Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Dami,” a timid voice says. It’s not Ri–Grayson. Grayson had left a while ago. He wasn’t sure how long ago but enough time had passed that Damian had surmised he wasn’t coming back today. “Dami,” it says again, and his eyes finally decide to focus, settling on black hair and blue eyes and freckles. He’s a little tanner than usual, he muses from where his head lolls and his body lays. 

“Hm?” he manages.

“Are you okay?” Jon’s voice cracks.

“Hm.”

“Sorry, stupid question.” Why does he even bother apologizing? His eyes go unfocused as he hears the sound of the sink running, then water dripping unevenly. “Can I–wipe you off?” He doesn’t bother answering. His opinion doesn’t matter anyways. “I’m going to wipe you off,” Jon finally decides. 

The cloth is cool. Jon starts at his face, which Damian takes note of as strange. Wouldn’t it be better to clean the worst parts first? He’s gentle, softly swiping down Damian’s neck and torso, hesitating at his hips and groin. Jon pauses, then starts on Damian’s legs, again stopping when he reaches his groin. 

“Can I…is this…okay?” He stares into blue eyes and finds that they’re shining softly, reminding him of pools of koi and plecos. Neither of them moves. They just breathe slowly, the absence of tension between them confusing. 

When it becomes apparent Jon needs some kind of affirmation, Damian finds himself nodding, a slight movement but one Jon recognizes nonetheless and tenderly begins to swipe at the more sensitive parts of Damian, the more bruised parts. Jon cringes anytime Damian flinches, so he goes limp, letting him maneuver him however he needed until he was clean. 

Damian watches as worn jeans leave his vision, shuffling and hinges creaking sounding from somewhere else in the room. He’s dressed quite carefully in a set of his green silk pajamas, less western and more like the things Mother had chosen for him, but still not exactly right by his standards. Grayson never dressed him in these anymore, since he preferred seeing Damian dwarfed in his own shirts and boxers, dressed in clothes he would never be able to fill out, short and stunted as he was. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, like he’s confessing a secret. Something shines through the air, dropping onto Jon’s pants. He thinks of pearls, silvery and lustrous, both white and black. Remembers a folktale about a creature that could cry the beads, could sit rich in despair. “I wish I—” His breath hitches wetly in a way that reminds Damian of someone choking, or perhaps drowning. There’s a creak when he finally breathes again. “I’m sorry,” he just says again, shaking with it. “Can I touch you?” Damian hums in the affirmative and Jon drops onto the bed, quietly apologizing for getting his bed dirty. A foot presses against his calves and he’s glad it’s just covered in a sock. He hopes Jon left his shoes on the windowsill. 

An arm, so small, so thin and spindly, drops over his side and pulls him into a warm, stuttering chest. Jon is still soft, he thinks, unmarred and undefined by experience. Innocent. His hair grows wet, scalp tickled by panting breaths and incoherent murmurs and whispered apologies. Damian doesn’t understand the apologies or the crying or any of it, but he supposes he never did. He supposes he never will. 

As they lay there, Damian grows increasingly concerned. What does Jon want from him? Jon’s too soft to want Damian to commit a crime for him, like blackmail or murder. He couldn’t be asking for something simple like tutoring or training by cleaning Damian up. It was too much. He wanted something more.

Maybe, Damian muses, feeling the warm press of the young body next to him, maybe he’s like Grayson. 

Damian shifts minutely, drawing Jon closer to him. He tenses, then relaxes into the touch shaking renewed by their closeness. 

“Dami,” he whispers. “Dami, Dami, Dami, Dami–Dami—” Good. Damian slides a hand up and over Jon’s side, mirroring the boy’s own arm. He starts with a slow rhythm of circles on his back, his touch slowing the hiccuping, gasping breaths Jon was letting out. “I love you so much,” he says, and Damian almost stops, almost believes him. His hand slows.

Then he remembers Grayson.

His other hand presses to Jon’s stomach, shifting in a motion that’s making him squirm at the touch, before sliding lower.

He’s not hard.

Why is he–he’s not hard? 

Damian's brain stops.

Jon immediately yelps and pushes him away, jumping so far from Damian that he tumbles off the edge of his bed, slamming to the ground with a sound that’s almost comical, sitting up and staring him in the eyes where he lay. 

“I’m—” Jon stops. “I’m sorry! I’m not–interested in you that way! Uh, thank you though? I’m so sorry. I don’t–thanks, um, bye!” he says, and then scrambles out the window, accidentally knocking his shoes out as he wiggles his way outside, hurriedly snapping the pane closed with an apology as it slams too hard before he dives down to grab his sneakers and bolt. 

What the fuck.

Chapter Text

Jon doesn’t know that Clark hears him whimper in his sleep, hears him cry and sob and hyperventilate, hears him wake up and gasp until he can quiet himself and lay there, never making any sort of move to come find his parents. There’s something going on, he knows. He can see his child’s discomfort, his anxiety. There’s something squirming within him, something tense and terse and tangled, something choking him. 

Jon never tells him.

Slowly Clark grows ever more worried. A nightmare or two could just be him stressing about something at school, or from watching too many scary movies. But after a week, and then two, it never eased. 

He didn’t really want to push his son about it, but he was worried, so he poked a little over breakfast. 

“Hey kiddo,” he says, a little softer than usual, like he’s talking to a scared kitten. “Has something been going on recently?” Jon visibly tenses.

“Uhhh, what do you mean, Dad? Everything’s fine!” 

“You sure? You’ve seemed pretty stressed recently.”

“I don’t–um–it’s just school! Math test this Friday! Stressful stuff. Algebra.”

“And last week?” Jon pales. That’s new. What could have him so high-strung?

“Uh, English!”

“And the week before?”

“Science! Yep, lots of tests. Testing season. Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“Ok,” Clark finds himself saying, picking up something with his fork just because he feels like he has to. “But if you ever need to talk about something, I’ll be here for you.” 

Jon looks down at his plate, then looks back up at Clark for a moment, hesitating. 

“Thanks, Dad,” he says, quiet and genuine.

Maybe Clark’s worrying too much.

Dami looks worse this time, more out of it. His eyes don’t focus on Jon at all when he slips in through the window, but maybe he’s just used to this already. There’s…tears dripping slowly down Dami’s cheeks, darkening his sheets. 

“Dami?” he calls. No response. “Dami,” he says again, walking closer. Nothing. Slowly, he presses a hand to his cheek, warm and wet with the quickly cooling tears. There’s a moment of stillness, then Jon’s head spins and suddenly he’s on the bed, Dami straddling him, a knife pressed against his neck. “Hi,” he finds himself saying, breathless. Dami’s eyes are focused on him at least. So, that’s good he guesses. 

“Kent,” Dami says, posture relaxing as he slips the knife back wherever it came from. Jon blinks and frowns. Guess they’re back to last names again. 

“Hi,” he says again, mind blank. “Are you okay?”

“It smells.” 

“What?” 

“It smells,” Dami says simply, sharply, like it’s the most obvious thing on the planet. A beat as Jon just stares up at him, waiting for him to elaborate. “Stale. Something—” He trails off into a frustrated noise. “Polyester left to sit for too long.” Jon blinks at him. 

“Okay? How do I fix it?”

“It won’t go away.”

“It won’t?”

“I can’t—I’ve tried everything,” and for some reason Dami sounds so much more hurt than he ever has, voice breaking. 

“I’m sorry.” It’s short, but Dami’s face crinkles in a new way, in a way he had never seen before. 

“It’s fine.” 

“It’s not fine, Dami. If it bothers you, I wanna fix it. Maybe we could, uh, go to my house? I don’t know…I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“Okay.”

…

“I wouldn’t be opposed to…going to your—” In that moment, Jon beams at him. “Stop that. Wait here, I have to get dressed,” he says without real malice, already walking away.

It’s only a bit later that they’re finally in Jon’s room, and Dami is asking him to turn around while he changes, slipping on the green pjs that became his the first time he slept here. Jon hums, looking out at the moon. He’s happy. Not as much as he usually is with Dami, since he can still feel the hurt radiating off of him, but it’s the happiest he thinks he’s been since he found out. 

There’s a warm hand against his, then he’s pulled towards the bed and they both fall in, pressed side to side, hands still together. 

“I love you,” Jon says, and means it. Dami hums, and it’s almost as good as hearing it back. He smiles harder, wiggling impossibly closer. It’s warm. Dami’s warm. It’s so nice to hear Dami’s breath and heart right next to him instead of miles away. It’s so nice to feel him, soft and gentle and safe. This is so nice.

He’s almost asleep when Dami whispers something he probably isn’t supposed to hear.

“Sleep well, habibi.”

Chapter Text

Clark knew Jon had come back with Damian that night. It wasn’t hard. They weren’t exactly trying to be quiet enough to fool superhuman ears, what with the walking around normally and humming. It wasn’t uncommon for Damian to sneak in on his own, surprising even Jon, so it’s not hard to factor him into their breakfast plans, especially given how Jon’s appetite has been ravenous for the past few months. Growing Kryptonian, he supposes. Although, it does make him wonder how Ma and Pa managed him. 

He pads into the kitchen behind Jon, wearing the same pjs he always does, hand entwined with Jon’s. Ah. Has something changed?

“Morning, son.” 

“Hi Dad.” A yawn.

“Morning, Damian.” The boy stands up straighter and looks him straight in the eye. Clark feels like he’s talking to a soldier.

“Good Morning, Mr. Kent.” 

“Is toad in the hole okay?”

“Toad in the hole!” Jon runs to get the maple syrup and probably a few jams. 

“It is satisfactory,” Damian says, stiff and stilted in that way he seems to reset to sometimes. It reminds Clark of when he met him. “Where is Mrs. Lane?” Clark blinks.

“Sleeping off a migraine, why?”

“Just curious.”  

Clark finds himself awkwardly standing in front of the oven, peering inside periodically. 

“Are you and Jon—” He clears his throat. “I mean, did anything happen–has something changed?” Damian blinks at him slowly. It reminds him of a gray cat his parents had taken in the last time he saw them. 

“We are not dating.” 

“Oh. Good.” Wait— “Not that it would’ve been bad if you were, I just–it’s also good that you’re not? I’m sorry, that doesn’t make very much sense, now does it son.” Damian, as strong and as steely as ever, just stares at him with the same neutral face. He sighs.

“I am not offended.” Thank goodness. “I do not believe your son is interested in me that way.”

“Maybe. I don’t know if he’s sure himself,” he says, and smiles to himself. “He talks about you a lot—”

“DAD!” Jon wails from the back door, face red and arms full with all manner of preserves and jams and jellies and marmalades. The syrup is balanced precariously on top. Clark huffs at him, sure that he used his heel or elbow to turn the doorknob. “Don’t tell Dami that!” He whines and grumbles as he shuffles in, kicking the door closed with his heel. 

“Please don’t slam the door.”

“Sorry, I thought I did it lightly…”

“That one is tricky, even for me. The frame is a bit strange. You’ll get it eventually.”

“Ughhhh, I want to get it nowwwwww.” The oven beeps.

“Clear the kitchen, kids. Hot pan coming through.” 

Soon they have the table set, casserole dish steaming in the center, two more in the cooling oven, scrambled eggs on every plate, and all the jars Jon brought in from the cellar scattered around, each with a clean butter knife balanced on top. A proper meal for two Kryptonians and two humans. Damian sits down next to Jon, still arguing about something with a furrow in his brow that Clark knows isn’t deep enough to be real. 

Lois slips quietly into her seat across from them and Clark plops down next to her. Beneath the table, their hands intertwine and her head drops to his shoulder, hair soft where it brushes against his neck. She hums minutely. 

“Hi, Honey,” he whispers. 

“Hrmmm,” she groans back, still waking up. He smiles and kisses her hair, smelling something so very Lois from her. 

Clark chuckles, says his prayers, and digs in. 

Jon’s house is a little domestic for his tastes. Damian isn’t used to family breakfasts anymore, not since Grayson gave up on trying to piece everyone back together. It’s only been a few years and yet Damian feels like an entirely different person. He remembers all of it. He remembers just how angry and hurt he was. He can’t imagine being that person now. He can’t imagine—

“Dami?”

Jon’s looking at him. 

“Yes?”

“You got spacey.” Jon’s parents are quietly chatting across from them, seemingly still absorbed in their own conversation. 

“I apologize.”

“I didn’t mean-it’s okay. You’re allowed to do…whatever. I’m just, uh, worried about you, I guess.” Oh. 

“Thank you,” he says, because it feels like the right thing to say. 

“Your welcome?” Maybe not. “What do you want on your toad in the hole?”

“Orange marmalade. And olallieberry jam.”

“Here.” 

“I’m not a child, you don’t have to hand everything to me.”

“We’re both children…”

“You might be, but I, the great Damian Al-Ghul Wayne, am above such things, and as such—”

“Eat your stupid jam!” 

Chapter Text

Jon helps. He helps when Damian is tired or distant or small or bleeding out on patrol. He’s a lot more…lively during that last one. Damian remembers rain and thinking about the chance of infection and smelling Jon’s hair while he holds him. Jon tells him later what he doesn’t remember—Grayson coming down to the cave in a tizzy, pacing as Pennyworth stitched him up. 

He remembers the day after. Remembers paint and mint and rice paper and oil. Remembers dogs and grass and the smell of the blanket Jon insists they use each time he’s over. Damian doesn’t think of it as his blanket. Not when it stays stashed in his closet. No, that’s Jon’s blanket. 

He remembers falling asleep. 

There’s something lonely about it. Even though Jon’s been around more often (and Grayson less, his mind supplies quietly), he can’t help but feel alone. Even as he lays here, the bed stretches out beneath him until it feels like a hard floor, not hot or cold or anything, neutral, unassuming. Like a detail he had forgotten. It looks black. It looks black and he can’t see anything, even two inches in front of his face. He’s not underground or in a box or even a coffin but he can’t see anything because he’s pretty sure light doesn’t even exist here. 

There’s a hand at his face. It’s gentle, but it—there’s something about it. Something that makes him feel like he’s a kid again, like he’s so very young and small and helpless as it brushes against his cheeks and presses against his lips, insisting on something Damian can’t even fathom right now. It slips into his mouth, somehow, and slides softly along his tongue in a way that tastes like metal and nausea and a headache. 

His eye hurts. His eye hurts and his nose feels numb and burns in a way that makes him dizzy, and his eye feels like there’s a little railroad spike pound, pound, pounding at the back of it, pressing ever deeper and threatening to burst through the front. 

Something blue crosses his vision and he tenses, ready for something but he can’t place what, can’t tell what exactly he’s supposed to be expecting. It makes his scars itch. His back feels like it’s on fire, but he can’t move and he can feel his spine melting within him, feel his skin blistering under the heat, can feel it all dripping off and out of him, can feel himself seeping onto the ground, amassing into nothing but a puddle of viscera and char as the floor expands and stretches out forever underneath him. 

He feels unimportant. He’s got the sense that Jon has left him and Richard has left him and that Mother and Grandfather left him long ago and that Father never stood beside him in the first place. He feels like he’s just going to be left here like this, a puddle to be washed away by the rain and left in the gutters until he decomposes into nothing. 

But isn’t he already nothing right here? Wasn’t he already nothing all along? 

He would laugh, if he could, but he’s not sure he’s even able to breathe anymore. So he sits, in the black, and waits for the rain. 

Chapter Text

“Hey Baby Bat,” Grayson says, slipping into the bed behind him. “Didja have a good playdate?” Playdate? What—Damian’s eyes shoot open, landing squarely on Jon beside him. He looks peaceful, face slack and mouth open and drooling, hand gently clasping Damian’s own. 

“Yes,” he finds himself answering, unsure of what Grayson means. 

“Yeah?” Hands encircle his waist. “What did you do?”

“We…painted except Jon isn’t very good at it, so I’m not so sure it could all be called painting.” A warm back presses against his own. 

“And then?”

“Alfred,” he takes a moment to squirm under wandering hands, “made lunch—spring rolls since I had said I missed them last week and egg rolls because Jon cannot appreciate the spice profile of—” Grayson tugs meanly at his nipple and he gasps instead of continuing. 

“So weak, baby. Keep going.” He finds himself squeezing Jon’s hand before he starts back up again. 

“Umn,” he groans, mind foggy. “We—Titus was happy to have someone else to play with. Ace too. And then, Jon suggested we watch Transformers? It was interesting. Juvenile.” Grayson huffs in his ear, breaths tickling his neck. Something hot and insistent pokes at his backside while a hand snakes its way down his pants and settles on his groin. 

Jon shuffles minutely next to him. 

“Grayson—I can’t—we can’t—please.”

“Why not, Sweetheart?”

“Jon—”

“—is a heavy sleeper.”

“Grayson. I don’t want—”

“Oh but Baby Bat, something,” a squeeze of that venomous hand, “tells me that you do.” There’s a snake nibbling at his skin, sucking at it and coiling itself around him. He whines, shifting away as best he can. “Honey, honey, stay still, I can’t do this if you keep wiggling.”

Lips and teeth return to his neck, tugging on already darkening bruises. He can’t help but feel he’s going to be eaten. 

He squeezes Jon’s hand again. Jon squeezes back. 

What? 

He squeezes once more, ignoring whatever shuffling is happening behind him. A short squeeze back as Grayson slips his pants down his legs. 

Oh. 

Jon taps something softly into his hand. Want help? Something warm and scaly brushes against Damian’s thigh and presses his legs apart. 

He taps back. 

No. 

Another squeeze to his hand that makes his throat feel like it’s closing, makes the ocean in his head spill out his ears and into his mouth, sloshing so doggedly against the sides of his lungs, filling him up until there’s nowhere to go but out. 

There’s something in him, something sparking a pleasant feeling in him, something so sickeningly pretty that it makes him want to crush it. It feels nauseatingly sweet. Decadent. And yet, all he can taste is salt and sand. 

Something bigger presses into him and rocks him with the waves, kissing up from his shoulder to his temple, promising a putrid little thing he cannot name and does not want, licking at the sea that seeps from his eyes, sliding against him until it’s satisfied. 

He’s blinded. Not by the sun, but by lightning that clings to his skin and creeps up his spine, brands him with its own mark without asking, and fries his brain until he’s nothing at all. 

Chapter Text

When he wakes again, Grayson is gone. His memories are fuzzy. The warmth he recalls next to him has disappeared, and all he can feel is the static as it seeps into his vision and blurs it, creeps up and slides against his skin like filthy sludge, makes him feel like he’s floating and drowning and like he doesn’t exist at all. He feels lonely, he thinks for the first time. So lonely that he himself was seeping out in a pathetic attempt to comfort himself, a facsimile of companionship. Green eyes gleam in the blur before him. There’s nothing behind them.

“–i?” His eyes shift over towards something black and beige and blue, moving slowly in the blur. The green has fled from him. “Dami.” It’s Jon.

Damian’s eyes refuse to focus. That’s fine. He can manage.

“Dami.” He realizes he still hasn’t answered him.

“—” His throat croaks, and he finds it’s dry, so dry that he can’t get a word out.

“Oh! Water!” Jon says, and zips away. Then, he’s being sat up, and the blurry world gets more colorful, and a cold glass is pressed to his lips. There’s a moment where he thinks he’s supposed to take it from Jon’s hands, but he forgets to, so Jon slowly tips it up, and Damian sits, being taken care of like a child, or worse, an invalid, as cool, sweet water drips down his throat and he stares into the obscured shape of Jon’s eyes. 

The glass is empty and Damian is sated. Jon clinks it down on his bedside table, and crawls up onto the bed, folding his legs until they’re pressed against Damian’s, their two bodies leaning against the headboard, symmetrical and still and sitting side by side, arms limp and relaxed. His shoulder is warm, and where his fingers brush against Damian’s it feels almost like feathers, like a bird. 

This is soft, he thinks. And then his mind wanders off into nothing at all, blank as he feels Jon breathe beside him, listens minutely to the small shifts of clothing as his chest rises and falls, noticing just how much louder, how much more present Jon allows himself to be. He’s allowed to make noise, to take up space. Damian forgot how to do that. He thinks he still doesn’t know. 

A long stretch of time passes, and then Damian’s mind wanders back into his body. He’s still in the same position, vision still blurry, eyes still trained on the door and the foot of his bed. Jon is still beside him, but his head is leaned gingerly against Damian’s shoulder, quiet whistling snores escaping from his lips. 

He was strangely quiet, Damian thinks, then realizes Jon’s been growing more and more quiet for months now. He chides himself for not noticing earlier. It must be him.

Maybe it’s conceited to think it’s his fault, but how could it not be? Of course seeing his best friend act weird and upset and hollow and broken is going to affect him. Of course he’s not going to know what to say. Of course it’s going to grow painful. 

He leans slightly into the soft head of hair laid against him. He smells good, safe. He smells like hugs, and maybe that’s because only two people in his life hug him and the other—

There’s hands on his thighs. Hands on his thighs, creeping up the seam between his legs and his hips, tracing the hard edges of his bones and the soft plush of his flesh, grabbing at him like they want to tear him apart, like they want to own him, pressing into him like they’re trying to sink to his bones and melt him down into nothing. Hands on his chest yank and grope until he’s sore and scratch at his shoulders and neck meanly, pulling at him, daring him to move. Hands on his groin, tugging, pumping until he’s sobbing, begging for them to stop and they don’t, because they know he never wanted them to start in the first place, because they want him to not want it, because him not wanting it is the whole point—

Blue crests his vision and he strikes, knocking his assailant to the side, backing up until he’s practically on the ceiling, one of the knives he had hidden in his bed swiftly pulled into his anxious grip. 

He smells blood.

“–‘m sorry–I didn’t–Dami, are you okay? Please be okay–I’m so sorry, oh my gosh–Dami, do you want me to leave?–or, or, maybe, uh, like—” A wet sniff. The voice sounds frantic, desperate, young. It sounds hurt and worried, sounds cautious. It sounds like it actually cares. “Can I touch you? Or is this like–will you hit me again? I’m sorry, I don’t–Dami–um, I’m sorry, sorry–I don’t know what to do–should I call my Dad?” 

“No!” he finds himself blurting before he can even process the question. Something in him flares and bristles, tensing for danger. 

“Dami…?” It’s softer now, hesitant. “Um, that’s the first time you’ve answered me in the past–are you okay? I don’t–I don’t really get why you hit me but I’m sorry for whatever I did!” Only one person calls him ‘Dami’, he realizes, and he can feel himself smoothing, calming down. He drops back onto the bed from his place perched on the headboard. His vision still refuses to focus. 

“Jon.”

“Are you–can you, uh, understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank goodness you’re okay!”

“Blood?”

“Um, yeah, I’m sort of bleeding–my nose–when you hit me I think it like. Broke or something? I don’t know, it hurts a lot. I’m kind of having trouble standing, haha—” he says, and then stumbles to sit awkwardly on the side of the bed. “My head feels kinda funny.” 

“Hm.”

“Yeah.” Silence. “I’m sorry for what I did. To make you hit me, I mean.”

“‘What you did’?”

“You don’t–? Um, so you were like, freaking out? ‘m not really sure cause I just woke up and you were like–I don’t know–shaking or something? Basically like, I could tell you were having a nightmare, except your eyes were open, which was kind of creepy but also cool in a way, but like, of course you freaking out is not cool! I just mean that like, uh, it seemed like something that would be cool in a movie, if you know what I mean.” Jon pauses, and Damian just nods, knowing he’s waiting for an affirmation of some kind. “So I try shaking you and I think it made it worse so I like, come to sit in front of you cause maybe seeing me will fix it? Or something, I don’t know, I was trying things, okay? And so I come and sit in front of you and you just absolutely deck me and I’m like on the floor for a second because my vision did that thing that it does when you stand up too fast and I’m like ‘oh wow, Dami hits hard, that hurts a lot’ and I think my ears were ringing? And like, my face feels like it’s on fire and I don’t know what to do, so I just keep talking at you cause when I sat up you were like all stood up on your bed like a freaking bird or something, like Nightwing does sometimes and—” Damian sucks in a breath at the name. Jon doesn’t seem to notice. “So then I kept talking and you like. Came back? Like. Stopped being spacey and started actually like, looking at me instead of looking um, through? Or maybe past me? So yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So I’m sorry, for like scaring you? I think? Probably?”

“That’s not your fault. I didn’t mean to hit you.”

“I figured not.”

“I missed…”

“Hm? No, you definitely hit me.”

“I missed talking.” Jon looks at him for a long moment, confused.

“We still talk? We’re talking right now.”

“You don’t…We don’t talk the way we used to. I missed your ramblings and your asinine interests and your juvenile worries.”

“I thought–I thought you didn’t really–I thought you were putting up with those things. With me. And your brother—so I stopped. Because it felt like you didn’t need more on your plate. More annoyances.”

“You’re not…you’ve never really been an annoyance.”

“Oh.” Jon looks away. “What…what have I been?” His voice is wet. He’s crying, Damian can tell, even without looking at him.

“My best friend,” he says, because he truly can’t think of anything else. Jon gasps, an ugly sound, a sob. He turns, and even with his fuzzy vision, Damian can see the almost iridescent sheen on his face and can’t help but think of pearls once more, especially with the way Jon’s eyes shine.

“Can I hug you?” Jon asks, inches away from him. He nods. 

The first thing he notices is that Jon is warm. Jon is always warm, but while his cheek is wet, it burns brightly against Damian’s own, radiating heat in a way that reminds him of just how radiant Jon is. It’s stupid and cliche, and certainly below him, but Jon is his sun. He can’t help but revolve around him and bask in his warmth. He can’t help but watch him shine just that brightly. Fuck, that’s stupid. 

Jon sobs against him, pressing his face into his neck. Damian carefully hugs him back, rubbing a hand against his shuddering back and breathing as calmly as he can. 

“My—” Jon says, voice breaking. “My nose still hurts.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not really upset, it just hurts,” he whispers, voice shaking. 

“I have a first aid kit in my bathroom.”

“I don’t–it probably wouldn’t–it’ll heal in a second, it just…sort of sucks right now.”

“Okay,” Damian says, and they sit, entangled, slowly calming as Jon stops sobbing and Damian’s tenseness seeps out of him. 

“I love you,” Jon says suddenly. 

Damian freezes. Jon leans back to look at him and frowns. 

“Not like, in the way my Dad loves my Mom, but like, in the way, uh, my Dad loves your dad?” Damian huffs out a short laugh.

“I don’t think you understand how your father loves my Father.”

“Oh.” Jon pauses. “Wow.” Another pause. “Wait–you think?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” A third pause. “That’s crazy.”

“Indeed.”

“So maybe not in the way my Dad loves your dad. Uh, in the way he loves Aunt Diana?” 

Damian waits for him to elaborate. He doesn’t.

“Thank you,” he says. “That’s…flattering.” 

“So you don’t—”

“I do,” Damian blurts, and it’s like the words come tumbling out. “I just don’t–I can’t—”

“You don’t have to say it yet.” Jon smiles at him, a small, soft smile. “Or ever. I just. Wanted you to know. That I love you.”

“I…me too.” Jon looks at him and melts, bursting into a grin that stretches wide and gleams.

“Oh my gosh, Dami you are so cute!”

“I am not—!!!” Jon just squeals as Damian shoves him over and they tumble and roll around on the bed, playfully swatting at each other and laughing. They stop when Damian leans over Jon, sitting on his hips. 

“I love you too,” he whispers, finally. And Jon tears up once more.

Chapter Text

They don’t talk for a month. It helps that Di–Dami’s brother is out on some mission the whole time, but Jon’s pretty lonely. He can’t exactly be himself with the kids at school or in his neighborhood when he has a whole secret identity and everything. It isn’t hard but it feels shallow in a way. Empty. Like there’s a canyon that he’s shouting across and they can hear him, but his words are a little faded, a little lost in the wind. 

But, he can listen to Damian, which helps with his worry that he’s spiraling without Jon there with him and makes him feel like he could be right next to him, but he sort of tries not to. For privacy reasons. It’s kind of creepy to imagine someone listening to you all the time. So he tries to just isolate Dami’s heartbeat, which is hard, but doable if he focuses. Plus, it’s good practice for control over his powers. So that’s all it is. Practice. 

Dami seems like he’s doing good. He really does. But Jon can’t help but worry that there’s something he’s missing, some pain that he can help with. But Dami’s fine. Damian doesn’t need Jon, and probably wouldn’t like it if Jon started being too clingy so he has to sit and wait for Dami to need him again. Or ask for him again. 

So he waits. And waits. And waits. And refuses to cave until his Dad mentions going swimming in a family friend’s pool and asks if there’s anyone from school he’d want to invite to go along. 

Before he knows it, he’s popping his head in Damian’s window and asking into the air.

“Dami! Wanna go swimming?” His eyes scan the room before settling on the bed. There’s a large figure there, hunched over but very clearly looking at him from over its shoulder, eyes cold and piercing. Oh. Dick’s back.

“Hi Jon!” Dick says, voice sweet and sticky in that way he makes it when he’s peeved at reporters and trying not to deck them or say something that would make Bruce mad. His Dad had pointed it out once, laughing. It feels wrong to be on the receiving end of it. Damian’s legs twitch from where they lay, wrapped around Dick’s waist. Jon can hear the sharp gasp from across the room, no enhanced senses needed. Shoot.

“...Hi Dick,” he says, because what else is he supposed to do? He doesn’t really think about it anyways, answering more out of muscle memory than anything. He sort of expects Dick to shoot across the room at him and pin him against the wall, brandishing the Kryptonite every Bat seems to carry on them like they’re epi-pens or something. Instead, he stands up, having fixed up his clothing to look downright modest, a simple t-shirt and jeans, and walks slowly towards Jon, that blankly cheerful look stuck on his face. Jon feels the urge to start rambling, to pretend he didn’t see anything, doesn’t know anything, hasn’t known for months now, but he keeps his mouth shut. 

The Bats are way too perceptive for any amount of his rambling to help. Dami had mentioned once, towards the beginning of their friendship, that the best way to keep from telling something was to keep from speaking at all. He remembers brushing it off as Dami being weird and paranoid and having grown up in a cult but surely there was some truth to it, he can’t help but think, as he’s slowly backed up against the wall by a smiling Dick Grayson. 

“Hi,” he says again, as Dick slams his hand against the wall, very close to Jon’s head. 

“Hi,” Dick parrots back. “You know how much I love Damian, don’t you?” Jon blinks at him, surprised.

“Uh, yeah. Of–of course.”

“You know I’d never do anything to hurt him, right?” 

“Yep. Yeah. Definitely.” 

“So whatever you think is going on, isn’t.” There’s a long silence as Dick stares into him, still smiling. “He asked for this, y’know.”

“Oh. He did?” Stupid, stupid! Don’t insinuate he’s wrong, he’s going to kill you!

“Yep. Got on his knees for me and begged me to …touch him.” Jon just looks at him, eyes darting to every part of his unchanging face. “I guess you’re a little too young to understand. But Baby Bat’s soooo embarrassed of us being together that he asked me not to tell anyone.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So it’d really be great if you could keep this between us. Ain’t that fun? Having a little secret?” Jon nods, feeling like his heart stopped at the beginning of this conversation. “You okay?” Dick asks, voice dripping with fake concern. “You’re breathing a little hard there, buddy.”

“I’m–I’m okay, I just—I’m okay.” Dick hums, tilting his face up in a way that makes his eyes sharper and looking at Jon with so much malice that it sends a shiver down his spine. He steps away, his shadow leaving Jon and finally making him feel like he can start to breathe again. He stands there on shaky legs, staring at the ground and distantly hearing the soft thud of feet on Dami’s floor.

“Your friend’s so cute, D.” Jon’s eyes flick back up, once again landing on the pair in the bed. Dick has Damian sat in his lap, chin hooked over his shoulder so he can whisper in Dami’s ear. 

“Don’t–you can’t touch him,” Dami whispers back, voice shaking.

“Of course not, Baby! I only have eyes for you.” He nuzzles against Dami’s cheek, snaking his arms around his middle and pulling him closer. Damian turns away, eyes flitting from Jon to a suddenly very interesting wall and back. Jon watches, frozen, as Dick’s hands get handsier and handsier, blocking out whatever he’s whispering into Dami’s ear. 

The slow, rhythmic sound of a metal zipper being slowly unzipped fills Jon’s ears so fully that he can’t think of anything else.

“NO!” It’s Damian that finally yelps it, startling in Dick’s hold and trying to struggle away. “Not in front of–please, I can’t–you can’t–please…”

“Aweeee, you’re so cute, D. All shy and bashful and embarrassed. Very well.” Damian relaxes. “Jon, if you could?” He sees it for what it is and darts out of the room, flying out the window and only settling once he’s firmly on the rooftop. He sits there and waits, because he can’t abandon Damian, but he can’t–maybe he shouldn’t’ve left. Maybe if he didn’t leave, Dick wouldn’t–maybe Dami could go to bed tonight without feeling sticky and gross and dirty like he had said. He could’ve stopped it. Maybe Dick didn’t have any Kryptonite on him. He could’ve stopped it. Even if he did have the stupid rock, he could’ve thrown him out the window or broken his wrist or taken Dami to his house or–or anything! He could’ve stopped it.

But he didn’t. 

And in a way, doesn’t that make him compl–complicit? Doesn’t that make it his fault?

He’s such a coward. Gosh, he’s such a coward. He can’t stop thinking about it as he hears his best friend whine and sob and gasp and sound so freaking hurt—he can hear him crying just a few feet below him, hear him begging Dick to stop, hear him shaking and squirming and sounding so vulnerable, so helpless and he could walk in and stop it right now but he’s not and doesn’t that mean it’s happening because of him, that he’s hurting Damian like that, that he’s helping Dick do it? 

No wonder Dami doesn’t leave, if his best friend and his favorite brother are the ones doing this to him. Jon doesn’t think he could bring himself to either. 

It’s when he’s helping Damian put on his pjs that he says it.

“I’m sorry.” 

It’s quiet, raspy, and altogether too timid. It sounds wrong. It doesn’t sound like Jon. He stops with his hands on one of Damian’s buttons, and wow, isn’t he pathetic for having this eleven year old dress him? Ibn al Ghul would die. It’s good that he’s been dead for a long time, sitting in that too-pretty graveyard in Damian’s head, the same place that Grandfather and Mother and Father and Grayson lay, those people he thought more of who died and left something worse in their place. Jon’s headstone is there but his grave is empty. For now, at least.

“Why?”

“I don’t–I’ve been–I’m helping him!” What? 

Maybe Jon will lay there very soon.

“What? How?”

“I’m not–I haven’t been stopping him. I haven’t…helped you.” Jon’s been speaking in fragments more. He’s been stopping and starting like his mind is tumbling and tripping all over itself, overthinking what to say instead of his usual practice of just blurting absolutely everything out. Damian kind of hates it. He waits for Jon to continue. He doesn’t.

“Yes, but how are you helping him?”

“Damian, being a bystander and not helping you is basically being his accomplice! I could do so much to stop him and I just. don’t.”

“That’s not helping him.”

“It is!” Jon insists, looking even more worried. “You don’t need to lie to me.” He’s an infuriating level of dense sometimes.

“I’m not lying.”

“Ugh! You’re impossible.” They stare in silence and Jon looks away, annoyed face turning guilty. He slowly finishes buttoning Damian’s shirt and then tucks him in when Damian shuffles into bed. “Do you want the light on?” he asks quietly.

“No.” The light flicks off. “Stay.” He freezes mid-walk.

“Oh. In bed–?”

“In bed.”

“Okay.” He tosses on the pjs he had stashed under the bed for nights like this and shuffles into bed next to Damian. “I’m sorry I’m still dirty.”

“It’s okay. You can’t be worse than me.”

“Yes I can! You just took a bath.” Damian just looks at him. He’s a lovely level of dense sometimes. 

“Jon—”

“I love you,” he says suddenly.

“Oh. Thank you.” Damian stares at him and he stares back. “You’re lovely as well.” Jon snorts.

“You’re so weird! G’night, Dami!”

“Good Night, Jon.”

Chapter Text

They did, eventually, end up at that pool. Jon remembers how Dami had been interested in his Dad’s explanation of the pool being freshwater. Something about an aquifer or something? He’s not sure because he was getting slobbered on by a dog that seemed to like him a lot, and petting it because those were definitely love slobbers and not I-hate-you-and-want-you-to-be-gross slobbers. 

He looks up and sees Dami, staring at the scenery. Probably judging the architecture or something. He looks good. He’s wearing blue, surprisingly, a really summer-y bright blue top, with cute little white jellyfish on it. And also white shorts. Underneath, he’s got on a skin-tight pair of what Jon believes is swim pants, dark gray and u-til-it-arian. Jon tries not to think about how much muscle Damian’s showing… It’s kind of scary what gets hidden in a school uniform or suit. 

It’s weird to be reminded that Dami’s a sort of like, hyper-competent, strong, deadly superhero. It’s not that Jon doesn’t know that, it just doesn’t click for him most of the time because Damian is so normal. Or at least, as normal as he can be. Or maybe Jon’s just used to him.

Probably the last one, actually.

The hat that Dami’s wearing is nice too. Jon looks back at the dog and pretends to focus on petting it, still thinking about the hat. It’s something Jon got him a few months ago. A white bucket hat with a few embroidered blue flowers. He didn’t know Dami still had it. He didn’t know Dami was willing to wear it. 

It’s made of polyester. Dami had said that when he gave it to him. He had looked it over with that sort of upset expression he always has, and scoffed. 

But he kept it. He kept it and is wearing it right now oh my gosh…

The dog walks away. So now Jon has nothing to do but stand up and follow Dami or his Dad around like a duckling. Or a puppy? Dami said something about him being a dog once. Meanly. But that was before they were friends. And his Dad is talking to Mr. Gordon and his family and Jon sees some old people over there who he’s pretty sure recognize him and he’s not about to go over and get his cheeks squeezed by strangers who know him. So he’s going to follow Dami around. Yeah. Not because he was going to anyways. Just because of the freaky old people. Yep.

And Dami seems to know what he’s doing, so Jon follows him to his Dad’s pickup truck and holds things when Dami asks him to and starts following him when he starts following someone else into the woods, and, wow he expected it to be farther because they’ve walked maybe 30 feet and there it is. 

It’s green.

His Dad had shown him pictures but they looked unreal and he thought it would be blue or clearish or maybe teal but it’s almost straight-up green! Clear, clean green, not like it’s full of algae or whatever. It kind of looks like jello. There’s a spout at the deep end of the pool, constantly pouring water, sitting underneath a crusty diving board. No way he’s using that. It looks like it’s a hundred years old… 

Dami’s surveying the pool, probably noting the cracked sides and inconsistent concrete. The slabs circling the edge are angled upwards and covered in sprouting grass and virginia creeper (he looks at that stupid plant and strongly recalls fighting it on Grandma and Grandpa’s farm, crouched in the hot sun clipping it vine by vine and brushing it with some weird pesticide). Verbena sits across the way, the occasional bee or butterfly visiting it and the yellow-pink-orange of it makes Jon smile. 

He sets his stuff down in the shade, near where Mr. Gordon places his own stuff, and after fussing with it a little, glances at Dami and finds him shedding his shirt, immediately turning back around to give him his privacy and rummaging through his own bag to pretend to have something to do. After a moment he peers back at him from his crouched position, finding him sans shorts and in a long sleeve dark grey swim shirt that matches the pants. He looks good, Jon thinks again, distantly, then sheds his own shirt, and remembers to tie his swim shorts when he feels the brush of the string against his leg. 

As he’s staring at Damian, sort of absently, the boy speaks up.

“Sunscreen?”

“Oh, I don’t–um,” he leans in, “Kryptonian.”

“Ah.”

“I can help if you—”

“I already applied.”

“Oh.”

“But if you wish to help me later when I reapply, then you may.”

“Uh, okay. You’re really serious about this sunscreen stuff, huh?” Dami looks at him, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Skin cancer is no joke, Kent.” 

“I wouldn’t really know,” he says, laughing.

“You wouldn’t, would you?” Dami says, smirking at him in a way he knows is kind, even if it doesn’t outright look it.

And so they wade slowly into the pool, splashing each other and goofing around. Dami seems to struggle with the concept at first, unsure of what to do, and Jon realizes this might be his first pool day, or maybe even his first time having anything even remotely similar. Like, what if he’s never even had a beach day? Dami’s definitely never gone to a pool party before (he hates parties, duh) and the Waynes aren’t exactly a pool-loving family. So he tries his best to make it good for him, suggesting games, recruiting him in the practice of sneak attacking his dad, floating around with him like they’re otters at sea, even putting him on his shoulders so Dami can pretend to be tall (that’s not what he said at the time, but it is his favorite way to think of it). 

They take a break to eat the lunch they had brought, Dami’s being something fancy and fragrant and Thai as he had explained it, the main has peanuts and some tiny green herb and noodles and shrimp and it’s orange and smells tasty as heck, alongside something fried and crispy. He can’t remember any of the names that Dami said, but he does remember he promised to let him try it next time he was over, so he has something to look forward to now. 

His own lunch is two sandwiches he made this morning, complete with crispy bread, multiple kinds of luncheon meat, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, whatever other vegetables he could find in the fridge, cheese (of course!), and sauce on the side because he doesn’t want his bread to be soggy. 

They’re looking out towards the pool, sitting at a metal table firmly in the shade when he says it.

“This is really a ‘white people party’.”

“A what?” Jon finds himself asking, turning towards him with sandwich still in his mouth. His elbows are resting on his knees, his legs crossed in front of him, back hunched over slightly. Criss-cross applesauce in a chair. The best way to sit, in his opinion. Dami’s sitting in a more normal, respectable position, feet firmly on the ground (as much as he can as short as he is) and knees at 90*, but Jon has seen how he sits when he’s not thinking about it. He’s no better than Jon is. He’s probably actually a bit worse, but definitely not as bad as some of his brothers (Tim…what the heck are that dude’s bones made out of?). 

“A white people party,” Dami replies after a moment of hesitation. “Drake has explained–the white metal lawn chairs in the water, the excessive beer and seltzer consumption,” he glances towards the almost full trash bag hung beside them and wow, it’s only been about an hour and a half, and there’s only like seven people out here, and his dad doesn’t drink so, “the football,” Dami sneers and Jon finds himself snorting, familiar with his disdain for the name of the sport.  

“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” Jon’s been to a few like this before. It’s not really his crowd. Not really his Dad’s crowd either, but he loves Mr. Gordon, who seems sort of quiet and reserved when he comes over for dinner, but here he’s a bit more rowdy. It’s a little strange, but Jon supposes it’s like how being around different people can bring out different parts of yourself. He’s staring at them back out in the water. Hopefully they can’t hear them. Or aren’t paying attention. His Dad knows to give them their privacy. He’s respectful like that. Unlike the Waynes…ugh…they’re nice but also such a handful at times. And weird. Like bad weird but not bad enough weird that he can’t be friends with them.

“I feel…strange.” He turns back towards Dami and swallows. He’s staring at his food, chopsticks raised with noodles in them, but his hand is frozen and his brows are furrowed. More than usual.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t…I do not fit in here.”

“That’s okay.” Dami just looks at him. “It is! I know it’s like, cliche or whatever to say, but you don’t really have to fit in. I mean like, I don’t really fit in here either. This is sort of an adult party, and we’re not really adults. And I sort of get it if you don’t really like this type of thing, that’s fine, I just, um—”

“It’s not that I dislike the pool or this type of outing.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I am having fun. With you. There is just something…off.”

“Um, do you mean like–the drinking is a little awkward for me too so—”

“No.” Damian sighs. “This feels very…exclusive. Culturally.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s what you–” Jon doesn’t really know how to reply to that. “I don’t–I’m sorry, I don’t really know what–um, sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Dami says, beginning to eat again. He swallows. “I just get the sense that I would not be having this experience should I not be your friend. Especially seeing that everyone here is…pale. Does that make sense?”

“Uh, I think so? I’m–um…sorry.” Damian stares at him for a long moment. 

“It’s not bad, just…strange. As I said, off.”

“Yeah…” Jon still doesn’t quite know what Dami means, but he does sort of understand what he’s trying to get at. A little. It’s kind of obvious Mr. Gordon’s family is old money. Like, old, old money. Especially from the way his house is built. Like, there’s certainly been renovations, but there’s an old bell in the front and the pool is over a hundred years old. The property’s been his family’s for like, ever, Jon knows, remembering some of the stories Mr. Gordon would tell about his great, great grandfather working himself up from being an indentured servant to being–well to having indentured servants. From the way he talked about it, Jon’s not so sure he didn’t have more…ethically dubious sources of labor, either. 

He’s sure Dami’s picking up on more things than he is, too. He glances back at his friend, watching him sip his stupid ginger beer (too darn spicy…) and stare at the pool. 

Eventually, they walk back in and end up in a competition to find a diving toy after one of them tosses it behind them. Dami’s a good swimmer. So good, in fact, that Jon has to sort of cheat with his powers a little to even match his speed. Even though Dami definitely can’t see as clearly underwater as he can, he’s still winning (only by two!!).

Dami emerges again, holding up the toy and treading water (short… ) grin wide and mouth opening to gloat over Jon as he pants across from him, standing and tired and thoroughly beaten by Dami’s quick hands. He smiles, ready to hear whatever he’s got to throw at him when—

“Hey little D!” Dami’s face drops, just for a moment, before righting itself. He pauses, pretending to catch his breath.

“Richard!” he says, smiling in a way that’s still his muted usual but makes Jon sad somehow. Jon turns and smiles and waves at Dick because that’s what’s expected of him, that’s what he has to do to keep Dami safe, that’s what he—

“Hey Dick,” his Dad says. “I’m so glad you ended up being able to come.”

“Dick?” one of the women beside Mr. Gordon says, “Like, Dick Grayson? You weren’t kidding?”

“The one and only!” he replies, flashing one of his gala smiles. Ugh…it makes Jon shiver. 

“Oh my god, that’s crazy, Clark, how did you–?”

“Perks of being a reporter, I guess. Plus, I really got to know him when Jon and Damian became friends. I’m just lucky he likes me enough to come out here.”

“You’re wonderful, Mr. Kent, don’t play yourself down like that,” Dick says, putting his bag down right next to Dami’s and promptly stripping his shirt off. Someone in the group wolf whistles. “Besides, you know I can never turn down a chance to show off.” 

He’s wearing blue swim trunks with flames on the bottom of them. They’re a bit strange, out of his usual style, but Jon sort of remembers hanging out with Dami on Dick’s birthday and watching Wally gift them to him, so there’s that. 

…Wally gave them to him. Wally, his boyfriend, who didn’t know what Dick was doing to Dami, who didn’t know he was being cheated on, who didn’t know his boyfriend was–what if he knew? Jon blinks, trying to focus on Dick here and now, but the thought strikes him cold. He shivers again.  

“Jon?” Of course Dami’s as perceptive as ever.

“It’s nothing,” he lies, knowing Dami can tell. “I’ll tell you later,” he says earnestly. 

If Wally knew… Jon stands there, staring at Dick. This was someone he thought he could trust, someone he considered family up until a few months ago. If he couldn’t trust Dick, who else couldn’t he trust? 

Everyone loves Dick. Everyone. There’s no way they’re all in on it, but if even a few of them are… He can’t help but think of finding one moldy berry in the bowl and not knowing which of the rest the spores have already spread to, imbedding themselves and rotting the plants from the inside.

Suddenly, there’s a hand in his. He turns to Dami, surprised. He looks as neutral as ever, but there’s some look in his eye that makes Jon’s heart swell so big that he almost starts crying. Dami’s so nice to him… There’s the soft pad of a slightly pruned thumb rubbing against his hand, gentle and kind and so wonderful.

“Thanks,” he says, because he can’t say more in front of everyone else. Damian looks back at Dick. 

“It is nothing,” he says. It’s really not, Jon wants to say. It’s everything, he wants to blurt. Because it really is. He leans towards him, knocking their shoulders together lightly. 

“We’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” Dami says, like he doesn’t believe it. 

Chapter Text

Grayson being there shouldn’t make Damian tense as it does. It’s shameful, being afraid of his brother like this. Because that’s what it is, fear. Even with his hand in Jon’s, he’s afraid. Grayson would never dare to do anything in public but there’s something still disgusting about being seen in swim clothes, despite already having been seen by him completely bare. 

Jon’s breath is steady next to him despite how tense he also is, mind elsewhere. He’s worried, of course. He’s always worried about Damian. Jon trusts him, obviously, but Jon, even before the–before Grayson–looked at Damian like it hurt him sometimes. After he said something he later realized revealed the differences between his upbringing and Jon’s, after he’s missed something common in American society, after he’s misunderstood something because all this time he’s been on the outside of Father’s world, looking in, and now he’s submerged in it, treading water but growing ever more tired. 

There’s some kind of distance between them in that sense. So close and yet… Damian squeezes his hand. 

Together, they watch Grayson chat and smile and laugh as if nothing’s wrong, as if he wasn’t here for Damian. Damian supposes that if he were a normal older brother, he would be here for Damian too, just in a bit of a nicer sense. 

Grayson turns towards them with a squinty smile that Damian’s all too familiar with and at that moment Jon relaxes his hand, letting it fall out of Damian’s own, turning towards him and smiling reassuringly. 

“C’mon,” he says, like Damian’s not watching him walk slowly towards someone who might hurt him. 

Still, he follows. 

It’s strange, sort of a reversal of their usual roles, but he walks behind Jon, slowly sloshing towards Grayson, watching as Jon rambles about dogs and the pool and flowers. Grayson’s smiling, for once actually happy, expression reminiscent of before, of when Damian had first met him. It’s exceedingly odd. Something twists in Damian’s throat. 

The scent of the water overwhelms him, almost ocean-like but missing that characteristic salt. That deep, earthy smell that wraps around him, in a way that makes him almost feel like he can smell the microbes in it. It’s nice. 

The gleaming water is beautiful. Bright shocks of green overtake the concrete on the sides, pops of warm-colored flowers join them. The sky is bright and blue in a way that makes him think of Jon and not–and there’s just enough clouds that the sun isn’t completely oppressive. It’s wonderful. And yet.

Jon’s still rambling and then he pauses and Grayson begins to ramble back, gesturing excitedly. They’re smiling, and for a moment Damian wonders if he’s the problem, if he’s the thing causing all this strife. He is the common denominator after all. And as far as he can tell, he’s the only one Grayson has…taken an interest in. 

But then Jon looks at him in a way that holds him and Grayson’s gaze claws at him at the same time and he sighs and shuffles over, standing closer to Jon than Grayson. 

“Dami! Your brother is being stupid!” Jon whines.

“When is he not?”

“Hey!” Grayson squawks. 

“He says that cats are better than dogs. That’s obviously not true. Just look at Krypto!” Damian raises an eyebrow. He can do this. He can be normal, even with Grayson’s gaze creeping like static up his spine. 

“No animal is better than another. All animals are glorious beings that—”

“Ugh, not this again… You just don’t want to hurt Alfred’s feelings! It’s okay, he’s not here, you can tell me that you like Ace and Titus better.” Jon cups a hand to his ear and leans in with closed eyes. Damian just huffs at him.

“What if I like Goliath better? Or Batcow?” 

“Goliath doesn’t count! He’s like the coolest thing to ever exist!! And Batcow is a cow. She’s not a dog or a cat. Doesn’t count.”

“Well…” Grayson chimes in.

“No! You Waynes and your stupid long explanations of stupid technicalities and like, stupid niche stuff like ‘linguistic taxonomy’! I don’t wanna hear it!!” 

“That’s not…” Grayson trails off. 

“You guys just talk around me ‘til I can’t understand what you’re saying anymore and then count it as winning the argument!! When it doesn’t even make sense! And like, totally shows y’all aren’t good argumentators or whatever if y’all can’t even explain it right!” Damian smiles. Jon’s kind of right, actually. 

Grayson huffs a small laugh.

“What.” And Jon is so truly annoyed. Damian smiles wider, lips parting just a bit to show his teeth.

“‘Y’all,’” Grayson says simply.

“You pish posh little rich dudes don’t appreciate my southern twang!”

“You’re from Metropolis. What ‘southern twang’?” Grayson’s grinning like an idiot now.

“My rural twang! Same difference.”

“Not at all the same thing, which you would know if—”

“It’s totally the same thing!”

“So not!”

“Totally is!”

“Literally not!

“It is!! You just wouldn’t know because the only culture you’ve experienced is aristocracy or whatever! Tiny little bland foods and penguin suits! Cucumber sandwiches and British people! All that stuff.” 

“Cucumber sandwiches?” Damian finds himself asking with a laugh.

“British people?” Grayson says at the same time.

“Yes!” Jon throws his hands up. “Ugh. Dumb rich people,” he grumbles, crossing them and turning away. Grayson puts a hand on his shoulder and Damian tenses, ready for something worse. “Go away! I don’t want to talk to out-of-touch stupidheads…” Jon says, shucking his hand off easily and wading further into the deep end, until he’s submerged halfway up his pectorals.

“Stupidheads? How old are you again?” Jon flushes.

“Plenty old!” And Damian can’t help but think of how he’s really not, how he’s way too young, how he’s just a kid, so innocent, so pure, kind and soft in a way Damian never was, never was allowed to be, all harsh edges and strong stature and duty, legacy. 

He watches Grayson approach Jon from behind, shoulders far broader and nature far more threatening, watches knowing that Jon is capable, that Jon can hear him, can probably feel him, that Jon could crush Grayson’s windpipe in a few seconds if he wanted to (if he ever had the courage to), and yet… 

Damian finds his hands pushing down on Grayson’s unsuspecting shoulders, dunking him before he can pounce on Jon. Grayson shoots back up, laughing and coughing, quickly turning to try to push Damian under. He’s sort of out of it as he steps back, dodging, and watching as Jon gets the message and dunks Grayson too, both of them quickly backing off before he can come up. 

They circle him, and even without signaling, it seems they’re on the same page, reacting well to each others’ subtle moves to corner Grayson and dunk him again. It’s fun, engaging at least. It feels like training. And it doesn’t make Damian want to scrub his skin off after he touches Grayson or Grayson’s skin brushes his own. It feels like before.

They get tired of it eventually, and Grayson migrates over to sit with the adults, Damian and Jon having moved on to diving for a sinking toy again. It’s fine. Normal. 

Damian wonders if it could be this good all the time. He wonders if something changed. Maybe he’s lost interest. Or maybe Damian’s finally shaped up enough to be a brother and not a slut. Maybe he’s finally fixed himself or maybe Grayson got tired of trying to fix him or trying to love him and is just pretending to be a good brother because it’s what he’s supposed to do, what he’s supposed to be. Logically, Damian knows his line of thinking is flawed, is irrational and deeply so. And yet… 

It wraps its claws around him even as he’s laughing, smiling, having fun, gripping him and pushing him down and choking him, pressure on his throat oppressive and painful and oh-so-familiar. 

Isn’t it always like that?

Chapter Text

If Jon’s cheeks are pink and his shoulders still radiating heat the next day, then it’s none of Dami’s business. Apart from how he lightly cuffs the back of Jon’s head in a way that makes him duck and laugh, shoving him a little bit in revenge. Somehow—and he’ll never, ever know how—it descends into them sparring, except sparring is sort of a word too dignified for what they’re doing. It’s not violent brawling or actual real fighting. They’re just…tumbling. Rolling around. Laughing.

It’s nice.

The sense of unease from yesterday is gone. 

Damian knows both of them can feel it, and they should definitely talk about it at some point in time, but for now he’s more than content to ignore it entirely, and pretend like Jon’s the only person in the world. 

“Ow! Oh my gosh, Dami, please don’t—” Damian backs off before he understands what his body is doing. 

“What?” he says, snappier than he means to. “Are you hurt?” That one comes out nicer, more neutral, better.

“I–um, I kinda gotta pee.” Damian stares at him for a moment. “And your knee—”

“I understand, Kent—”

“‘Kent’? ”

“So go…relieve yourself.”

“Oh! Yeah, okay, yeah.” 

It’s quiet without Jon. Somehow, Damian doesn’t know what to do with himself, gaze flitting over the items in his room languidly. 

“Hi Baby Bat!” Oh. 

“...Hello,” he finally settles on, after a moment. The figure is already walking into his room and plopping down next to him, barefoot and dressed in deep blue sweatpants and a t-shirt that’s been modified by cutting out the sleeves and widening the armholes, enough that when Grayson leans over, Damian can see right through one side and out the other. It doesn’t slip his mind that Grayson’s nipples are showing either, smears of contrast against his relatively pale skin. He glances away, feeling exceedingly immodest. 

“Whatcha doin’?” Grayson singsongs.

“I’m…Jon and I were just talking.”

“Yeah? About what?” Something about this conversation in particular is making the static-y noise of the ocean sloshing fill his ears. 

“Mn.” Damian has to blink off the brainfog. “He got sunburned…”

“Whaaattt? Even as a Kryptonian?”

“Half-Kryptonian.”

“Still! I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Nor did I.” By the moment he’s getting more stilted. 

A shift of fabric near the door and Damian’s eyes are flicking towards Jon, whose expression looks briefly scared, then pained, disgusted, something fiery underneath. It’s quickly hidden as Grayson turns towards him.

“Hi Dick!” he chirps.

“Hey!” They lapse into silence, still smiling at each other stiffly. 

“Uh…did you need something from Dami? Or like, me?”

“No, not really. I just wanted to hang out a little.” Jon blinks.

“Okay…” Another silence. “Um, do you want to play like, a board game or something?” 

“Sure!” And so Jon pulls out Hanabi, a game Tim had picked at random from an indie bookstore as a birthday-present obligation that actually turned out to be pretty fun. It’s a simple game, where players work together to play the correct colored cards in sequence, while not knowing their own hand. 

At every move Jon and Grayson make, Damian finds himself squinting, both in judgement and confusion. They’re not quite as good at this as he is, even with the brainfog rolling in. 

“Jon,” he hisses after watching him squander a clue opportunity. 

“What! It was blue! I clued blue! He knows what blue means!”

“Blue means play it, right?” Grayson puts the card down. It's a 4. They needed a 2.

“This is why we don’t color clue cards we don’t want them to play!” 

“Oops,” Jon replies simply, not sheepish or apologetic, grinning stupidly. 

Eventually, to Damian’s great surprise, they win, even with how badly Grayson and Jon are playing. Probably because Damian is playing optimized moves only. And staring pretty hard. The staring (and glaring) probably helps. 

But they win, and Grayson is laughing and Jon goes, “I told you so!” and begins to brag about how well (ha) he played before Grayson gets up and dusts himself off. 

“Well this was fun! But I’ve got to go grab food with Steph or she’ll strangle me for making her starve for even a minute.” 

And with that he leaves. 

Just leaves. 

Jon seems shocked too, staring at the door long after it closes. 

Jon really needs to stop popping into Dami’s room without checking if it's just him in there because it’s only as he stumbles in from under the halfway-stuck pane that he notices the noises. He’s pretty sure Dami uses like, the opposite of wd40 on it so he has to embarrassingly crawl through the gap every time, but that’s not really what he’s thinking about as his eyes land on a back that’s becoming increasingly familiar. 

Dick turns to him. 

“Jon.” It’s said neutrally, as a greeting he guesses, casually thrown out with disinterest as if he’s not got his fingers inside of Dami, as if Dami’s not tied up and blindfolded and earmuffed and squirming naked under him. It makes him nauseous, that stupid pressing feeling in his throat making itself known, sharp and heavy and dry.

“Um! Sorry! I can just–leave, like, uh—” His hands are on the pane and he’s turned around, already shoving his head back out. 

“Stay.”

He freezes. A long silence, only filled with the sound of Dami’s heavy panting–he sounds like a dog–and a sickeningly slick schlick, schlick, schlick, rhythmic in the way a ticking bomb is. He can’t help but recall a slowly clicking deathtrap he was in recently, dangled by rope over some kind of kryptonite-laced acid and somehow, somehow, he’s dreading this more. 

“You wouldn’t want Damian to get hurt, would you?” The threat is obvious, even to a kid like him.

He pulls his head back in and straightens up, turning towards Dick. 

“No,” he whispers, staring pointedly at the floor. Dick hums, pleased, and changes something because now Dami’s whimpering and oh, he’s got a gag in, the kind that looks like a big rubber horse bit and he’s biting pretty hard into it, so much so that the hard rubber is bending under the pressure. He flicks his eyes away again, feeling increasingly dirty, slimy, and voy-eur-istic. 

“Look,” Dick orders, and he does, stomach churning. Dami’s…penis has something small and brightly colored taped to it, vibrating softly, shifting with the twitching of his hips. This feels violating. He feels like he’s betraying Dami’s trust… he has to be, since Dami didn’t want to be seen like this. 

He doesn’t know how he could’ve ever thought Dick had changed. He heaves, disgusted with himself. Bile, chunky and yet thin, sloshes into his mouth and catches on his teeth, the acid quickly corroding them in a way he swears he can feel. He swallows it down, not knowing what else to do as he stares and stares and stares, unable to look away. 

Dami’s sobbing. 

Dami, the strongest person he knows, even surpassing his Dad, is crying harder than he even thought possible.  

His chest is heaving with each breath, shaking and stuttering as he shivers and struggles against his bonds, and somehow Jon watches his feet step forward and Dami slowly get closer, until his hands are gripping the bedspread, the mattress moving with his best friend’s despair. 

Dick says something he doesn’t catch over the sound of Dami, something sickening that’s said sweetly like everything else. He doesn’t really care. 

There’s something wrong with his face, something numb and crawling about it, something pressing and burning and twitching under his skin, something scratching, scratching, scratching at him. It twitches at his eyes, pulling their focus away from them, blurring them without his control. It claws at his nose, prickling heat creeping its way up into his brain. There’s warmth on his cheeks, wetness rolling and rolling and rolling. There’s some loud feeling he can’t identify filling up his bones, bloating him, threatening to spill out his mouth. 

There’s a hand on the back of his neck, stern and harsh with sharp nails digging into him and dragging him away. 

“Like what you see?” Dick hisses in his ear. He sounds so happy, so delighted, but in a tainted way that Jon can only put one word to: Sadist. 

A scuttling, skittering numbness crawls up his spine alongside a shiver as his hand drifts into Jon’s hair. His hand is deceptively gentle, it kind of feels like Kon’s when he thinks Jon is asleep, slow and loving and careful but it’s not . 

There’s something nauseatingly familiar about it, nauseously familial. 

He sobs, eyes dry and spit thick and sticky in his mouth, choking him, the laugh beside him suffocating in its jingling sound. 

A hand on his jaw. There’s a hand on his jaw, there’s a hand on his jaw, a hand on his jaw, hand on his jaw hand on his jaw—

Dick’s fingers press into his cheeks and squish his face, turning him away from Dami in a way that makes him want to press into a corner like a scared rat. He looks at the floor, at the carpet–rug?–on the floor, at Dick’s feet, even, before looking up at Dick finally. 

His eyes are bright. Scary. There’s something wrong with him. There’s something deeply wrong with him. 

He’s staring. Just staring. Staring with a creepy look that Jon has no idea how to–how to parse. Another hand grips his forearm.

They breathe, and even with the noise beside them, it seems so loud. So darn freakishly loud. He wants to flatten himself against the floor. Against the wall. Against the ceiling =.

“You’re cute.”

He doesn’t want to be cute–frick–and somehow he’s unfrozen, stepping back, back towards Dami, free hand grasping at the sheets, shaking just as Dami is. 

Dick’s nails dig into him. 

Clark’s up editing, mostly because he spent the day rescuing people from flood conditions in the south, and he’s sitting and quietly typing in his living room recliner, just the one lamp beside him on. 

Jon’s just come in the front door, and in a way, he’s glad his kid trusts him enough to not sneak around, or at least knows it’s pretty futile, even though Clark really does try his best to give him privacy (he doesn’t want to know everything his son is up to anyway). He smiles at him, and Jon smiles back, soft and tired and in a way that makes Clark’s heart swell every time because that is his son , his lovely little boy, and Jon just turns and walks further into the house, trudging in that slow little way that means he’s comfortable and about to knock out. 

There’s a mark on Jon’s neck. A bruise. It’s not uncommon, what with how clumsy Jon is and how fleeting and strange his powers are, but there’s something about this one that makes him pause. Maybe it’s the placement, maybe it’s the color, maybe it’s the shape. Clark isn’t sure. He knows Jon’s been with Damian, that’s where he goes most of the time, and that’s where he said he was going, and they often fight crime together so it’s not out of the ordinary for him to come home late with mystery bruises but there’s just something about this one that makes Clark sick. He stares and stares and stares at it, even as Jon turns the corner and starts his way up the stairs. 

Something’s wrong. Something’s deeply wrong. 

He watches as his kid goes through all the normal motions, like Clark’s world isn’t in the middle of imploding. 

What happened?

And if Jon is—then Damian—

Before he knows it, he’s outside of Damian’s window, pjs and all, and Bruce has to know he’s here because he always does, so he doesn’t bother standing on the porch or ringing the doorbell, just knocks on the pane, twice actually, and with no response, enters the room. Something’s wrong with the mechanism, and he gets anxious and just phases through the wall like Barry had taught him a few years ago, too impatient to find another window. 

The smell hits him before anything—it smells like sex, and for a moment, he relaxes, a little perturbed that Jon is experiencing this so early, but relieved that it’s not something worse—until he sees Damian. 

The boy is shaking, and there’s a split second of doubt in his mind, of his son’s character, because Jon would never leave Damian like this, would he? And then he sees the large handprints, and realizes that his son definitely didn’t want to and was coerced or forced to because his son’s best friend is laying there, seemingly unaware of Clark’s presence, shaking and sobbing, huge bruises running blue-black-purple-yellow-red-green across his body, distinct handprints across his back, his hips, his neck, even his behind. Clark has to take a moment to swallow down his bile. 

Slowly, he moves to cover Damian with a sheet, trying to preserve his dignity, or at least his privacy, when his wrist is grabbed and he’s punched in the face. 

He turns his head with the blow, hoping it will be enough but—there’s a telltale snapping of bone and a muffled groan of pain, and one glance to Damian’s eyes makes it clear that the pain snapped him out of it. 

“Hey Damian.”

“You—” he hisses, cutting himself off. “Did Jon—”

“He didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re asking.” He pauses. “Can I set that?”

“I can do it.”

“That’s not really what I—”

“I can do it.”

“Okay.” He watches in silence as Damian does. “Do you need—”

“I can attend to myself.”

“Okay. That’s…good.” He pauses again. “You know it’s okay not to be fine, or to need help, right?”

“I’m fine.”

“It would be okay if you weren’t.”

“I’m—”

“Damian.” They sit in silence for a moment. 

“What.”

Clark finds himself sighing. 

“Who…” Damian waits, instead of cutting him off. “Who did this to you?”

“No one did anything to me, fuck off.”

“I…” He sighs again. “I want to help you.”

“I don’t need—”

“DAD? ”

“Jon,” Clark says, not knowing what else to say. His son’s gaze flicks over to Damian. There’s some fear in his eyes and the same doubt Clark had flashes over his face. Damian sighs. 

“He’s fine, Jon. Being his boyscout self. It’s kind of sickening, really.”

“Thank Rao…” And just like that, his son gets to work cleaning Damian up. 

The way he does it is…comfortable, almost mundane, as if he were not treating a rape victim, but just helping his best friend get to bed. It’s sickening, so, so sickening, and Clark really has to swallow to keep the bile down this time. His son cleans him up with a wet cloth, starting with Damian’s broken wrist, and handing him gauze and a splint as he moves on. Damian does the same, moving as if it’s natural, as if it’s normal, as if everything hasn’t gone to pieces. He feels useless, helpless. Damian won’t tell him and Jon certainly won’t if Damian won’t and something is happening to his boy, his boys, and someone is hurting them and he doesn’t know who it is. 

In a few minutes, Damian is clean and dressed in a set of nightclothes that reminds Clark of his time in the Middle East. He’s clothed in a dark, shiny green fabric that covers all the bruises but the ones on his hands and neck. 

“Um, Dad?” He turns to Jon. “Can I sleep with Dami tonight?” Clark has to keep himself from tearing up. 

“Of course, kiddo,” he says instead of breaking down. Jon gives him a look he recognizes, a subtle clue to leave, but it takes him a second this time. Of course it does. He’s…He can’t—

Clark’s standing on his porch. Lois is staring at him, mouth moving without sound. He’s not in his Superman gear, just in his pjs, like he was when he left. 

He blinks at her.

“–ark. Clark? Are you back with me, sweetheart?” He’s barefoot. The tile is cool. 

“Huh?” he says, dumb as ever.

“Where were you?” He can see there’s other questions she wants to ask, but she’s way too used to out-of-it people to overwhelm him.

“Bruce,” he says, forcing the word to move through his mouth, shoving it out with his fat tongue and keeping it out of his jaws with his numb lips.

“Why were you–Where’s Jon?” 

“Same–same place,” he says, and gosh, he feels shuffled around, like his arms are where his ears should be or something and there goes another question out of her throat.

“What happened?”

“I—” He sobs, then holds his breath, surprised at himself, dazed and dizzy with everything. “Lois.” And he’s collapsing into her arms, holding her tight against himself, and after a moment she returns the embrace, tensing and gripping his shirt harder when he wails into her shoulder.

Chapter Text

“Jon’s father knows.” Damian doesn’t know why he says it. He especially doesn’t know when it gets Grayson to freeze on top of him, one hand mid-buttock squeeze. 

“What.” 

“He knows someone’s…” He’s never said it out loud before. Something stops him now. 

“How did he find out?”

“I did not tell him,” Damian huffs, offended. “I do not know. He just came one day and found me…after.”

“Jon—”

“Jon would not be able to keep your name from him should his lips spill.” Grayson’s mouth presses into a thin line, eyes intense and hard. 

He sits back on his heels, kneeling in a way that makes Damian think of his childhood. Grayson sighs.

“What do we do?” he finds his mouth whispering without his permission. The words tumble out like water spilling from a cup, splashing his cheek on their way down and messying the floor as they crash down. 

Grayson’s eyes widen at him, just slightly, surprise so large he can’t hide it. 

“Oh, Baby…” he says instead of acknowledging it.

Damian just looks at the wall. 

“It’s going to be okay, we’re gonna get through this.” There’s a hand carding softly through his hair. It irks him. 

“I know,” he snaps, voice colored with frustration. Richard knows not to treat him like a child. 

“Sorry.” The hand recedes.

“I forgive you.” The words are a clear struggle, practiced and stilted, but he’s sure Ri–Grayson can tell they’re genuine. 

Grayson laughs softly, then smiles and kisses him chastely, holding him tenderly all the while.

Clark wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He shoots up from his bed, but this time is a little different than others. There isn’t a disaster he needs to intervene in, or a supervillain attack, but there’s something on his mind that makes him shake, hands clammy and grasping for Lois’s own, desperate for some sort of comfort. She shifts with him, also seemingly unable to sleep, making eye contact in the dark and rubbing a thumb comfortingly along his hand. 

It isn’t enough. Nothing will ever be enough. Clark shakes and shakes and shakes and shakes until Lois, the angel that she is, decides to lay on top of him, affording him some kind of pressure, some kind of security. He gasps, then sobs, eyes dry. To his own ears, he sounds like a dying animal. She whispers comforts into his ears but he doesn’t hear them over his own thoughts. The very thing that woke him from his fitful slumber—the idea that there wasn’t just one culprit. 

Jon had been worried that Clark himself had been—at the very least complicit, and what if, what if that was because more than one person already was? 

He begins to stand for the umpteenth time, and just this once, Lois doesn’t pull him back, doesn’t try to convince him to calm down and stay in bed. She rises too, and together they walk to their son’s room. Into their son’s room. And he’s there, breathing, sleeping almost as soundly as ever, except his eyebrows are furrowed and he squirms every so often in a way Clark doesn’t recognize as Jon. 

He and Lois stand there for a moment, maybe for more than that, watching over him, before she ushers him back to their own room and they both lay down stiffly, shaken and not willing to stop touching each other, minds swirling and swirling with doubts and questions and theories and fears. 

He listens for Damian’s heartbeat. It’s as calm as ever, quiet, just as any Bat’s is. Rao, he’s so young. 

Dick’s scared.

Jon can tell because so far, nothing has happened to Dami since Dad figured out what was going on. At least, nothing he’s been aware of. And that’s–it’s good. It’s good. Especially since—flashes of a hand on his face, another on his arm—yeah, it’s definitely good. 

But still, he keeps finding excuses to get Dami out of the manor, group project at the library, photography assignment for art class, museum notes for history, a plain old sleepover—anything. 

It doesn’t work. 

Or maybe it does. 

But it stops working. 

Jon doesn’t know how–he doesn’t know anything actually, but he especially doesn’t know how this happened. Dick, coming into Dami’s room, just standing in the doorway, staring at them both until he softly closed and locked the door behind him. He remembers being terrified, unable to move, thigh and hand going numb from his seated position on the floor, breath far too calm for how fast his heart was racing. He remembers voices, then Dami stripping and getting onto the bed, a hand in himself slick with something that wasn’t saliva. And then—

“Jon.”

No—

“Come here.”

He does, knee giving out on the first step he takes, barely able to catch himself before his legs collapse. And then he takes another step, then another, and another, and somehow, like a robot, he finds himself near the bed. He’s shaking, hands unable to keep still. 

“Excited?” Dick asks, then laughs, quietly and to himself, like Jon’s about to find out what that means, like there’s something—

Dick grabs his shoulder, soft and gentle, more gentle than he should be, and moves him over to stand in front of Dami. There’s a too-large hand fumbling with the button on his jeans, and the feel of a chin settling on his shoulder, cheek pressed to his own. His zipper next, and then he’s stepping out of his pants, legs newly cold and feeling more exposed than he even thought possible in his underwear. He wishes he wore boxers like Dami does, instead of briefs that let Dick brush a hand against the skin of his thighs and maybe it doesn’t matter because they’re soon gone too and he’s—

There’s a hand resting on his hip, the other around his—He can’t help but brace his hands against the strong forearms around him, suddenly feeling off-kilter and sick, suddenly feeling acid in his throat and his mouth, the too-slick feeling between his legs awful in a way he never thought could exist—And somehow he missed it but his ears tune back in and Dami is begging, sobbing, asking Dick to stop, to leave Jon out of it, and then—Dick connects them. Presses one piece of Jon into a piece of Damian, and somehow that’s worse than everything before and Jon can’t help but think about all the times Dick has been connected to Damian like this, how Jon’s hurting him the exact same way, and Damian looks horrified, looks disgusted, looks like he wants to die and maybe Jon wants to die, which is terrifying, but maybe not die, maybe just stop existing until this is all over and maybe—

It’s gray. And quiet. 

And then it’s not. 

And then there’s something inside him, too far inside him, too big and too warm and it’s inside him like a parasite or an alien or a virus—and it’s rocking against him, pushing him against Dami in a way that makes him sick, sick, sick, and Dami’s pulling him down to his chest and holding him as Jon sobs against his skin, quiet as he strokes his hair. He’s shaking, shaking, shaking still, even as they’re pressed together, even as a too-large, too-warm, too-slick hand weighs on his back, slipped under his shirt, exposing more skin to the cold air of the room. 

He’s hot and cold and sick and slimy and everything is too much, especially the bursts of–of something that take him by surprise and have him groaning against Dami, drooling too-thick spit onto his chest, halfway to just upchucking onto both of them as he wails and rocks, rocks, rocks, like the sickening sway of a boat, swift and lurching and absolute. 

It’s there for so long that Jon begins to think it will never end. He begins to think that maybe, this was all there ever was, so of course that’s all there ever will be, blurred vision and snot rolling down his lips, slime—so much slime—filling his mouth, mixing with the already wrong spit inside. Maybe this is all life is: shaking and sobbing, chest spasming with all of it, gasping for air and punched-out noises that he’s never heard from himself before but are now intimately familiar with. A soft hand in his hair and an arm thrown over the back of his neck, the harsh press of something onto his back, his hips, his butt. There’s something warm and almost inviting around a part of him, and it’s making him feel sick in a sweet way, the same way that bursts to the surface sometimes without warning, grabbing him like a trap, feeling the way rot tastes, the way perfume tastes. It’s all awful. It’s all awful and he hates it and he wants to stop feeling all of it so much he hopes he could maybe please stop existing just for a moment just until it’s over just until he can be okay again but what if he’s never okay again what if this is it what if this is all there is what if he’s stuck here forever what if he can’t leave and what if this is all there is—

There’s something final, some blurred, grayed-out action that happens behind him, that happens to him. It leaves him sticky and disgusting and dripping with something from his butt, tired and exhausted like he’s dead, the feeling bone-deep and scratching at him. He’s pulled off of Dami, away from Dami, then shoved down next to him, shaking hand quickly finding his, and then there’s something around his—a hand splayed on the space where his leg meets his hip, thumb pressing and insistent, just as frantic as the stroking of the other—until he’s crying out, sobbing once more with it, body spasming, locking up as his vision whites out with those little bursts, trying to push away the hands that keep moving against him, crying, crying, crying, and then they’re off of him and he’s cold and wet and hot and slimy and disgusting and still sobbing, hand fumbling, looking for Dami’s, and when did he even let go, when did he even—

He doesn’t know when, but eventually Dick leaves. 

It’s cold, even where Dami holds him, tucked saf–tucked snug under his covers, nose still snotty and burning with it, eyes all cried out and yet still so wet, hands shaking, even in Dami’s secure grip. 

This must be how Dami felt.

“I’m sorry,” Dami says, like it’s his fault. 

Jon just wants the sea to swallow them both whole.