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“Hey, remember last summer?”
Damian didn’t even need to think about it, it was almost a reflex when he answered: “Yeah, summer of super.”
“Summer of super,” Jon said at the exact same moment.
Damian grinned at the screen in front of him at his and Jon’s chat history. Jon was one to ramble a lot, so Damian wasn’t surprised to get another voice recording from him.
“I’m sorry, but …”
Damian frowned at the tone Jon’s voice was slowly drifting into. He wasn’t used to having the Superboy getting … pretty much the opposite of excited.
“This summer won’t be so super.”
Damian jolted upward almost ripping out his headphones. For a moment his body tried to adjust to the sudden movement and the glowing city of Gotham flickered below him.
His brain didn’t register what Jon said next, but his finger immediately drifted to the call button on his phone, cutting Jon’s minute-long recording short.
…
Not picking up.
“Jon, please call back immediately!”, Damian himself now sent him a note and figuring it would be his best option for now, he sat back on his favorite gargoyle and played the audio Jon sent him.
“Hey, remember last summer?”
Hearing this the second time, Damian realized that Jon’s voice was already much more somber than usual.
“Summer of super. This summer won’t be so super.”
Jon fell silent for a few moments. Damian felt like he could hear him breathing into the microphone, but it also could have been himself.
“To keep this brief … there has been … sort of a family emergency. And I am currently on my way to the other side of the universe.”
Damian blinked a few times, noticing his vision getting smaller while trying to take the news in.
“I know we had plans, but this is a problem that might end up concerning the entire universe, so I had to go.”
Damian slowly buried his face in his arms.
“I … I really don’t know what else to say, except that I’m sorry … Sorry – ugh, I said it again – this is my fifth attempt at recording this, and I don’t really want to because I feel terrible for leaving you, but also more terrible for not saying good bye. Anyway. I don’t know when I will be back, but I’ll keep you updated. My grandfather – yes, I have a grandfather apparently? It’s complicated – somehow, he made it so I can still send messages home. But it only works one way, so … sorry, your replies won’t reach me. Whatever. It’s been one heck of a day and I desperately need some sleep … so … good night.”
The background noises from the recording lingered in the air for a few more seconds, as if Jon was contemplating saying something more.
Damian was still squatting in the same place as before. He sat still for a few more seconds until he realized he heard the entire recording and the static was gone.
He unplugged his headphones and just stared at Jon’s profile picture.
After putting his phone away, he took his grappling hook and flew away over the roofs of Gotham.
Duty calls.
The next day was the last day of school and simultaneously the most uncomfortable day ever. Damian sensed Colin wanting to talk to him, but he previously had made clear that he is better not disturbed during class. So it wasn't until the end of the final school day that Colin finally was able to approach Damian and ask him the question that Damian was afraid he wouldn't be able to answer.
“Hey, Damian. You got any idea about Jon?”
“He’s sick,” Damian replied in an unimpressed manner.
“What, he has some sort of kryptonite flu?” he whispered as to not be overheard.
“Exactly.” Damian mentally rolled his eyes immediately letting himself get distracted by his phone vibrating. A blessing in disguise.
Of course it had to be another message.
Damian blankly stared at his phone screen showing the pop-up message.
“Oh, it’s a message from Jon,” said Colin who peered over Damian’s shoulder.
That’s the way Jon was. Having Damian lower his guard, if he just so much as spared a thought on him.
A weakness really.
With a swift motion his phone slid back into his pocket.
“Eh, are you not even going to look at his message?” Colin questioned his actions, while trying to keep up with his pace.
“No.”
“Then are you going to visit him?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you guys in love or something? How can you not make a sick visit?”
“Yeah not so sure about that,” Damian muttered under his breath. Colin wasn’t sure if he heard him correctly but didn’t really want to get wound up in a depressing conversation topic. Which suited Damian as he didn’t really want to elaborate.
It didn’t have anything to do with Jon leaving. Maybe a bit. But there was something else.
“Man, missing the last day of school is kind of on brand for him,” Damian let Colin babble on, while leaving the school building, and walking towards the limousine Alfred drove to pick Damian up.
“How was your final day of school, Master Damian?”
“Fine,” Damian shrugged his question off quickly.
Inside the limousine he stared at the now opened chat with Jon and after a fond look at Jon’s profile pic – a surprise selfie of the two of them, with Jon having lifted up Damian with one arm, to make his boyfriend look taller – he decided to listen to Jon’s new message after all.
“Hey Dames, it’s me! Obviously. You probably made sure who sent you this voice note before playing it. Anyways, I didn’t think I would send you another message this quickly, but I noticed that it’s the last day of school. I feel like it’s a very me thing to miss the last day of school.”
Damian smiled at this display of self-awareness.
“God I just hope we didn’t get any homework over summer. Not that I would have done it anyways, spending my summer with you. Though I imagine you’d probably make me do it.”
After that there was a pregnant pause. Damian heard Jon’s breathing on the other side of the mic. Though it also could’ve been a sigh. For once, Damian Wayne wasn’t sure.
“I’m sorry, I’m just rambling. You’re probably not even listening to this. You’ve got better things to do.”
Damian’s eyes went wide in a mix of fear and disappointment. Did Jon not know what he meant to him?
“But … everything out here is so … alien, no-pun-intended. I just need some familiarity. The sky is really beautiful.” Damian imagined Jon looking out of the windows of whatever spaceship he was occupying. “Even out here. Wish you were here. To see it. With me. I mean, I could send you a picture – or could I? But that wouldn’t be quite the same hahah.”
Damian imagined looking at the night sky and seeing the same stars as Jon. Would that make them feel any closer?
“God, I am so close to saying some cheesy bullshit, I should probably end this message.”
Love you, Damian thought to himself.
“Okay, bye”, Jon ended his message.
Damian sighed in a volume he hoped wouldn’t reach his butler. He left his earbuds in, so he wouldn’t have to get caught up in Alfred’s small talk, which would probably result in the other realizing the despair and … other emotions, the nature of which Damian was not quite sure of.
“Damian! We’re going! Little gremlin, he did not seriously forget …”
Tim shouted for his brother through the manner, because quite frankly he kind of did not want to bother facing his brother one on one most of the time. While his killing urge had settled down, what remained of it was a mutual disdain one could only harbor for their siblings.
“Jesus, Damian …”, Tim jogged through the manor, taking two stairs at a time, Conner just leisurely floating behind him. “Hope he’s not asleep.”
“Even without super hearing I could tell that he probably is awake. God, do I know your brother better than you do?”
“No, it’s just that I always believe in the worst of people.”
“Oh …”
Tim made a 180-degree turn, facing his boyfriend and making him stop in his contrails. “Don’t worry, your ‘worst’ amounts to conveniently forgetting your sweatshirts at my place.” He placed his hands on Kon’s shoulders and kissed him on the head. Kon replied with a pleased hum.
“Keep your repulsive displays of affection to yourself, Drake.” Damian had appeared in the door to his room, his green oversized sweater and shorts showing no signs of any intention to leave anytime soon.
“Damian,” Tim said as if that was a grammatically complete sentence expressing his entire reason for being here.
“You’re not ready,” Kon said, oftentimes better at voicing his thoughts. Though that may have also been because he barely had any thoughts, as they were likely to leave his mouth before having fully formed. Kon and Jon really were siblings.
“No, I have not,” Damian replied, thinking about just shutting the door behind him. But as he realized that would be seen as an immature way of acting on his emotions, he decided to instead just face the couple in front of him.
He realized soon after that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea either.
“Jeez, Dami what is going on?” Tim asked, understandably confused and maybe just a bit annoyed.
“Well, I hoped your boyfriend over there would know,” he answered bitterly, after clenching his jaw in frustration for a short while. He went back to his room, shoving the door shut, but not after it to even confirm if it was closed.
“What was that about?” Tim asked his boyfriend back in the hallway.
“So, what I might have forgotten to tell you … is that Jon is kind of in outer space right now? It’s a very complicated story that I haven’t fully understood yet myself,” Kon tried to explain.
Tim sighed, pinching his nose bridge in frustration. He without a doubt loved Kon (and hoped the other felt the same) though sometimes he was a little hard to handle.
“And why didn’t you tell me about that?”
“Well, because first of all, he only left, like, three days ago? And I was hoping he’d maybe return soon enough. And also, I didn’t wanna burden with my … stupid human problems …”
Kon had slowly hovered downwards, now at approximately the same height as Tim.
“Kon …” Tim whispered, his hands gently grasping the other’s.
“I miss Jon … and I figured Damian would probably feel the same. I was hoping … if we just went on the trip regardless, it might make things easier.”
Tim looked Kon in the eyes, a goofy yet loving smile forming on his face.
“Oh Kon, I’m pretty sure Damian misses Jon in a different way than you do. Either way, missing someone is nothing you should hide. And while I think going on a camping trip is kind of the same thing as running from your problems, at least we know, that this problem is one that is going to solve itself, as soon as Jon comes back, so … um, we should do it.” Tim cut his rambling, that he often found himself in, short.
“Damian?” Tim called for his brother once more, gently pushing the door to his room open.
“Oh boyo,” Kon commented on a suspiciously empty room.
Damian had snuck out through the window. He usually left his room as composed as humanly possible, not realizing, that a tidied-up teenagers’ room would raise more suspicion than avert it.
“Todd, I am on my way,” Damian called his older brother while creeping through the dark alleyways of Gotham city. He didn’t even give the Red Hood a chance to tell his younger sibling that he did not have any intentions to leave his house. He just hung up on him. Red Hood didn’t like getting hung up on. That was his thing. Rude.
After a short journey in which Damian did his best staying vigilant, he positioned himself on the roof of one of the Red Hood’s safe houses.
Of course, there had to be another message from Jon.
“Hi Dames. Ugh, I know you don’t like when I am too clingy but lately … I’ve been thinking a lot about you …”
‘Lately as in … all three days you’re gone now?’, Damian thought to himself.
“I tried my best over the past days not to send you to many messages but … here we are!”
Damian could not contain a grin, imagining Jon doing finger-guns or some other goofy gesture at his own statement. As hard to handle as he was, Damian really missed his kryptonian bundle of energy.
“Thankfully I have some rare pictures of you on my phone, some of which you would probably murder me over, hahah, but … before a year and a half ago, there is nothing there of you. Can you believe that we’ve been friends for three years or so now and yet there’s not a single picture of the time before we were dating.”
Disjointed memories flashed before Damian’s eyes.
“Every now and then I think about how we first met … Honestly it’s harder to believe we became friends in the first place, rather than staying friends for three years.”
Damian’s face heated up at the thought of his younger self.
“I mean you kind of were a little annoying gremlin back then.”
Damian breathed a suppressed groan into the crook of his arm.
“I kind of was …” Damian muttered to himself, immediately regretting it. It sounded so wrong. Jon wasn’t here, he couldn’t hear him. He had so much to say and yet he was sure that when Jon came back and he finally got an opportunity, he … wouldn’t know. Jon always found something to talk about. Oftentimes it was just non-sensical babbling (just like most of his messages now, if Damian was being honest) but there was something very charming about it. Damian was nothing like that. He often came off as insensitive and threatening. He was aware of that. And maybe he was also afraid that whatever the first thing he said to Jon was, his anger at having been left like that would dominate his intention.
Lost in his thoughts like this he did not pay attention to Jon’s message. He snapped back just in time for Jon’s usual awkward goodbyes.
‘What even was the point’, Damian asked himself.
He did not listen to the message in full again.
“I gotta say Dami, today you weren’t quite yourself,” Dick mused about, in a light-hearted tone that suggested this statement might as well have been directed to just himself.
“You did not gotta say that, Dick,” Damian said with just the right amount of stress on the latter part of the sentence.
Dick just answered with a chuckle.
The both of them were in the Batcave, Dick just finishing up Damian’s bandages after a fight with Kid Amazo. As soon as Dick applied the last bandage, he sat next to his brother, facing him cross-legged.
“I could just pry what’s bothering you from you, but let’s make this quick: Is the thing with Jon bothering you that much?”
“The thing with Jon?” Damian asked, his mind immediately associating it with the messages.
“You know, him being gone? Tim and Kon told me about it, after you just disappeared the other day … It’s quite unusual for you to be that distracted.”
“I was not.”
“Damian, last time you fought against Kid Amazo you made Cyborg have a stroke to defeat him. This time however … well in the end we managed to shut him down once more, but there was definitely a lot more erratic punching involved than one would assume from a trained assassin.”
“Tt, this was the first time that I haven’t fought against Kid Amazo with Jon,” Damian finally surrendered after staring at a point in front of him for a while. “It … I wasn’t prepared for that. That’s all.”
“You and unprepared? Wow, I didn’t know you couldn’t properly function without your boy by your side.”
“I- what?” Damian turned his head at breakneck speed to present his flushed face with a shocked expression to his brother.
“Damian, admit it, you miss him,” Dick told his brother failing to contain his smile, seeing one of his youngest brother’s rare expressions. He propped his straightened arms in front of him like an excited child.
“I- do.” Damian found himself admitting that quicker than expected. Curse the Grayson Smile.
“See, it’s easy as that!”
“Please try not to treat me like a baby during missions though …” Damian replied turning away from his brother.
“Don’t worry, I won’t!” Dick said and wrapped Damian a firm hug propping his chin on the other’s head.
“You literally only started this conversation because you saw an opportunity to hug me, didn’t you?”
“Possible. But I was just acting accordingly to Adam Smith’s theory of the Invisible Hand.”
“Sure,” Damian said, leaning a bit more into his brother and grabbing onto one of the arms wrapped around him.
After a while …
“You know, Jon has been sending me messages.”
Curse the Grayson Hugs.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not all you wanted to tell me.”
“It is,” Damian said because he thought that to be true.
“That was a lie,” he corrected himself after over-thinking it a bit. “Jon has been sending me these voice messages and … they are nice. But sometimes I just get so overly frustrated listening to them.”
Damian pushed himself out of the hug.
“I know they are supposed to make me feel better,” he continued, “but every time I hear his voice I just want to be there. Hearing these messages makes me miss him more and by now it’s starting to become a chore.”
“Oh, Dami …” Dick said a bit at a loss of words.
“I wish I could just talk to him; I feel like I need to tell him something. But I’m not sure if I’d even find the right words …”
“Then why don’t you just send him a message back?” Dick asked the obvious question.
“Because we don’t have the tech to send a message to some point several lightyears away.”
“Huh, makes sense.”
Dick propped his chin onto his hands pondering the situation at hand for a bit more and finally coming to a conclusion. “Why not record a message either way?”
“What good would that do?”
“You could just talk.”
Dick gave Damian one of his charming smiles.
“I get you might not be comfortable talking about … “boy problems” with anyone else really, but if that’s the case, why not just talk to yourself? Or rather to Jon, only, well, he won’t be able to respond or even hear you. But … you could use this as a preparation for when it’s finally time.”
Damian abruptly stood up, to Dick’s surprise.
“Damian?” He said, almost at the same time that the other said, “Thank you, Richard.”
“You’re welcome?” Dick wasn’t really saying that as a question, but his youngest brother’s thought processes sometimes left him a bit lost.
“Hey Jon. God, I already feel so stupid, how could you do this to yourself all this time ... Never mind.”
Damian was close to just dropping this attempt at talking to his faraway boyfriend, but as he dropped his phone onto his stomach, he immediately felt a surge of confidence burst through. He didn't know if it was the act of pretending to talk to Jon, that made him feel that way, or if it was him sort of reenacting what his boyfriend did possibly light years away. But suddenly he felt connected.
It was so tempting to open his next sentence with “I know, you probably won't hear this message” but he better not remind himself of this reality.
In that moment, for him, Jon was here.
“You know, earlier I ran into Kid Amazo. It was weird fighting him without you. I know you'd think it's silly, but I've kind of seen him as our arch nemesis, a bit. I did not like fighting him without you. Next time,” and he suppressed a chuckle, realizing what he was about to say sounded so much like something Jon would say, “let's kick his ass together.”
He stayed silent for a bit. Then, he picked up his phone and took a peek at the mess of pixels that was Jon's profile photo.
“How we became friends ... boyfriends really is beyond me, you're right.”
He sighed, this time his sigh was rather content.
“Anyway, it's late and I am rather exhausted,” he said, the same way he would end most of their usual calls. “So, I am going to say good night. And I love you.”
This “love you” was the most confident one yet.
Damian plugged in his earbuds, listening to Jon's voice once more, before drifting off into sleep.
The next day there was no message.
“Hey Damian. I'm sorry, it's been a while.” He sounded tired, exhausted. “I- I am recording this message because I need to tell you something.” His voice trembled. “I somehow got stranded on Earth 3.” … “Luckily you here and you there think a lot alike, so it wasn't too hard for me to sneak into this version of the Teen Titans tower.” He sighed. “They will probably find me soon. So, I'll have to make this quick. I don't know of any way to escape from here, so ... I wanted to talk to you just once more ...” Some rustling noises could be heard behind the mic. “I have to be quiet …” He muttered. “There was … something, I wanted to talk about. I wanted to do that during our summer trip, but … this is probably the best chance I’ll ever get. You remember last summer? Silly thing to ask that of you … though if you happened to have forgotten what happened last year, I think I might need to knock some memories into your head.” He chuckled, though the speed of which, indicated a profound sadness hiding somewhere out of reach. “After we spent that entire summer travelling through other dimensions and I remember Alfred coming in and giving us our school uniforms and I said something about the Summer of Super and of course you said shut up, and then you just freakin’ kissed me and I … I … I was asking myself, was I hallucinating because I was sleep deprived, or maybe you were sleep deprived but then I realized that, Jesus, I’ve wanted that for a while. And I think you also wanted to do that for quite some time, hahah.” His voice undeniably started to tremble during that laughter. “And then I thought to myself ‘are we dating?’ and then you said to me ‘I love you’ and then I remember freezing up and … not telling you that I love you. I somehow talked myself into thinking you did not really notice, that I never exactly told you, that I loved you – god, I am even avoiding it now – and how could I make myself think, that one of the greatest detectives on earth would not notice?” He could be heard breathing in and out on the other side of the microphone, as if to calm himself. “I don’t even know, if this is going to reach you … I am in the Teen Titans tower of a goddamn other dimension, for fucks sake.” He rarely let his frustration show through actual cursing … “What I wanted … was to apologize. I have noticed, that especially lately, you’ve been rather on edge, when I was with you, and I think that is my fault for never … saying it. I wanted to, but I always have been second guessing myself, because I … couldn’t believe you liked me?! I mean you’ve tried to kill me, more than once and suddenly we were together?” He paused. “I’ve been trying to pinpoint when exactly it happened. I always thought, there had to be a certain ‘point of no return’ when it comes to stuff like this, whether it be a point, when you fell for me, or a point when I fell for you. You know, like in the movies a ‘and that’s when I knew I was in love with him’ moment. It never occurred to me that it could just happen gradually over time.” A sigh, that slowly faded into awkward laughter. “Damn, I’m such an emotional disaster. Honestly, still not sure, what you see in me.” Another sigh. “I wasn’t sure, if what I was feeling was what you felt, and that if it didn’t it would feel disingenuous for me to say that I felt the same ... I am sorry, I never should have just stayed silent, I knew what was up from the very start, and Damian I realized I felt this way for a long time. I don’t know, if you’re feeling love the same way I do, but Damian, for me there’s nothing more obvious now. I love y-“ The message abruptly cut off.
“I love you too.”
“Has anyone seen Dami around?” Dick asked Tim and Kon, who were acting as if they weren’t just making out.
“Just- knock, please?” Tim said, the same time that Kon answered “Nope!”
“Ugh, I’ve kind of been struggling lately to get ahold of him, he’s always in his room, but now he isn’t and the Robin suit is also missing and I’m worried,” Dick rambled on the verge of panicking with a complete disregard for having barged into his little brothers room.
Tim sighed. “Well honestly I’m not really surprised, that boy has some of the worst coping mechanisms in this family.”
“That was not very helpful and maybe a bit mean,” Dick answered.
“Look, Jon should be back by the end of summer, I think this problem will resolve itself pretty quickly.”
“Yeah, but also Damian really has not been himself lately and I am scared he’ll do something stupid, which, wow, wouldn’t have thought to ever say that about him but I guess that’s what happens when after 13 years of repressing your emotions you suddenly start to feel something …”
In the middle of his rambling Dick’s phone rang. Without really paying attention to who it was, he fished it from his pocket and accepted the call.
“Hey Dickie, guess what little bird just flew into my arms.”
“Jay?” He asked.
“The one and only.”
“What do you mean, is Damian with you?”
“Yes, he’s been with me a lot lately, which you didn’t know, because people usually don’t want to be associated with me. Anyway, Robin kind of has been out of it lately so I figured it best to restrain him. Please come pick him up, I really don’t want to deal with that brat anymore …”
The Red Hood ended the call, leaving Dick with an astonished expression on his face. Kon had listened in on the call and told Tim everything in the meantime.
“So, are you-“
“I’m coming,” Tim didn’t even let ask Dick his question. With a resigned old-man’s sigh he heaved himself of the bed.
“Weren’t you two like … in the middle of fucking?” Dick asked, pointing between Kon and Tim.
“Dick, what the hell?!”, Tim shouted in embarrassment. Kon just laughed and floated behind his boyfriend. “Yes, I was gonna spend time with Kon, but also our brother needs some sense knocked into him and the more the merrier.”
“That’s the spirit!” Dick cheered as everyone left Tim’s room.
“Okay, now I’ve had it!”, Tim shouted at Damian, shaking him back and forth in the chair he was bound to. Jason’s safehouse was soundproof so they could just shout out their emotions to their hearts content. Kon flinched as he was not used to his boyfriend shouting. He knew from listening to his heartrate, that Tim was agitated, but he remained oblivious as to what the exact cause for this was, as he kept a calm demeanor until now.
Damian on the other hand knew exactly why he was being scolded by his older brother. It’s the same reason as the last few times Tim was angry at him.
“You can’t just go out there and beat up people like it’s nothing.”
“Um, you can, that’s what I’ve been doing the past years,” Jason threw in his two cents.
“Jason, could you please go, you’re not going to be of help.”
“No.”
Tim ignored his older brother’s sassiness and got right back to scolding Damian. Kon felt like this should be Dick’s job as the oldest, but at the same time he just couldn’t imagine this happy-go-lucky guy being angry. Tim on the other hand had a history of disliking Damian so that wasn’t an issue.
Tim sighed once more.
“Damian, you know that you should talk about your emotions and not try to, I don’t know kill people until you stop feeling them.” Surprisingly, Tim tried to strike a friendlier note. Damian on the other hand seemed calmer than what the Red Hood described earlier. He just endured the scolding and his brothers stare but after Tim seemed to have finished, he just lowered his gaze to look on the floor.
“Jon is dead.” Damian’s voice sounded like he actually succeeded in numbing his emotions.
“What? Damian what are you talking about?”, Tim asked.
“Oh boy, that calls for a drink and some popcorn,” Jason said as a means to opt out of this entire scene.
“He sent me a message and … if you heard it, you’d know what I mean. He died. He hasn’t contacted me since.”
Tim froze up.
A memory flashed up from the time Kon was dead, so he thought to know how Damian felt. He still wanted to shout at him, for endangering himself and people around him. But now he knew the place he was coming from. Loss.
Truth is, Damian could have easily broken his restraints. He chose not to however, because … he wasn’t quite sure himself. He didn’t know what to do. Jon was gone. He was alone. When he was younger, he kept telling himself, that he was always alone. Now he knows, that never was the case. Whether it be his mother, his grandfather, Jason, when he still was with the league, his father, his brothers … Jon.
Suddenly he couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.
It was weird.
He still had his family.
But without Jon …
He felt alone again …
“Damian … I don’t know what to say,” Tim muttered and let go of his brother’s shoulders.
Damian wanted to reply with a sarcastic “me neither” but what good would that do.
Suddenly, Kon, who has been leaning against a wall this entire time jerked up.
“Um, may I add something to this conversation?”
Neither Tim nor Damian really knew, what Kon could add to this conversation but they both just said: “Sure.”
“Jon isn’t actually dead?”
“What?” Damian answered, pretending his heart didn’t just skip a hopeful beat.
“Kon, what the fuck,” Tim mouthed at his boyfriend.
“Now that’s what I call a plot twist!” Jason, who actually went and grabbed himself some popcorn and a drink, called out.
“No, no, I’m serious. I can hear his heartbeat again. He’s on Earth.”
While Tim was just completely flabbergasted, unsure how to process this information, Damian broke free from his restraints and asked: “Where?”
“I think he should be somewhere in a ten-mile radius?”
That was enough for Damian to hear. He leapt through one the windows, grabbing onto the window frame, hoping to spot Jon somewhere. He then threw himself upwards climbing to the roof of the safe house, when he noticed the familiar ring of his phone.
He accepted the call without even looking at the phone.
“Look up,” a boyish voice ordered him.
He swung onto the roof and looked into the night sky, removing his phone from his ear. He slowly turned around, searching for any sign, that he could really be here.
Until he noticed.
A bright red shooting star dropping down from the heavens.
Damian walked, and ran, and sprinted, leaping over the gaps between the roofs, over the streets.
Walking, running, sprinting, leaping towards his boyfriend.
He was on the edge of Gotham city, when he was close enough hear him shout: “Damian!”
“Jon.”
And Damian leapt once more.
“Damian.”
He leapt into Jonathan Kent’s arms.
“Jon.”
He couldn’t contain himself, he had to kiss him.
“You’re here,” he whispered, their arms wrapped around each other slowly gliding upwards above and beyond the skyscrapers that covered the centrum over Gotham.
“Of course I’m here,” Jon whispered back.
Damian almost had forgotten what happened, what he felt, mere minutes ago.
“I thought you were dead …”
“Well, I had a very good reason to keep on living,” Jon replied as he nuzzled his boyfriend’s cheek, who just wrapped his arms around him tighter.
“Damian, I need to tell you something, I-“
“I know.”
“Y- You do?”
“You’re about to profess your love to me,” he answered with a smug grin.
“Wha- wait, how?”
“I could say that that’s maybe because I am one of the world’s greatest detectives, but … I got your messages.”
“Oh, oh god, I am so sorry, you had to listen to me ramble like that …”
“Oh, shut it, your rambling is … the best sound in the world.”
“Damian.”
“No listen, I know, you think, that you do not deserve me, that you don’t know why I would love you, but hear me out. Your voice is literally the most beautiful thing on this planet. Your ramblings are cute, you always speak your mind and that’s fantastic, I could not do that. You can start up a conversation with anyone, I … always push people away with the way I talk. But you, you always try your best to see good everywhere, true, you might be naïve oftentimes, but … if you would not have given me a chance, I probably would not be who I am today. And not only do you pay attention to others, you are also very self-aware. Mostly. Not to say, you … are so hot, Jesus Christ, and your hugs are very close to beating Richard’s.”
The entire time Jon just stared at Damian, his eyes open wide, his grin getting wider and wider until he couldn’t hold it anymore and started laughing out loud, burying his face in the other’s chest.
“Wha- what is it now?”
“You were rambling.”
“Oh, shut up,” Damian said, suppressing a chuckle and pressing Jon’s head against his chest.
“Tt.”
“Oh, but Damian … I was away all of summer … I’m sorry I ditched you and ruined our plans just like that,” Jon muttered into Damian’s chest.
“What are you talking about?” Damian said pushing the other away from him.
“I was away for three whole months! Well, to be fair, I’ve kinda lost track of time, but school sure must be starting soon.”
“No? Jon, you were gone for … just over a week.”
“What?”
“Yeah, you sent me those messages almost every day, didn’t you?”
“N-no, I only sent them like … every now and then.”
“You may have traveled through time a bit due to time dilation of being in outer space …”
“Whoa, that could be it! Wait a second … so you’re telling me, we still have most of our summer ahead of us?”
“Yes.” Damian smiled at his own statement.
Jon suddenly turned over with an excite squeal, so his boyfriend lay on his stomach.
“That means we can still go on a trip!”
“If you wish to …”
“As if you don’t,” Jon teased him.
Damian just grinned back at his boyfriend and hugged tighter onto him.
“Oh, and also,” Jon said, changing his position to being upright again, while again wrapping Damian in a hug, so he wouldn’t fall.
“Damian,” he began his sentence anew, looking into his boyfriend’s eyes earnestly.
“I love you.”
“I know,” Damian replied.
“I love you too.”