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Day two of tailing Todd.
After last night’s ridiculous little stunt with the message made of fire, of all things, tonight, Damian isn’t actually trying to hide the fact that he’s following Todd around again. In fact, the following itself is entirely unnecessary for reconnaissance purposes. Damian already knows where Todd is going to end up once he ceases trying fruitlessly to lose his tail.
It’s true that Damian’s hacking skills are slightly less advanced than Drake’s or Gordon’s — he can admit his own few weaknesses — but he could not ask either for assistance in this matter without giving away the wealth of blackmail fodder he has on everyone, including themselves, and be subsequently forced to sit through a lecture on ‘privacy,’ as though such a thing truly exists. Not that it matters anyway. Perhaps one of them could have found a bit more than Damian has; however, the single incoming message Damian was able to intercept from Todd’s phone — unfortunately, but not debilitatingly, sans contact information — was still more than enough intel.
[Unknown]: Sounds great, baby. I’ll wait for you at yours. Can’t wait to see you tonight!! 😘❤️
Initial observations:
‘Baby.’ An affectionate hypocorism. Implies intimacy in an established relationship between persons. Usually issued by a parent to their child or mutually between lovers. Todd’s natural parents are both deceased; it is highly unlikely he would be receiving textual communication from either. Damian’s father, Todd’s adopted paternal figure, is entirely unknown to utilize such endearments or sobriquets, nor does he employ the use of excessive exclamation marks or emotive pictographs in his written communication.
Conclusion: Todd is in a romantic relationship.
Additionally: he will be meeting his lover at his apartment tonight.
Reconnaissance mission: successful.
Therefore, the following of Todd tonight is only to serve the purpose of allowing him to know that he is being followed. Damian could, of course, simply go to Todd’s apartment and wait for him there, but knowing his second-eldest sometimes-brother, clueing Todd in to his tail will only prove to clinch his meeting tonight with his paramour. The Red Hood on patrol could become distracted by a lead, a case, or a stumbled-upon active crime. But a Jason Todd whose secrets are being challenged by his ‘little’ brother? That is a man who will stubbornly stick to his prearranged meeting if only to spite Damian.
Foolish. Predictable.
Easy.
Damian breaks off of the shadowing stage of his mission the moment he discerns that Todd is preparing to return home. The purpose is to arrive before him, to be there when Todd greets his lover.
It works (of course it does). Damian has time to rappel down from the roof of Todd’s building and position himself between the window of the hallway outside of his apartment and the first window that leads into the apartment itself, all before Todd gets home.
Damian is perched on the outside sill of the hallway window when he hears keys jangling in the lock on Todd’s door.
The door opens while the keys are still inside the deadbolt, a bit sooner, by Damian’s count, than it should have opened if Todd were the one doing it. His paramour must have been waiting near the door and opened it before he completed the action. There is a split second where Todd’s paramour may have spoken a greeting, perhaps even revealing their identity to Damian if he is familiar with their voice, but the chance is taken away when Todd speaks first.
“Shh,” he says to whoever is inside his home, “don’t say anything. I have a tiny tail.”
And then, as Damian curls his lip disdainfully at being described as ‘tiny,’ he hears the telltale sounds of kissing. Disgusting, wet, smacking sounds. A hum, probably Todd’s, given the depth of the vocal pitch. More inane kissing noises.
Dear god, how long are Todd and his lover going to stand in the doorway of his home, locking lips? How juvenile. How truly embarrassing for them both.
But then—
Oh?
A murmured voice that is distinctly not Todd’s sounds out too quietly for Damian to hear the words spoken. However, he can hear the voice’s pitch.
Perhaps that hum did not come from Todd after all.
The voice Damian hears is deep. Very deep. Far too deep to be a woman’s.
Conclusion: Todd’s lover is a man.
Is that Todd’s secret? That he is not heterosexual?
That is...utterly useless to Damian. It is one thing to blackmail a person with their deep, dark secrets, but it is entirely another to threaten them with a forcible outing. Damian is a strategist, not a monster. He would never do such a thing. To anyone. Even Todd.
The two men inside the building finally move into the apartment and shut the door, which is Damian’s cue to swing over to the first window of Todd’s home. Both men are determinedly continuing to speak in low voices that Damian cannot fully hear. An annoying, but not altogether unexpected factor. Damian is prepared to settle in and wait until Todd and his lover either presume that he has left, or become so enraptured by their abhorrent mouth rituals that they forget about him entirely, therefore returning to a baseline volume of conversation and, with luck, revealing the identity of Todd’s lover to Damian with no more investigation necessary.
But then—but then!
Todd’s lover laughs.
Loudly. Delightedly.
Familiarly.
Damian knows that laugh.
The only laugh Damian knows better than that one is Jon’s. That laugh, in there, is the first one he heard inside the house that he now considers his home. That laugh is the one he heard over and over through his comm when he was first learning what it meant to be Robin. The one he’s heard over and over through his comm ever since.
That laugh is the laugh that taught Damian how to laugh.
“Grayson?!”
Damian did not even intend to speak, let alone release whatever kind of childish shriek that just was. Grayson’s utterly familiar laugh is cut off with a strange sort of ‘hrk!’ and Todd makes one of his patented growling noises.
And then, all at once, the curtains of the window beside which Damian is suspended are yanked open, and Todd’s face appears through the glass, glaring at Damian while he lifts open the window itself.
Damian meets Todd’s angry stare with his own admittedly-dumbfounded one. They remain there, nose to nose, for a long, drawn-out moment. And then Todd sighs.
“Get in here, you pint-sized stalker,” Todd orders, shaking his head. He disappears again from the window, leaving room for Damian to climb inside.
Grayson is sitting upright on the sofa when Damian lands in the kitchen area of Todd’s studio apartment. He’s half-turned around to look at Damian over his arm that’s resting on the sofa’s back. His mussed hair, however, clearly betrays the fact that he was most certainly lying down on said sofa mere moments ago. Conversely, Todd’s differently-mussed hair suggests the recent presence of hands in it, gripping and pulling on it. Both of their mouths and noses are pink from the kissing Damian already deduced they were partaking in, but it’s only Todd’s throat that is currently sporting a quickly-darkening splotch of red that Damian knows to be the beginnings of what one might call a ‘hickey.’ Additionally, while Grayson’s eyes are sharp, Todd’s, though irate, are markedly glazed-over. Even still, as he’s glowering at Damian, arms and ankles crossed and leaning against the sofa back.
All of this already tells Damian far too much about his eldest brothers’ sexual proclivities and preferences. Things he truly did not ever desire to know about either of them, thankyouverymuch.
“Hey, kiddo,” Grayson says as Damian straightens. “So, this is kinda awkward, huh?”
“You two are sleeping together,” Damian replies bluntly. He sees no point in circling the issue.
Todd snorts mirthlessly. By contrast, Grayson winces.
“Jason and I are dating, Dami,” he says in that voice he uses when he thinks Damian needs to be handled gently, like a child. “We’re— We like each other a lot, kiddo. We have real feelings for each other. It’s not just— Jay and I are in a monogamous, romantic relationship.”
“And we’re sleeping together,” Todd adds. He’s smirking, trying to look defiant and angry, but he’s an idiot if he thinks Damian missed the way his eyes softened while Grayson was redundantly and repeatedly describing the feelings they have for each other.
Grayson smacks Todd on the arm for his comment, but the look they exchange after is full of fondness.
Revolting.
“This is revolting.”
The two men at the sofa turn their attention back toward Damian at his very true and necessary comment.
Grayson sighs.
“Okay, c’mere, Dami,” he says and pats the sofa next to him. “Let’s talk for a sec, all right?”
Damian allows this, marching over to circle the sofa and flounce down beside Grayson. Todd moves out of his way as he goes and crosses the other way, eventually taking his own seat on the armchair perpendicular to Grayson.
Grayson reaches out to Todd as he sits — almost unthinkingly, it seems — and Todd just...takes his hand. The two of them now holding hands as though this kind of casually affectionate gesture could possibly be easy for someone as guarded and emotionally constipated as Todd. But he...he does not seem to be struggling. Todd is holding Grayson’s hand in his own living room, right in front of Damian, and he appears to be perfectly fine with it.
Todd is terrible with emotions. When did this kind of thing become comfortable for him?
“Since you followed Jay all the way down here,” Grayson begins when all are seated, “I’m gonna guess you have some questions?”
“I was...merely attempting to ascertain further weaknesses of Todd’s,” Damian says. He does not, unfortunately, have the wherewithal at the moment to spontaneously produce a convincing excuse for his investigation. The truth will have to suffice. “I lack adequate blackmail material for him.”
It’s Todd who laughs this time. His laugh sounds genuine. It seems to stem from legitimate feelings of mirth. Grayson’s mouth twitches, and Damian sees the way he squeezes Todd’s hand indulgently, but his attention remains on Damian.
“Okay, well, we’re gonna talk about that sometime in the near future. But for now—you kinda bit off more than you could chew, didn’t you? I know that face, kiddo, that’s the face you make when you’re struggling to understand something. Let us help. Ask whatever you want.”
Damian frowns. He does not appreciate being read so accurately by his brother.
His brother who is also a little bit like his second father. Not that Damian would ever tell him that.
But it’s unsettling, the feeling of being so easily known and understood by his facial expressions alone. Grayson is not Damian’s enemy. Damian knows this. But that knowledge does nothing to erase the feeling that he has given his enemy the advantage. That he’s been caught on his back foot.
Damian very much dislikes this feeling.
So, though he knows it lacks kid gloves, Damian does not hesitate to ask the very first question that comes to his mind.
“Why on earth would you attach yourself to Todd?!”
Todd actually laughs again, this one a kind of surprised yawp, even as Grayson’s eyes darken.
“Believe me, short stack,” Todd says, “I ask myself the same question every goddamn day.”
“That’s not funny.” Grayson glances at Todd and then back at Damian. “I really care about Jay, Damian. He’s really, really good for me.”
Todd stops laughing abruptly, his expression turning to one that is openly adoring. He looks with vulnerably awestruck eyes at Grayson while Grayson continues without pause.
“I want to attach myself to him. I want him in my life, and not just as a friend, or as some kind of pseudo-brother. We have a long history, Jay and I, that no one else in this family has, or even understands. I didn’t realize until recently how strong my feelings for him are, but recognizing and accepting those feelings, and then moving forward into a relationship with Jason—those have been the best decisions I think I’ve ever made in my whole life. He makes me so stupidly happy, kiddo. That’s why.”
Todd looks absolutely overwhelmed, just staring at Grayson with wide eyes and parted lips. He lifts Grayson’s hand in his and kisses the back of it. In response, Grayson turns to him, smiles with softness in his eyes, and once again squeezes Todd’s hand.
It’s...not...altogether...completely repulsive.
But—no! No, this will not do!
“You could do so much better,” Damian argues with Grayson, ignoring the way Todd’s romantic expression shutters with his words. Ignoring Todd altogether. “You have courted Gordon, a genius, and Starfire, Tamaranean royalty and an exceptional talent in combat, among many others, worthy and unworthy of your affections alike. You could have any number of the greatest individuals on the planet, and knowing your attractions are not limited to cisgender female persons opens your options up further to—”
“Damian,” Grayson warns, low in his throat
But Damian is not finished and will not be interrupted. “There is no reason why you should stoop so low to settle for—!”
“Little man, you should stop,” Todd cuts in like a warning sign, like he’s trying to shield Damian from a blow, damn him, “Dick’s not—”
“Todd isn’t good enough—!”
“Stop it!” Grayson barks, so fierce — so truly enraged — that Jason’s eyes widen drastically, and Damian’s mouth snaps shut.
It’s very, very rare for Grayson to use that tone with Damian. And when he does, Damian knows at once that he has just made a grave error. That he is, as Drake would say, ‘in deep shit.’
“Damian, you are sitting in Jason’s home,” Grayson says with that fuming articulation he uses that reminds Damian how he can be terrifying. “On his furniture. In front of his boyfriend. You followed him here without his consent and forcibly learned something about him that he was not ready for you to know. You will not sit there and disrespect him like this, do you hear me?”
Damian blinks, startled into silence by his brother’s uncharacteristically stern admonishment.
“Do you hear me, Damian?” Grayson repeats, and Damian nods as quickly as he can manage.
“Yes. I do.”
“Jason does not deserve any of what you just said. Not even a little, Damian. He is a good, kind, incredible man who has been nothing but patient with you tonight while you’ve done nothing but repeatedly violate his personal boundaries and berate him. You owe him an apology, and a pretty big one, at that.”
“Dick—”
“I apologize, Todd.”
If possible, Todd looks even more surprised over Damian’s apology than he did over Dick leaping to his defense.
If he’s honest, Damian is quite surprised, himself. Contrition is not...natural for Damian. He was taught, for the entirety of his life before meeting his father, that remorse is unbefitting the grandson of the great Ra’s al Ghul. Guilt and regret are beneath the son of Talia al Ghul, the son of the Batman. He has been...learning. Since coming here. That the things his mother taught him are not always the truth. That his father not only feels remorse, but feels it so greatly that it threatens, at times, to crush him. That Grayson, too, staggers under the weight of his contrition. That everyone in this family experiences that in some way.
There have been many, many times when Damian has seen this and vehemently, viscerally rejected it. What use — what good — is a feeling that can have that kind of control over you? That can burden you and weigh you down and make you less effective? Less efficient? Less skilled? Damian has watched his own father and the brother he loves like a father bury themselves under guilt, and he has thought them fools.
But...
Richard’s words...they have weight. They feel to have settled inside Damian’s stomach, scratching at the walls with every breath he takes.
He knows this feeling, as infrequently as he allows himself to feel it.
He knows it is called guilt.
Damian swallows. “I should not have—Richard is right. What I said was uncalled for. I am...sorry. Jason.”
Todd — Jason — blinks a few times. “Thanks, squirt,” he says, softly, after a moment. “We’re good.”
Richard turns to look over at Jason again. There’s something in his eyes that Damian thinks he has seen there before, albeit only in one very specific circumstance. Even more surprising, that same something in Richard’s eyes is reflected right back at him in Jason’s. And Damian realizes that he’s seen that something in Jason’s eyes, too, in only one even more specific circumstance.
Jason has always — since Damian first knew him — looked at Richard, and only Richard, just like this.
Richard, on the other hand, has looked like this at Gordon in the past. He looked like this at Starfire, once. And at Shawn Tsang. And at Beatrice Bennett. And—
Oh.
Well...that is...highly interesting.
“This is very serious, isn’t it?” Damian asks abruptly as the occurrence sparks in his mind.
Richard huffs a short laugh and shakes his head a little. Not a denial, but a gentle kind of incredulity.
“Yes, Dami, it is,” he says. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Damian frowns again, trying to work out how to say out loud what he’s realized in his mind. “I mean—you do not just—” He makes a noise in his frustration, and then it just spills out. “You love him.”
Jason reels back, alarmed, almost afraid. His lips part again, his eyebrows shoot up, and his head snaps to stare at Richard with something like desperation.
But Richard does not look alarmed. He does not look caught, despite Damian’s...truthfully rather indelicate handling of his own surprise.
No, Richard just smiles ruefully at Damian and says, “I haven’t told him that yet, kiddo.”
“You what?!” Jason gasps.
And that is when Richard finally turns to Jason once more and fixes him with a smile that contains many multitudes of devotion and of tenderness. It’s so much, that it almost makes Damian’s heart ache. Jason looks like he might simply blow away.
Richard takes Jason’s other hand so that he is holding both in both of his and says, “I love you, Jason. I love you a whole hell of a lot.”
Jason’s mouth closes. And opens again. And repeats this process two or three more times before he seems to remember how to speak.
“You do?” he whispers.
“Yeah, Little Wing.”
Damian watches a very slow smile take over Jason’s entire face. Unmistakable tears are shining in his eyes as he breathes out, “I love you, too, Dickie. So much, it hurts.”
With that, Jason surges out of his seat to kiss Richard hard on the mouth. Richard laughs as he kisses back.
And Damian, surprisingly, is not mad about this. He is not even repulsed by it. In fact, he feels a kind of...warmth in his chest. If he didn’t know himself better, he would almost say he felt...happy, watching the two members of his family arguably most in need of one person to call their own and love them unconditionally, do that for each other.
Almost.
When he stops kissing Jason, Richard presses their foreheads together. Both of them seem to have all but forgotten Damian’s existence. He reminds them of it by clearing his throat.
“May I ask...,” he begins when Richard turns to him and Jason turns the other way to wipe his tears (as though that hides him from Damian’s view), “how did this begin?”
Richard grins. He seems very happy that Damian asked. “A little over two months ago, I was feeling really crummy about this fight I had with Tim,” he begins, pulling at Jason until the giant, exceptionally muscular, adult man relents and sits on his lap like a child. “I was really upset with myself for not being able to be there for Tim and help people who ask me for it—”
“He was brooding on a balcony about not being omnipotent,” Jason interrupts. Richard pinches his thigh and he yelps.
“—and Jay came out and talked to me. He said he was just hiding from Bruce—”
“I was just hiding from Bruce.”
“—but he still stuck around just to make me feel better.”
Jason rolls his eyes. “Well, I mean,” he grumbles, “you were all sad and shit.”
“Grayson is deeply pathetic when he is sad,” Damian agrees solemnly.
Jason laughs triumphantly. Richard narrows his eyes at them both.
“Anyway,” Richard continues, pointed, “that conversation really meant a lot to me. Jay was sweet to me when I needed that, and he said a lot of stuff that really made a difference in how I’ve been seeing things ever since. I asked him if he wanted to hang out sometime, and he said yes.”
“Again, I’m crazy in love with you, Dickie, of course I wanted to hang out.”
“Jay came over to my place, and we ordered pizza and put on a movie that we didn’t end up watching because we were just talking about...everything. And at some point, I looked up, and...Jay just looked so handsome, all relaxed and laughing and joking around. It was so nice to see him like that. One thing led to another...”
“Okay, don’t traumatize the kid,” Jason mutters, blushing tomato-red under his freckles.
“Yes, that is enough,” Damian agrees.
Richard’s mouth pops open in mock offense. “I was only going to say that we ended up kissing!”
“That is not how we ended up,” Jason argues, twisting around and pulling his knee up so that he’s sitting sideways on Richard’s lap. He slings his arm back behind Richard’s head and starts playing with his still-mussed hair, the both of them smirking at each other. “That is how we...started.”
Richard’s smirk grows into a wicked grin, disturbingly similar to that strange green man on the Christmas-themed cartoon he always forces Damian to watch with him, the one with the...the Whats, or the Wheres, or...whatever. It’s a disturbing look.
“Technically,” he tells Jason in a drawl that Damian would rather not be hearing, “kissing is also how we ended.”
“Enough!” Damian cries, throwing his hands over his ears. “That is enough!”
Richard cackles. “See, Dami? This is why you don’t eavesdrop on people’s dates.”
“In their apartments,” Jason adds.
“On their sofas.”
“GRAYSON!!!”
Richard dissolves into loud, exuberant laughter, tossing his head back against the sofa. Jason watches him, a huge and nakedly happy smile on his face. And Damian—
Damian smiles, as well.
Perhaps seeing two of his brothers happier than he’s ever known them to be...is not so bad a thing, after all.
“Well,” Damian says after a moment, pushing himself up to his feet, “I suppose I will leave you to your date, then.”
“Hey, squirt?”
Damian turns back at Jason’s call, eyebrows raised to show he is listening.
“We’re not quite ready to bring the whole family into this,” Jason tells him. “That’s a lotta people breathing down our necks about something we’ve only just started to figure out ourselves. Could you, uh...?”
“I will not share your secret,” Damian vows. “You have my word.”
The trace amounts of tension left in Jason’s shoulders sloughs off of him, and he sinks further down into Richard’s arms.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Richard says, soft.
Not sure what else to say, Damian nods his response. His hand goes to unlatching his grappler, and he’s about to make his way back to the window he entered through, when Jason’s voice stops him again.
“You wanna stick around a while?”
“What?” Damian asks, his brow furrowing. “I thought— You said you were having a date....”
Jason shrugs. “Yeah, but you’re here already. It’s not like we had fancy plans. I just was gonna make us some dinner and we were gonna watch TV, you could stick around for that. If you want.”
“I am not a fool, Todd,” Damian says, quirking an eyebrow. “I know you also had plans to—”
“Okay, now I’m about to be traumatized!” Richard cries before Damian can finish his sentence. “But really, Dami, don’t worry about that. Hang out with us.”
Damian shifts his weight back and forth, deliberating. On the one hand, he still feels some measure of that stomach-scratching guilt inside of him. He does not wish to continue to impede his brothers’ date. On the other, both are asking him to stay. And it does sound nice...
“May I borrow a shirt to wear with my tights?” he asks eventually. “It can be difficult to lounge in my Robin suit.”
“Oh boy,” Jason laughs, climbing off Richard’s lap despite the hands that grab at him to keep him there, “I can relate, kid.”
“See, this is why our Robin costume was the best one,” Richard says while Jason crosses to his dresser and sifts through the carefully-folded clothes in one of the drawers.
“That is...demonstrably untrue,” Damian retorts.
“It was!” Richard insists, throwing his arms up into the air like a muppet. “Comfy, lightweight, non-restrictive—”
“You failed to design yourself trousers!”
“Even better!” Richard says. “What could be better than the fresh night air on your bare legs as you triple somersault through the sky? It was freedom, baby. It was iconic!”
“It contained no protective body armor!” Damian cries.
“Didn’t need it, kid,” Richard says with a wink, then clicks his tongue and points a one-handed finger-gun at Damian’s disdain of him.
“Maybe you didn’t,” Jason says, rejoining them in the living room area and dropping a folded t-shirt onto Damian’s head as he passes him, momentarily blinding him. “I could’ve used some.”
Damian pulls the t-shirt — an age-softened, faded black with a Red Hood Bat emblazoned across the chest — off his head in time to see Richard pout showily up at Jason in a way that Damian suspects is hiding true emotions behind a joke, both arms reaching out to pull Jason — willingly, this time — back onto his lap.
“You also weren’t the one who had to wear that abomination on the goddamn Matterhorn,” Jason adds before the joke about his own death has time to settle like ash and ruin the evening. “In winter. In Switzerland.”
“Yeah, baby, I know where the Matterhorn is.”
“Sadist,” Jason accuses without heat.
“You could’ve designed your own costume like Tim did.”
“No, I couldn’t’ve! I was supposed to be you! Although how the old man thought he was pulling that off when you left fully-grown and tits a-blazin’, and then I came along, thirteen, malnourished, and barely four feet tall, just rarin’ to go.”
“Well, at least we were both...cowboys. Apparently.”
“Technically, by those metaphors, only you would have been a cowboy. I would’ve been a horse.”
“Ah, well, we’ve discovered the problem, then.”
Jason flicks Richard in the center of his forehead, making him laugh again.
“I never want to hear the phrase ‘tits a-blazing’ again in my life,” Damian intones, pretending he’s not enjoying this.
Jason snorts. “Well, then, you better not come over here all that often, small fry.”
Eventually, after a fair amount of arguing, banter, and shenanigans, Damian sits installed on Todd’s surprisingly comfortable sofa, swathed in a massive but surprisingly cozy Red Hood t-shirt, belly full of surprisingly delicious home-cooked food, having a surprisingly pleasant time watching television in his second-eldest brother’s home. Jason is, himself, slumped down on the opposite side of the couch, lying in a curled ball across the chaise there like a cat. Richard is between them, stretched across the length of the sofa, his head over by Jason and Jason’s head pillowed on his shoulder, one leg dangling off the couch while the other, bent at the knee, is serving as Damian’s leaning post. Richard has his fingers in Jason’s hair, absently stroking it, and Jason looks very much like Alfred the Cat does when Damian is giving him head scritches.
It’s been some time since any of them have spoken, caught up as they’ve become in the darkness of the room and the stories playing out in flickering light before them. Damian is, indeed, starting to drift off a bit, lulled as he is by the dimness, the warmth of Richard’s body heat, and his own full belly.
That is, until he hears the whispering.
“So,” Jason whispers to Richard, “you love me, do you?”
Richard hums a happy noise and whispers back to Jason, “I do. I love you a lot, sweetheart. Like, ridiculous amounts of love for this just being our two-month anniversary. But...rumor has it you love me, too.”
“Dickie...you got no fuckin’ idea.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me more.”
“Later, love. After the munchkin goes home.”
“That good, huh?”
“I repeat, prettybird: you got no idea.”
Richard makes another hum, this one deeper. “C’mere,” he murmurs.
“I’m right here,” Jason deadpans. Considering he is using Richard as a pillow at the moment, Damian tends to agree with him.
“Well,” Richard insists playfully, “come here.”
“Can’t get any closer than this, genius.”
Damian hears Richard let out a little, breathy laugh that gets cut off very quickly. He glances over to see him and Jason kissing again, sweetly and quietly, this time. Quietly being the key factor that keeps Damian from punching Richard in the leg and stopping them both.
Jason and Richard stop watching the television at this point. Instead, they seem to get lost in their own dimension in space and time. They kiss, yes, but that’s not all. Sometimes they’re just staring at each other with dumb, happy smiles on their faces. Sometimes they whisper to each other, though Damian stops listening to what they say. In fact, Damian does something he has only ever comfortably done in his own home and, occasionally, in Richard’s home.
He lets himself fall asleep.
Damian doesn’t know how much time has passed when he wakes to Richard gently rubbing his arm and saying his name.
“C’mon, kiddo, time to get you home.”
Damian blinks and looks around. Jason is at the kitchen sink, loading up the dishwasher with the last of their dinner plates before he presumably runs it tonight. Damian’s Robin suit — sans the tights, of course, which he is still wearing — is folded on the couch beside him.
“What time is it?” he croaks.
“Almost two,” Richard tells him. “I’m gonna drive you back to the manor, okay? Jason found a hoodie you can wear so you don’t get cold on my bike. It should fit you like a ballgown. Come on, let’s go.”
“No, no,” Damian says. He’s fully awake now, and he is more than capable of returning home himself. Besides, he did hear it when Richard said that this was his and Jason’s two-month anniversary (despite that being a ridiculous concept considering the very word, ‘anniversary’ clearly denotes an annual event — annus plus versus, Grayson, dear god). “Remain with Todd. I arrived here on my own, I can return on my own.”
“You sure?” Richard asks. He glances up to where Jason is standing, his back to them both, humming some tune as he wipes down his counters.
“Yes, Richard. I am sure.”
Damian changes quickly into his Robin suit and slips out the window again, dodging a bone-crushing hug from Richard and shooting him and Jason a grin and a wave before he launches his grappler and swings away.
But before he takes off toward his home, Damian doubles back, perching on the sill of a different window in Todd’s apartment and listening.
Jason and Richard are talking to each other about small, simple things. Domestic chatter about whether Richard will be able to sleep if the dishwasher is running, when Jason needs to be up in the morning, and whether or not they can ‘play hooky’ tomorrow and remain in bed late into the day. Little things. Unimportant. And yet, Damian listens.
He can’t say exactly why he does it. It’s not as though he’s concerned for their safety like this. Not as though there is any new information to glean, any more insight to gain.
Perhaps...
A small, honest voice inside Damian’s head posits a theory: perhaps he finds comfort in this.
In the way that Richard and Jason have found in each other, somehow, a kind of peaceful resting place. In the way that Jason, in particular, seems to be truly happy in this relationship, not getting in his own way or sabotaging his own joy. Perhaps there’s something in seeing Jason Todd loving someone and allowing them to love him, too, that gives Damian...hope.
Hope for himself. That maybe someday, he can have that, too.
The talk inside has gotten quieter. Lower, and more suggestive. Richard begins to suggest he might enjoy doing something with or to Jason’s thighs that Damian does not want to hear the elaboration to. It’s time to go.
Damian shoots his grappler again, and this time, he lets it propel him off into the night sky. A laugh echoes in his ears — the only laugh he knows better than Grayson’s — and as Damian flies through the city, he smiles.
And he hopes.
✨