Chapter Text
Damian was a very practical boy.
Well, that may be phrasing it incorrectly, but he definitely was not someone who took serious missions lightly. He fooled around sometimes, yes, and sometimes he might be a little arrogant (though Todd would certainly snort and ask when ‘a little’ became the new way of saying ‘massively over-egotistical’) but Damian liked to consider himself someone who knew his limits, and knew when to get things done.
Everything in his life was methodical, down to a science. He was performative, of course—there was absolutely no denying the fact that Damian enjoyed putting on a show—but there was also the fact that everything he did had a purpose to it, even if that purpose was as ridiculous as pissing off Grayson for the thousandth time that day.
Really, Damian didn’t know why people didn’t appreciate the lengths he went through to annoy people more. He had a check list of things that he had yet to get to—most of them involving unique ways to piss off Todd.
It was just something that never got old.
Sometime after Kent showed up—the redheaded Kent who took the name Nightwing, like Grayson—more aliens began to show up after him, other aliens who Damian later found-out were lost members of the Kent family. Kon-El, Lar-Grand, Cir-El, Linda Danvers, and Jon Lane Kent. All of them were found by the old and new Superman, who had both reunited quite happily with their apparent long-lost family, before settling into something akin to a clan of supers that Damian had honestly been surprised to see form.
The Lane one—one that Jon had taken to calling “Laney,” as well as calling him his “twin”— was apparently the child of his own world’s Superman, while the rest of them were the child of the older one. “Laney” had settled-in after the longest amount of time, though it had seemed that it was mostly because of the help of Jon, and finding his own, strange group of friends that Damian had been surprised even more to see form.
For one, he didn’t think that there could be anyone out there even more self-destructive than Todd, but it seemed to be the case when Lane found himself hanging-out with Artemis and Todd.
At first, it had just been a case of finding someone who was just as outcast as the rest of them (which, honestly, he really couldn’t blame Todd for, even if Damian quite readily said that he wanted no friends, he needed no friends, and he was damn glad to hear that Jon hated him, thank you very much) but it had soon seemed to become a regular thing between them. An occasional meet-up became a regular meet-up, which became something of a team, which all of them denied fervently—save for maybe Artemis, who just said that it was a thing that boys did. They were in such denial that they became ridiculous, she said, and tossed her long hair over her shoulder in an effort to hide her smile.
Really, Damian thought she wasn’t giving them enough credit. After all, it only took him four years to admit that he liked Jon to himself. That was quite a record for a Wayne, especially considering the fact that it took his father over ten to admit it to Kent, and it took Drake five to admit it to the smaller Kent.
That, of course, brought them to what Damian was currently planning: a way to ask Jon out, and to make sure that he said yes, without any possibility of failure.
He was sitting down at the computer of the bat-cave, hunched over the keyboard, while his eyes were locked on the massive monitor above his head. Tapping away quietly at the keyboard, he was running through a list of possible ways to do this, each in a carefully-numbered and organized manner, from most likely to succeed, to least likely to succeed, as well as which were most easy to preform, to the most outlandish and difficult to pull off. Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Damian highlighted the top one in a yellow outline on his word document, considering it closely.
1.) Make homemade chocolates for Jon
He had no idea how to cook, of course, which left this completely and utterly useless to him, but nobody ever said that Damian wasn’t stubborn for a reason. He was pretty sure that with a few days he could learn how to do this—he was the son of the bat and the grandson of the demon, learning how to make a few chocolate hearts wasn’t something out of the realm of possibility, dammit—but, even so, everything that he did had to be perfect in order to best impress Jon, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to do something as simple as just make some chocolates for him.
Drawing his knees up to his chin in thought, the tiny bat contemplated the situation for a moment, before he suddenly felt the weight of the chair shift behind him, and he shot upright, grabbing a batarang from his belt in the process. Looking up, he saw that Jason had planted an elbow on the back of the bat chair and was looking up at the screen, already having removed his hood, with it tucked underneath his arm.
Freezing up quickly, Damian glanced back over his shoulder to the screen, before he pulled the plug on the massive monitor, and turning it to black, praying that Jason hadn’t figured out what he was doing. Jason, much to his relief, didn’t say a single word, and only looked back down at Damian with raised eyebrows, planting his chin on his elbow while he watched the youngest bat.
“What are you using the old man’s computer for?” He asked, a bored tone to his voice. Damian scowled, glaring up at Todd, before shoving his metal pole up into the bottom of Todd’s chin, then scooting himself forward on his chair, hunching over in frustration.
Of course, Todd had caught the pole even before it struck him, and stood there with his eyebrows raised, pushing it back down. “Getting defensive, huh? You’re not doing anything bad, right? Old man wouldn’t be happy with you using his computer for crime.”
“Why do you care, Todd? You hate father.”
“I don’t.” He yawned. “But I’m bored. Nothing out tonight, and Alfred’s cooking the good ham today, anyway.”
“Did your new friends ditch you or something?” Damian asked with his eyebrows raised, earning a twitch of irritation from Todd, before he earned himself a nice cuff on the back of his head from Todd, and he snickered softly in reply. He stretched out on the chair, a lazy, cat-like smirk on his face, and Todd’s scowl only deepened in response to the smirk from Damian.
“No.” He huffed, folding his arms over his chest, after setting the red helmet on the computer desk. “And they’re not my friends. Or teammates. Or anything like that. I don’t work with people anymore, I just happen to have convenient allies.”
“Makes sense.” Damian lilted. “It’s not like people can stand to be around you anyway, Todd.”
He snickered again quietly when he saw Todd’s eyebrow twitch, before the outlaw’s entire face changed. Something downright maniacal suddenly began glinting in his blue-green eyes, and Damian quickly turned back to the computer monitor, praying for it to still be black, and hoping to whatever deity he didn’t believe in that it was still that way. Sure-enough, it was, but that didn’t explain the horrendous look in Todd’s eyes...
“You’re right.” Todd grinned. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have...connections. Ones that can make you pay if you don’t take that back.”
Damian immediately felt himself bristling in response. How dare Todd insinuate that he needed to apologize for anything in his life? He was the son of the demon and the bat, dammit! He never apologized!
“Hell, no.” Damian hissed. “You can’t make me.”
Todd shrugged, humming with a lazy, Cheshire cat smirk. “Oh, well. You asked for it. Don’t blame me when things start going...wrong.”
And, with that, he turned on his heel, almost strutting out of the cave. Damian watched him as he left, frowning deeply, before plugging the monitor back in, and huffing out of his nose.
Well, great. Now he couldn’t focus, and he’d completely lost his place. Looking back up at the list, he let out a sigh, before deciding to just go for it. Even if he couldn’t make the chocolates, he still had more things on his list, and he thought that trying it out would at least give him some good practice for making Jon chocolates in the future...
Then it was decided. Standing up, he saved the document to a flash drive, then exited it, and left the bat cave, a determined look on his face. He was going to ask Alfred how to cook—and he was going to succeed.
The next day, Damian stood outside the White family farm, completely steely-faced, and frowning. Smallville was now home to two farms—the Kent farm stood a few miles away, home to Jon Lane Kent, Clark Kent, and Diana Prince. Lois Lane and Bruce Wayne were also visitors—often enough that Damian showing-up in Smallville was a pretty usual thing—and even though Damian knew that people were so used to the rich socialites of Gotham in Smallville that they didn’t pay him any heed, he still felt ridiculously nervous about this.
Lips pressed together, he finally worked up the courage to begin to walk his way up the driveway...only to find himself completely tackled from the side by a sudden blur of black and red, and the box of half-melted chocolates went flying from his hands, earning a yelp of shock from the Robin in the process.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING TO MY TWIN?” A near-demonic voice yelled, and Damian blinked rapidly, before coming face-to-face with Lane, who looked as if he were near about to burst a blood vessel. Damian opened his mouth, ready to ask Lane to take a damn breath mint, before he found himself lifted up by his collar, up against the red truck.
“Put me down, you psychopath!” Damian snapped, reaching for his tool belt, but that only made Lane’s face twist further.
“ARE YOU PLANNING TO SEDUCE MY INNOCENT TWIN? HE’S JUST A BABY! HE DOESN’T NEED SOMEONE LIKE YOU IN HIS LIFE!” The indignant yelp that escaped Damian after that was apparently lost on Lane, as was his distress on the rest, because the Amazon that palled around with them simply strolled behind Lane and picked up the box of chocolates, beginning to pop them into her mouth one by one.
“Those are--!”
“SEDUCTION TOOLS FOR MY TWIN?” Lane cut him off, earning a choked laugh from Todd, who also appeared behind the truck, clutching his stomach in laughter. Putting two and two together quickly, Damian fixed a hate-filled glare on Todd, who only gave a shit-eating grin in response, and grabbed one of the chocolates from the box.
“None of your business!” Damian snapped back, before twisting Lane’s wrist, and managing to squirm out of his grasp with a quick slip he’d learned from his father. Lane lunged for him again, but Artemis thankfully made herself useful, stepping between them, and swinging down her axe.
“Okay, enough threatening.” She said very sternly. “We agreed we wouldn’t hurt him. That would only get us all in trouble.”
Lane let out a low grumble, but huffed, and turned his nose up in the air. This earned an eye-roll from Artemis, and Damian was about to get up and get revenge on Todd for this, before he noticed that Todd was reaching for some kind of pistol...one that was far, far too colorful to be one of his regular guns.
“What is that?” He asked, a little apprehensive. Three identical, mischievous grins met him, and Lane immediately opened fire on Damian, earning a yelp and a reflexive dodge. He was about to panic, before he looked back, and saw the splat of yellow paint behind him.
Paint. Paintball guns.
“Now, REVENGE!”
Damian screamed as he ran, swearing his own personal revenge in the process.
Jon, unfortunately, would have to wait until he could regroup another day.