Chapter Text
“Jon,” Damian says, sounding frustrated. He knocks on the door again. “Don’t cry."
“I’m not,” Jon lies, wiping at his face. “Go away.”
“God have patience,” Damian mutters, and there’s a shuffling noise in the hallway before things go quiet. Jon swallows, his face hot and wet with tears, and burrows deeper into his blankets, feeling wrung out and miserable. He’s curled up against the wall and sniffling into Ted-El when Damian kicks through the window and lands on the foot of the bed.
“Jesus, farm boy,” Damian says, straightening. “Not crying much?”
“It’s not my fault!” Jon protests, clutching Ted-El closer to his chest. “I’m not talking to you, you — you — person who kisses other people."
“I didn’t kiss her,” Damian barks, hot and embarrassed and a little angry, the way he always gets when he makes Jon cry. To be fair, he’d looked as horrified about it as Jon had felt, but it’s the principle of the thing that Jon finds so wounding. “It was two seconds at best, and there wasn't even — God, I can't believe I'm actually explaining this."
“You let her," Jon retorts, scrubbing at his eyes. “You had all that training from your grandfather and you just sat there and you let this — this strange girl — ”
“You can’t even insult well,” Damian sighs.
“ — just walk up and — and do that to you,” Jon concludes, feeling himself grow more and more upset with each syllable. Damian had broken his fist on Jon’s face the first time Jon had tried holding his hand; Jon had cried about it for days. He can’t believe this stranger just gets to walk through the gates he’d spent months keying open. "And now you're going to start acting like Kon and hiding in the kitchens with Tim all the time only it's worse because she's not even Tim, she's some stranger who's going to be your new best friend and I —"
"Ugh," Damian says, and hauls Jon in by the collar and kisses him, loud and annoyed and with an impatient smack, right on the mouth.
Jon stares, too shocked to say anything.
“See — it's not even a big deal,” Damian says, aggravated, crossing his arms. “So stop freaking out about it, bozo.”
Later, when they’d dragged Jon’s blankets down into the living room and settled on the sofa, Damian had looked over at Jon halfway through a soap commercial and said, speculative, “What were you so worried about, anyway — I pushed her into a trash can.”
Jon ducks, and feels his face go very hot.
“I,” he whispers, and bites his lip hard enough to hurt.
After a second, Damian sighs and pulls Jon into him. “So incredibly stupid,” Jon hears Damian say into his hair, and he mumbles, “Not,” but only half-heartedly. They fall asleep like that, Jon’s head pillowed on Damian’s arm and Damian warm around his back, and Jon listens to Damian’s steady heartbeat and remembers, drowsily, how it had skipped — the curious absence of a single stroke right as their lips had met.