Tim looks down at the armour piece. Then back at you. Then down again.

He looks, for once, caught. “It’s… a filter layer. For your suit.”

“My suit already has filters.”

“Not good enough ones.”

You stare at him.

The Cave hums around you.

Tim clears his throat. “Gotham smoke particles are smaller than standard urban pollutants because of all the chemical runoff, fear toxin residue, old industrial waste, and whatever Ivy did to the East End in March. Your spiracles were inflamed after the last warehouse fire.”

“You saw that?”

Tim winces. “Yes.”

Your antennae tilt back. “You were studying me again.”

“No.” Then, immediately, “Yes. Kind of. But not—” He drags a hand through his hair. “Not like before.”

You step closer. Tim does not move away.

Good. Brave.

Stupid.

“What is the difference?”

He looks at you for a long moment. All the jokes leave his face. “The difference is I should have asked.”

That stops you.

Tim sets the tool down. Carefully. Like he does not deserve to hold something sharp during this conversation.

“When we met, I treated you like a discovery before I treated you like a person,” he says. “I got excited. That’s not an excuse. I do that sometimes when something is new and impossible and fascinating, but you weren’t a something. You were standing right there, and I made you feel like an experiment.”

Your spiracles flutter.

He heard you.

That is inconvenient.

“I’m sorry,” Tim says.

Not defensive. Not rushed.

Just sorry. Real sorry.

“I wasn’t judging you,” he adds, quieter. “But I get why it felt that way.”

You cross all six arms, mostly so your hands have somewhere to go. “You stare often.”

His face goes pink. Just a little. “I know.”

“You never denied it.”

“I couldn’t.”

Your antennae lift.

Tim looks like he wants the floor to develop mercy and swallow him.

“I like researching,” he says, then laughs once at himself, tired and small. “That’s probably obvious.”

“Yes.”

“But with you…” He pauses. Swallows. “I think I kept telling myself I was just trying to understand your biology. Your abilities. Your risks. But that wasn’t all of it.”

You do not move.

Tim looks up at you.

His eyes are dark and exhausted and painfully honest.

“I study you more than I study anything else because I notice you more than anything else.”

Oh. That lands somewhere soft and unarmoured.

You hate that you have soft places. Your people would call this vulnerability inefficient. Your human teammates would probably call it having feelings.

Both are terrible.

Tim keeps talking because he is nervous, and nervous Tim is a train with no brakes.

“I notice when your antennae angle toward people you trust. I notice that you hold your lower-left hand still when you’re trying not to show pain. I notice you hate the Cave lights but like the computer glow. I notice you always stand near exits unless Duke is in the room, and you stand near Jason if you think a fight might break out, and near Bruce if you’re pretending you don’t want approval.”

You stare. “You notice too much.”

“I know.”

“Is that why you made these things?”

“Yes.”

“To make me more useful?”

Tim’s face changes fast. Hurt, then horror, then guilt.

“No,” he says. “No. To make you more comfortable.”

You do not answer.

He looks at the armour piece. “I thought… maybe if Gotham felt less hostile, you wouldn’t feel like you had to be ready to fight all the time.”

Your arms loosen. A little.

Tim’s voice softens. “I wanted you to have something that felt like home.”

That is the worst thing he could have said. The best thing. The thing that makes the whole Cave go blurry for half a second, though you refuse to acknowledge that.

You look away. “I do not know what home feels like anymore.”

Tim says nothing.

For once, thank every star, he says nothing. He just stands there with the half-finished filter between you, looking like someone who would build you an entire planet if he thought he could get the atmosphere right.

You step closer. Pick up the armour piece.

It is good work.

Of course it is. Flexible. Thoughtful. Precise. Not restrictive. Designed around you instead of despite you.

Your antennae curl before you can stop them.

Tim sees. He tries not to smile. Fails slightly.

“Do not look pleased,” you say.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m relieved.”

“That is worse.”

He does smile then. Small. Nervous. Devastating.

“I can stop,” he says. “If the modifications bother you. Or I can show you everything first. Ask permission. Actually communicate like a normal person.”

“You are not a normal person.”

“Fair.”

“You may show me.”

Tim blinks. “What?”

“You may show me. The things you made.”

His face opens like sunrise through a dirty window.

Not bright exactly. But hopeful. Dangerous.

You should leave.

You do not.

That is how it starts shifting.

Not all at once. You do not suddenly trust him because of one apology and one piece of alien-friendly armour. You are not that simple, and Tim would not insult you by expecting it.

But you stop leaving every time he enters the room. Mostly.

You let him explain the chair modifications. You sit in it. It is comfortable.

You accuse him of witchcraft.

Tim looks delighted.

You let him adjust the comm frequency. The static that had been irritating your antennae for weeks disappears.

Your whole body relaxes before you can stop it.

Tim notices.

You glare.

He looks away, smiling into his coffee like a criminal.

You let him ask questions now. With rules.

One question at a time. No touching without permission. No medical scans unless you agree. No calling anything about you “specimen,” “sample,” or “data set,” even jokingly.

Tim looks horrified. “I would never call you a specimen.”

“You called my skin texture ‘structurally fascinating’ during our second meeting.”

He covers his face. “I am so sorry.”

You find you enjoy making him apologise for things he has already apologised for. Only a little.

As enrichment.

Your dynamic becomes strange.

Still prickly. Still edged. But warmer underneath.

Tim looks at you too long, and now when you say, “You are staring,” it is not always a warning.

Sometimes it is an invitation.

Tim, doomed, always blushes.

“I was thinking.”

“At me?”

“Near you.”

“You are a terrible liar.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You keep lying terribly.”

Then one night he says, very quietly, “I was thinking you looked beautiful.”

The Cave does not explode. The world does not end.

You do, however, forget how to respond for several seconds.

Your antennae curl.

Tim’s eyes flick up. Then he looks away immediately, like he is trying very hard not to make you feel watched.

That is what gets you.

Not the compliment.

The restraint. The effort. The way he is learning.

“You may look,” you say.

Tim’s gaze returns slowly. Carefully. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He looks at you then.

Not like an experiment. Not like a threat assessment. Like a person he is almost afraid to want.

Your spiracles flutter.

Tim’s voice drops. “Still beautiful.”

You turn and leave before your dignity can fully die.

Behind you, Tim whispers, “Okay. Great. Smooth.”

You are smiling for the rest of the night.

Unfortunately, Jason sees. Even more unfortunately, Jason has a mouth.

It becomes lowkey enemies-to-lovers in the sense that neither of you were ever enemies, but both of you are stubborn enough to make basic emotional progress look like a competitive sport.

Tim offers you a new wrist guard.

You say, “Trying to improve your experiment?”

He winces.

You immediately feel bad.

Then he says, “Trying to protect someone who keeps blocking bullets with their forearm.”

You say, “My forearm is durable.”

“Your pain receptors disagree.”

“You researched my pain receptors?”

“I researched injury responses generally.”

“Liar.”

“Okay, yes, yours specifically.”

You should be annoyed. You are.

You are also touched. Horrifying.

One night, during a mission, everything goes wrong.

Because Gotham. Because of course.

Smoke bombs. Hostages. A collapsing floor. Too many moving parts, too many screams, too much noise striking your antennae until the whole world becomes vibration and threat and heat.

You freeze for half a second. Just half.

But half a second in combat can become a lifetime.

Tim’s voice comes through the comm.

Not loud. Not frantic.

Soft, steady, perfectly filtered through the frequency he built for you.

“Hey. Focus on my voice.”

Your spiracles flutter.

“Too much sound,” you manage.

“I know. I’m dampening the channel. Three hostiles to your left. Two civilians behind the forklift. You don’t need to solve the whole room. Just the next step.”

The next step.

That you can do.

You move.

Tim guides you through it, not controlling, not commanding. Translating chaos into pieces small enough to hold.

Afterwards, when the civilians are safe and no one is dead, you find him outside the warehouse.

He is bleeding from the temple.

You are instantly furious. “You are injured.”

“Small cut.”

“You should have told me.”

“You were busy.”

“You are not allowed to become injured quietly.”

Tim blinks.

Then, softly, “You were worried.”

You glare.

His mouth curves. “About me.”

“I am leaving.”

“You came over here.”

“To assess damage.”

“To me.”

“You are very irritating.”

“I know.”

You do not leave.

Instead, you reach out with one hand and wipe blood from his cheek, carefully, with the edge of your thumb.

Tim goes still.

Your extra hands hover uselessly at your sides, unsure what to do with the size of this feeling.

“You helped me,” you say.

His voice is quiet. “You let me.”

That is the thing, isn’t it?

You did. You let him into the chaos. Into the sensory overload. Into the place where your body becomes too much even for you.

And he did not make you feel like a malfunction. He made you feel understood.

The first kiss happens later.

Not on the battlefield. Not in the Cave.

In the lab, because of course it does. Tim Drake’s romance settings are either rooftops near death or fluorescent-lit workspaces at 2 a.m. There is no middle ground.

You find him asleep at the workbench, face pillowed on his arms, surrounded by parts for your new comm attachment.

A small note sits beside him.

Ask before installing. Do not be weird. They are a person, not a project.

You read it three times.

Something inside your chest hurts. Softly.

You touch his shoulder. “Tim.”

He jerks awake, blinking. “I’m up. I’m—oh. Hi.”

“You wrote a note.”

His gaze drops. His face goes red. “That was private.”

“It had my name on it.”

“Not the point.”

You lean closer. “You remind yourself?”

Tim looks away. “Sometimes I get too focused. I don’t want to mess it up again.”

“You have not.”

“I did.”

“Yes,” you say. “But not recently.”

A small smile tugs at his mouth. “That’s the most romantic performance review I’ve ever gotten.”

“I am being sincere.”

“I know.”

You study him now. The tired lines beneath his eyes. The ink on his fingers. The careful hope he tries to hide because hope is embarrassing and dangerous and terribly human.

“You stare when you care,” you say.

Tim goes still.

Then nods once. “Yeah.”

“I thought you stared because you were judging me.”

“I know.”

“Were you?”

His answer comes immediately. “At first, I was assessing risk.”

Your antennae lower.

Tim continues. “Then I was trying to fix what I’d done wrong.” He looks at you. “Then I just couldn’t stop looking at you.”

Oh.

You should have something sharp to say. Something defensive. Something safe.

Instead, you reach for him.

Slowly, so he can move away.

He does not.

Your hand touches his jaw.

His breath catches.

“You may kiss me,” you say, because subtlety is for people with fewer emotional problems.

Tim’s brain visibly crashes. “I—what?”

“You may kiss me.”

“I can?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Preferably.”

“Oh. Okay. Great. Yes. I can do that.”

“You are rambling.”

“I’m aware.”

Then he kisses you.

Gently. So gently it almost hurts. Like he is asking with every second. He remembers the first time he got too close without permission and is determined never to make that mistake again.

You answer by wrapping one arm around his waist. Then another around his shoulders. Then another hand against the back of his neck.

Tim makes a soft sound against your mouth.

You immediately decide you need to hear it again.

The romance after that is quiet and ridiculous and painfully sweet.

Tim still studies you. He always will.

But now he asks.

“Can I look at your antennae response to this frequency?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

A pause.

“…Can I show you the frequency first?”

“Yes.”

Progress.

He builds things for you constantly.

Better armour. Softer clothes with room for all your arms. A sensory-safe corner in the Cave with dim lights and warm surfaces. A custom keyboard so you can use all your hands at once, which turns out to be a mistake because now you type faster than him and he is personally offended.

“You’re cheating,” he says.

“I have superior equipment.”

“You have four extra hands.”

“Yes. Superior equipment.”

He is so proud it makes him stupid.

You catch him watching you work one day, chin in hand, eyes soft and unfocused. “You are staring.”

“I know.”

“You are not going to deny it?”

“No.”

“Why?”

His smile is small. “Because you said I could look.”

Your antennae curl so violently that one of them bumps a hanging cable.

Tim tries not to laugh. Fails.

You threaten him with bodily relocation.

He says, “Flirting.”

You hate how Jason was right about that word.

Tim loves you in details. That is his language.

Your favourite lighting settings saved in every system. Nutrient bars reformulated so they no longer taste like “compressed dirt with ambition.” A program that tracks your stress signals and quietly asks if you want reduced sensory input instead of announcing it to the whole Cave like a betrayal. His hand slipping into yours beneath the briefing table when someone says something that makes you feel too alien.

One hand at first. Then another. Then another, until he is holding three of your hands and pretending this is normal.

It becomes normal.

That is what gets you. Not the grand gestures.

The normalcy.

Tim no longer makes you feel like a strange thing in the room. He makes room strange enough to fit you.

And when you tell him that, one night, he goes quiet.

You are sitting together on a rooftop, Gotham humming below, your antennae tilted toward him because his heartbeat is familiar now. Comforting.

“You made the Cave less hostile,” you say.

Tim looks over. “I tried.”

“You made Gotham less hostile.”

His expression softens. “I don’t think I can take credit for all of Gotham.”

“You may take partial credit.”

“Generous.”

You look at him. “You made yourself safe.”

That hits him hardest.

You can tell.

Tim looks down at your joined hands. All three of them.

“I wanted to be,” he says.

You lean in and press your forehead to his.

Careful. Gentle.

“Tim.”

“Yeah?”

“You may study me.”

His breath catches.

You continue, because now you understand the difference.

“But not as a subject.”

He squeezes your hands.

“No,” he says. “Never again.”

“As what, then?”

Tim looks at you.

Really looks.

Like you are not an experiment. Not a threat. Not a problem to solve.

Like you are the question he is grateful to spend his life answering.

“As someone I love,” he says.

Your spiracles flutter.

Your antennae curl.

Tim smiles, barely. “Good reaction?”

You kiss him before he gets too smug.

But he gets smug anyway.

Because he is Tim. Because he knows you now. Because you let him.

And because somewhere between bad first impressions, secret inventions, late-night apologies, and all those stolen glances you mistook for judgment, Tim Drake stopped studying the alien in Gotham and started learning how to love you properly.

damian wayne, 4.7k

childhood friends to lovers, slow burn, childhood displacement, reader being called a monster, being hunted/feared in Gotham, child violence, trauma from violent upbringings, LOA parallels, alien cultural conditioning against love/attachment, fear of abandonment, p

You and Damian meet when you are both thirteen. Which is, arguably, the worst possible age for anyone to meet anyone.

Thirteen is all teeth. All rage. All unfinished bone and pride too big for the body holding it.

Damian is thirteen and already thinks he has survived enough to be considered ancient. You are thirteen and not human enough for Gotham to know what to call you.

So Gotham calls you a monster.

That is how Batman first hears about you. Not through a Justice League alert. Not through some clean, official extraterrestrial report. Nothing useful. Nothing kind.

Just whispers.

Something crawling along rooftops. Something with too many arms. Something with huge black eyes that reflect headlights in the alleys. Something with antennae and no nose and skin that breathes through tiny fluttering holes.

Something strong enough to tear open dumpsters and bend street signs and throw grown men into brick walls when they get too close.

A monster haunting the East End. A monster stealing food. A monster attacking first.

Batman finds you in the rain. Of course it is raining. Gotham has a flair for dramatic cruelty.

You are crouched in an alley behind a closed bodega, soaked through, all your arms wrapped around yourself except one hand clutching a dented can of food you cannot open correctly. Your antennae are flat. Your spiracles are fluttering too fast. Your huge eyes catch the white slits of Batman’s cowl and go sharp with panic.

He takes one step closer.

You launch at him. No warning. No hesitation. Just thirteen years old and already convinced that everything reaching for you means harm.

You hit him hard enough to crack the brick behind him.

Batman does not hit you back.

That enrages you.

You swipe at him with claws or fingers or whatever your strange young body has made of fear. You snarl. You try to bite. You move with ugly, desperate force, all instinct, all hunger, all the violence your people taught you was survival.

Batman pins you eventually.

Carefully. Too carefully.

You scream at him to fight properly.

He looks down at you, rain sliding off the black shape of him, and sees what Gotham refused to see.

Not a monster.

A child. A starving, terrified, furious child with too many arms and nowhere to go.

And Bruce Wayne, because his heart is a haunted house with every light still on, brings you home.

Damian hates this immediately. Naturally.

He stands in the Batcave when Bruce brings you in, arms crossed, chin lifted, green eyes sharp with judgment.

You stare back from behind Bruce, antennae angled aggressively forward.

Damian looks you up and down. “What is that?”

You hiss.

Bruce says, “Damian.”

Damian’s mouth curls. “It tried to bite you.”

“I can hear you,” you snap.

“Excellent. Then you can understand when I say your technique is abysmal.”

You lunge. Damian lunges too.

Bruce catches both of you by the backs of your shirts like two feral cats.

That is the beginning.

Not pretty. Not soft. Not some instant soul-deep understanding.

You and Damian begin as a war crime in progress.

You fight constantly. Not always physically, though, yeah, also physically. A lot.

You fight over training space. Over food. Over who gets to stand closer to Batman during briefings. Over whether your claws count as weapons. Over whether Damian’s sword is “compensating for having only two arms.”

That one gets you thrown into a mat.

Worth it.

Damian calls you undisciplined. You call him small. He calls you beast. You call him blade-child.

He pretends not to like that.

He absolutely likes that.

But the strange thing is, beneath all the insults and sparring and mutual threats of bodily harm, you understand each other.

Not fully. Not yet.

But enough.

You both know what it is to be young and already trained for violence. You both know what it is to have adults look at your hands and see future blood. You both know that being called dangerous feels better than being called helpless.

At thirteen, you are bloodthirsty in a way that frightens the others.

You do not understand why Batman pulls his punches. You do not understand why criminals get to keep breathing after hurting people. You do not understand mercy as anything but a tactical delay.

Damian understands that. 

That is why he hates you at first. Because looking at you is like looking at a version of himself no one has polished yet.

Raw. Hungry. Certain.

When you say, “Killing him would be easier,” Damian does not flinch.

He says, “Obviously.”

Bruce’s head turns.

Damian continues, scowling, “But Father becomes intolerable when we suggest efficient solutions.”

Bruce closes his eyes.

You decide Damian is the only sane human in the Cave.

This is concerning for everyone.

Bruce works hard with you. So does Alfred. Quietly, gently, with warm food and soft towels and no sudden movements. Duke is kind first. Dick is friendly first. Tim is curious and then apologetic. Jason calls you Bug within forty-eight hours and gets hissed at for his trouble.

But Damian is the one who grows beside you.

Not above you. Not around you.

Beside.

You are both thirteen when Bruce starts building Gotham into something like a home for you.

He cannot send you back to your planet. No signal. No safe route. No surviving contact he can verify. Nothing. You are alone in a city that thinks you are something from a nightmare.

So Bruce does what Bruce does. He makes systems.

A room in the Manor with dim lights because bright ones hurt your eyes. Custom clothing with space for all your arms. Filters for your spiracles because Gotham air is basically soup with crime in it. Training routines to help you control your strength.

Strict patrol rules.

No killing. No maiming unless absolutely necessary. No eating evidence.

That one has to be added after an incident. Damian laughs about it for weeks.

You throw a pillow at him with enough force to dent the wall.

Alfred bans both of you from “unstructured cushion warfare.”

You grow up in the Manor like some strange, sharp shadow.

At first, you do not believe it can be home.mHome is not stone halls and ancient portraits and a butler who somehow knows your preferred food temperature. Home is not Batman watching you through training footage and pretending it is not worry. Home is not Damian sitting beside you in silence after you nearly kill someone during patrol and saying, without looking at you:

“You stopped.”

You glare at your hands. “I wanted not to.”

“I know.”

“It felt weak.”

Damian is quiet.

Then he says, “It is not weakness to deny what trained you.”

You look at him.

He looks furious, like tenderness has personally insulted his bloodline. But he means it.

That is when friendship begins for real.

Not loud. Not named.

It creeps in like ivy through stone.

Damian starts saving you a seat in the Cave. You start taking the patrol route closest to his, even when no one assigns you there. He learns how your antennae move when you are overwhelmed. You learn that Damian’s silence has different textures: angry silence, thinking silence, injured silence, sad silence.

He teaches you blade forms. You teach him how to fight someone with more than four possible attack angles.

He mocks your footwork. You mock his height. He tells you humans do not moult, and you stop asking, reluctantly.

You tell him your people view attachment as a liability, a psychological weakness, because love makes warriors hesitate.

Damian looks away. “The League believed similarly.”

“Were they correct?”

He is quiet for a long time. Then he says, “They were afraid.”

You remember that.

Years pass. Not smoothly.

Nothing with either of you is ever smooth.

At fourteen, you nearly kill a trafficker who threatens a child. Damian is the one who stops you, stepping between you and the man with his sword lowered, not raised.

“You will regret this,” he says.

“I will not.”

“You will.”

“I am not you.”

His face shutters.

“No,” he says. “You are not. So learn from me and spare yourself the humiliation.”

You hate him for that for three days.

Then you sit beside him in the library without speaking.

He slides half his snack toward you. You eat it.

Forgiveness, apparently.

At fifteen, Damian loses control during a spar and cuts too deep.

You do not flinch from the blood.

He does.

His hands shake afterward.

You cover the wound with one of your palms and say, “It is shallow.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you afraid?”

He snaps, “I am not afraid.”

You stare. Your antennae tilt. “You are lying.”

He storms out.

Later that night, you find him in the animal enclosure with Titus curled against his legs.

You sit nearby.

Do not touch him. Do not demand words.

Eventually, Damian says, “I do not want to become what I was made to be.”

You think of your own hands around a criminal’s throat. Your own pulse singing for blood. “Neither do I.”

He looks at you then.

Something between you settles.

At sixteen, Gotham stops calling you a monster as often.

Not because Gotham becomes kind. Gotham is still Gotham. It would hiss at a sunrise if it looked too cheerful.

But people start recognising you.

The many-armed figure who lifts cars off trapped civilians. The dark-eyed alien who carries children out of burning buildings. The terrifying thing in the alley that only hurts people who hurt others first.

You still scare them. But sometimes they say thank you.

The first time a little girl gives you a sticker after you save her from a collapsed fire escape, you stare at it like it is a holy object.

Damian sees.

He says, “It is crooked.”

You almost hit him.

But later, when the sticker starts peeling off your armour, he seals it in a protective case without telling you.

You find out anyway.

You always do.

At seventeen, you and Damian are inseparable in a way everyone notices, and no one is brave enough to comment on without protective gear.

Dick calls you “the murder twins.”

Bruce says, “Do not call them that.”

Jason says, “No, no, let him cook.”

You and Damian, in perfect unison, say, “Do not.”

The Cave goes silent.

Steph whispers, “Oh my god, they’re synced.”

Damian turns red at the ears.

You have no idea why that matters. Yet.

Because for you, Damian has always just been Damian.

Your first friend. Your fiercest rival.

The person who knows what your silence means. The person who will stand close when strangers stare, not in front of you like you are weak, but beside you like the world is simply wrong.

The person who has watched you become less bloodthirsty and somehow never made you feel less strong for it.

You do not realise when friendship starts changing.

Damian does. Of course he does. He notices everything he wishes he would not.

It happens slowly, which he finds humiliating.

At eighteen, he starts noticing the way your antennae tilt toward his voice. The way you relax when he enters a room. The way your extra hands, so dangerous in combat, are absurdly careful when adjusting a bandage on his wrist.

The way you say his name differently than anyone else.

Not “Wayne.” Not “Robin.” Not “Damian” like a challenge.

Damian like home.

It is unbearable.

He tries ignoring it. This fails immediately.

He tries training more. Also fails, because you train with him.

He tries being colder. You notice within six hours and corner him in the greenhouse.

“You are displeased with me.”

“No.”

“You are lying.”

“I am busy.”

“You have sharpened the same blade for twenty-seven minutes.”

Damian looks down. The blade is, admittedly, very sharp.

You step closer, antennae angled with concern. “Did I do something wrong?”

And that is what destroys him.

Not your strength. Not your face. Not the frightening beauty of you under the greenhouse glass, all alien angles and midnight eyes and too many hands held uncertainly near your chest.

Your concern.

The fact that you, who once attacked Batman in an alley because the world taught you everything was a threat, now worry that you might have hurt him.

Damian looks at you and thinks I love you.

The thought is so clear that he nearly drops the sword.

He does not tell you. Obviously.

Damian Wayne is many things, but emotionally straightforward is not one of them. He treats feelings like assassination contracts: privately researched, extensively planned, and preferably executed with no witnesses.

So he plans. For months.

He writes and rewrites what he will say. Not in public, never that. Somewhere private. Somewhere meaningful. The old rooftop where you both first patrolled alone together. Or the library where you sat after your first real fight. Or the greenhouse, maybe, because it is warm there and you like warmth even though you pretend not to.

He thinks about telling you everything. That when you arrived in Gotham, he saw a beast because he was still too much a blade to recognise another child.

That growing up beside you taught him there was no honour in becoming what others designed.

That every time you chose not to kill, it made him believe he could keep choosing too.

That you are not his weakness. You are the proof that tenderness did not ruin him.

He wants to tell you that. He wants to say it perfectly.

Which is stupid, because you have never needed perfection from him. You have only ever needed true.

Still, he plans.

He writes one version that is too formal. One that is too short. One that sounds like a military commendation and makes him briefly consider throwing himself into the harbour.

He asks Dick, indirectly, hypothetically, how one might confess romantic feelings to a long-standing companion without “creating unnecessary emotional spectacle.”

Dick cries.

Damian leaves immediately.

He asks Bruce nothing, because he would rather die.

He almost asks Alfred, but Alfred looks at him once over tea and says, “Perhaps sincerity may accomplish what strategy cannot, Master Damian.”

Damian realises with horror that Alfred already knows.

So does everyone, probably. Including Titus.

Humiliating.

Meanwhile, you remain oblivious in the most devastating way possible.

You spar with him. Sit beside him. Steal food from his plate. Ask him to fix the clasp on your armour because your lower right hand cannot reach it at the proper angle. Fall asleep in the library chair beside his while pretending you were “resting your eyes for tactical reasons.”

Damian watches you sleep sometimes.

Not in a creepy way. In the way a person watches something precious and remembers the world is not gentle.

Your antennae twitch faintly in dreams. Your spiracles flutter slow and even. Your arms, once always ready to strike, rest loose around you.

He wants to touch your hand. He does not.

Not yet.

He will tell you first. He will do this properly.

Then the transmission comes.

It is late. The Cave is blue and quiet. Rain taps against the stone above. Bruce is at the computer. Tim is half-asleep over a tablet. Damian is reviewing mission footage beside you, pretending not to be distracted by the way your shoulder brushes his.

An alert cuts through the Cave. Unknown extraterrestrial frequency.

Your antennae snap upright.

Every head turns.

Bruce stiffens. Tim is suddenly fully awake.

The message comes through broken at first. Static. Distortion. A language you have not heard in years.

Then a face appears.

Not human. Not familiar to the others. But familiar enough to make you stop breathing through every spiracle at once.

A relative. Alive. Older than you remember. Worn by distance and war and time.

They say your name.

Not the way humans say it.

The real shape of it. The one Gotham never learned.

Damian feels the air leave his lungs.

Your relative speaks of routes reopened. Of conflict settled enough for passage. Of survivors. Of home.

Home.

The word lands in the Cave like a blade.

They say you can return. Not immediately, perhaps. Not without arrangements. But soon. Safely. Finally.

You can come home.

Everyone looks at you.

Damian does not. He cannot.

Because devastation is already moving through him, cold and precise, before you even make a decision.

That is the humiliating part.

You have not said yes. You have not said anything.

And Damian is already grieving.

It is irrational. He knows this.

You deserve the choice. You deserve answers. You deserve your planet, your people, your history. You were taken from it too young and dropped into Gotham’s teeth. Of course you should want to know. Of course you should want to go.

Damian knows all of that. Knowing does nothing.

His planned confession turns to ash in his chest. Every sentence he had built, every careful word, every memory he wanted to lay before you like proof—gone. Useless. Selfish.

How can he tell you now? How can he say stay when no one should ever have had to make Gotham home because the universe gave them no other option? How can he ask to be chosen over a world you thought you lost?

He cannot.

So he says nothing.

The transmission ends with promises of further contact.

The Cave stays silent.

You are still staring at the blank screen. Your antennae are trembling.

Damian sees that and hates himself for thinking of his own heart first.

Bruce speaks gently. “We’ll verify everything before any decisions are made.”

You nod once, but you look far away. Farther than Damian can follow.

He leaves before anyone can look at him.

You find him in the greenhouse.

Of course you do. You always find him.

He is standing among the plants, hands clasped behind his back so tightly his knuckles ache. The air is warm and damp. You like it here because it is easier on your breathing. He likes it because you do.

You step inside quietly for someone with your strength. “Damian.”

He closes his eyes.

There it is. Home and wound in one word.

“You should be in the Cave,” he says.

“So should you.”

“I am not the one receiving life-altering transmissions.”

“No,” you say. “You are the one fleeing after them.”

His jaw tightens. “I do not flee.”

“You strategically retreated emotionally.”

He hates that you learned humour from his siblings. He hates more that it almost makes him smile.

Almost.

You move closer. “Are you angry?”

“No.”

“Do not lie to me.”

He turns then, sharper than he intends. “What would you have me say?”

You still.

He regrets the tone immediately.

But the wound is open now.

Damian looks at you—at the person who came to Gotham with blood on your hands and fear in your teeth, who grew beside him, who learned mercy with him, who became woven so deeply into his life that he does not know where friendship ends and breathing begins.

His voice drops. “You have been given back something you thought impossible. I would not insult you by being angry.”

Your antennae lower. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I can give.”

“Why?”

Because I love you. Because I have loved you for longer than I knew what to call it.

Because I planned to tell you. Because I was a coward and wanted the words to be perfect.

Because now anything I say might sound like a chain.

Because if you leave, I do not know what Gotham looks like without you in it.

Because if you stay only for me, I will never forgive myself.

Damian says none of that.

He says, “Because this is your choice.”

You look at him for a long moment.

Your face is still difficult for most people to read.

Not for Damian. Never for Damian.

“You are upset before I have chosen,” you say quietly.

His silence betrays him.

Your spiracles flutter. “You think I will leave.”

“I think,” Damian says carefully, “that you have the right to.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“No.”

“You think I will leave,” you repeat.

Damian looks away. “Yes.”

There. A small, ugly truth.

You absorb it like a blow.

“I have lived here for seven years.”

“I know.”

“You are here.”

“I know.”

“Bruce is here. Alfred. The others. Gotham.”

“I know.”

Your antennae tremble, anger or hurt or both. “Then why do you assume I would choose elsewhere?”

Damian’s composure cracks. “Because it was stolen from you!”

The words hit the glass walls and come back softer.

He breathes once.

Then again.

“You were a child,” he says, quieter. “Alone. Hunted through alleys by people who called you monster. Father did what he could, but Gotham was never supposed to be your cage.”

You stare at him.

He continues because stopping now would be worse. “I will not make myself another reason you feel obligated to stay.”

Your whole body stills.

Something changes in your eyes.

“Is that what you think you are?”

Damian says nothing.

You step closer. All your arms are loose at your sides. No threat. No defense.

Just you.

“An obligation?”

His voice turns rough. “I do not know what I am to you anymore.”

The confession is not the one he planned.

It is not elegant. Not dignified. It has no structure, no carefully chosen memories, no perfect transition from childhood to now.

It is just the truth, bleeding through his teeth.

You look at him as if he has finally spoken a language you understand. “Damian.”

He cannot bear how soft your voice is.

“I had a plan,” he says suddenly.

You blink. “What?”

“A confession.”

Your antennae lift.

He looks mortified, but there is no retreat now.

“I planned it for months. It was going to be…” He scowls. “Better than this.”

You stare.

Then, very softly, “A confession of what?”

He gives you an incredulous look despite the fact that he is actively dying.

“Do not make me say it badly.”

“I want you to say it honestly.”

That shuts him up.

Because of course.

Of course that is what you would ask.

Not perfect.

True.

Damian looks at you. Really looks. At the huge dark eyes Gotham once feared. The antennae he has learned like punctuation. The extra arms that once reached first for violence and now reach for him when nightmares come. The person who grew beside him, not away. The person who knows every ugly part of his history and stayed.

“I love you,” he says.

Simple. Severe.

Terrifying.

Your spiracles stop.

Damian’s heart beats once. Twice.

Then your antennae curl inward, overwhelmed.

Oh.

He knows that response. He has known it for years.

Hope hurts worse than dread.

“I did not want to tell you like this,” he adds quickly, because panic apparently makes him verbose. “I did not want it to influence your decision. I still do not. If you choose to return, I will not stop you. I will not ask you to stay out of guilt or sentiment or—”

You kiss him.

It is not graceful. You have too many arms and he is standing too rigidly and one of your antennae bumps his cheek and Damian makes a sound so startled it would get him mocked for the next decade if anyone heard it.

But then he kisses you back.

And all the years between you seem to fold inward.

Every sparring match. Every insult. Every rooftop silence. Every time one of you chose not to kill because the other was watching. Every moment of growing away from blood together.

Your hands come up slowly, carefully. One at his shoulder. One at his jaw. One at his waist. Others hovering like you are afraid to hold too much.

Damian catches one of them and presses it against his chest.

His heart is beating fast. You can feel it.

He lets you.

When you pull back, his forehead rests against yours, careful of your antennae.

“You are terrible at timing,” you whisper.

His laugh is almost soundless. “Yes.”

“I was not going to leave without you knowing.”

His eyes close. Pain and relief move across his face, too quick for anyone else.

Not for you.

“You still might leave,” he says.

“I might visit.”

His eyes open.

You tilt your head.

“I might need to see where I came from.”

“You should.”

“I might need answers.”

“Yes.”

“I might need to know whether any part of me still belongs there.”

Damian’s throat works. “And if it does?”

You look at him like he is being particularly foolish. “Then I will have more than one home.”

He goes still.

You touch his face with two careful hands.

“Damian. Gotham became my home because Bruce gave me shelter. Because Alfred fed me. Because the others tolerated me.”

“Tolerated is generous.”

“Yes,” you say. “But you became home because you grew with me.”

His expression breaks. Just slightly.

Enough.

“You were there when I was monstrous,” you say.

“You were a child.”

“I wanted blood.”

“So did I.”

“We became different.”

“Yes.”

“Together.”

Damian cannot speak.

So he kisses you instead.

This one is better.

Still trembling. Still raw.

But better. Like a promise made by two people who had to unlearn violence one choice at a time.

After that, nothing is magically solved.

The relative contacts again. Bruce verifies.

Tim researches possible travel routes and contingency plans until his eyes look haunted. Dick tries to be supportive and only cries twice.

Jason says, “If they give you trouble on your home planet, call me. I’ll start an interstellar incident.”

Steph designs a “space trip but make it fashion” packing list.

Cass hugs you silently for a long time. Duke tells you that having more than one home does not make either one less real.

And Damian?

Damian stays close.

Not clinging. Never that.

But close.

He helps you prepare questions for your relative. He researches customs he can find, even the sparse ones. He trains with you when you are restless. He sits beside you when you are quiet.

Sometimes he still looks devastated.

You call him on it.

“You are grieving me while I am standing here.”

He looks annoyed. “I am preparing.”

“For what?”

“Every possibility.”

You take his hand in yours.

Then another.

Then another.

“You cannot prepare for all of them.”

“I can try.”

“You can stay with me while I decide.”

His fingers close around yours.

“That,” he says quietly, “I can do.”

And maybe that is what love becomes for both of you.

Not a cage. Not a chain. Not the weakness your people warned you about. Not the sentimentality the League tried to carve out of him.

Love is not what keeps you from choosing.

Love is what makes choice possible.

You may go to your planet. You may come back.

You may learn that home is stranger than memory. You may learn that Gotham, ugly and rain-soaked and impossible, has sunk too deep into you to ever fully leave.

But Damian will not ask you to stay. He will only stand beside you, jaw tight, heart open in the only way he knows how, and trust that the years between you matter.

That he matters. That what you built together is not so fragile it can be undone by distance.

And when you tell him, one night under the greenhouse glass, “I love you too,” he looks away like the words are too bright.

“You should have said that sooner,” he mutters.

“You confessed during an emotional crisis.”

“I had a better version planned.”

“I liked this one.”

“It was undignified.”

“It was honest.”

He sighs.

You lean closer, antennae brushing his cheek. “Also, you made a small noise when I kissed you.”

His face goes scarlet. “I did not.”

“You did.”

“You are mistaken.”

“I have excellent hearing.”

“I will deny it under interrogation.”

You smile. It is still not a human expression.

Damian finds it beautiful anyway.

Then he takes your face in his hands, careful and certain, and kisses you like he is not asking you to stay. Like he is telling you that wherever you go, whatever you find, whatever name your first world calls you by—

You have already been loved here.

Not as a monster. Not as a weapon. Not as a lost thing Gotham claimed because it was too stubborn to let go.

As you.

His oldest rival. His closest friend.