Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Are you absolutely certain about this, Pennyworth?”

Damian eyes the gourd in front of him with blatant skepticism, his brows drawn flat and his arms folded tightly. Sheets of newspaper line the kitchen table, a monochrome drop-cloth for the waxy pumpkins scattered about in various size and shape.

“Indeed, Master Damian,” The butler rejoins, the corners of his mouth twitching. His own sleeves are rolled carefully to his elbows, his hands steady and calm as he cuts the top off of Colin's pumpkin.

It's shorter than Damian's, with a squat stem and a flat spot near the bottom that gives the entire form an awkward tilt. 

The redhead doesn't seem to notice.

Instead, he makes a happy noise as Alfred finishes popping out the lid, and moves onto his knees in order to plunge himself elbow deep into the gourd.

Damian's nose wrinkles, but his posture softens, just a little, as suspicion hedges towards curiosity.

“I fail to see a point to any of this.” 

Colin pulls his fist free, gripping the stolen pulp, and drops the mess onto the newspaper. He ignores Damian's scoff, as well as the spoon that Alfred slides towards him with a pointed glance.

“It's to ward off bad spirits.”

Damian's brow arches. 

“You believe in superstitions, Wilkes?” 

He gets a toothy grin in reply, even as the other reaches back in, tilting to the side to get at deeper parts.

“Nah. It's still fun, though.” 

Watching as Colin pulls out another messy handful, Damian snorts, shooting an annoyed glance to the butler cutting into the pumpkin in front of him. 

“I'm not a child, Pennyworth. I can cut my own.” 

Despite himself, he leans forward when the elder is finished, and casts a wary glance into the dark hollow.

“Plus,” Colin continues, chattering aimlessly as he pulls at a stubborn piece of pumpkin. “You get to eat the seeds when you're done.”

The white teardrops don't really look appetizing, slippery and limp in their tangle of pulp, but Alfred hums an agreement and reaches for the remaining pumpkins to work on himself. 

Damian sniffs, watching from the corner of his eye as Colin plops another heap onto the table. Sensing his companion's wavering, the redhead glances over, brows rising in a way that makes the Wayne heir straighten in his seat.

“Bet I can carve a scarier face than you.” 

Bristling, the eleven year old turns to the boy beside him.

“In your dreams, Wilkes.” 

Colin's grin turns sharp and challenging in a manner not unlike the smirk Damian can feel forming on his own face.

He ignores the knowing twitch of Alfred's lips as he grabs his own pumpkin and jams his hand inside.

It's slimy and cold, the pulp squishing wetly between his fingers. Damian's lip curls. 

“This is disgusting.”

Colin laughs, tossing a fistful of mush over, “Wimp.”

He barely has time to dodge the return fire, squawking indignantly as he nearly falls from his chair.

Damian cackles, thrusting his hand back into the fray.

Carving pumpkins, he decides, isn't so bad after all.

–

Much to Damian's dismay, it takes longer to separate the seeds from the pulp than it does to separate the pulp from the pumpkin. 

He finally complies begrudgingly, assured that the spoils are worth the work, and vents his frustration by shoving a handful of orange squelch down the back of Colin's shirt. 

–

Damian's Jack-o-Lantern has a symmetrical smile and eyes that are cut in neat, perfect lines. He takes artistic liberty with the mouth, giving it a scowl full of teeth, and slashes two fearsome brows in. 

When he's done, Colin sullenly complains that no one should be able to make such a good looking face their first try out, to which Damian merely smirks, wondering aloud if there was ever any doubt.

(The sound he makes when Colin pinches him isn't quite a yelp, because that would be ridiculous, but it's not exactly not a yelp, either, which makes it just as satisfying.)

–

Alfred carves four of the six pumpkins himself. Their expressions vary - he draws a frown on one, carves surprise from another - but the designs are crisp and the butler's execution is concise.

Even Damian is impressed.

–

No one is surprised by Colin's sloppy lines and clumsy knife work. They tease him, Alfred quirking a brow and Damian snorting, until the redhead huffs in protest.

His pumpkin doesn't have a nose but its mouth is long and uneven. It frowns, a crooked slope Colin's carved the center from, with deep furrows slashed in various sizes along its length. 

The eyes are sawed out circles, round and jagged, that droop unevenly and sit too high.

“I thought you said you'd done this before,” Damian accuses, smirking at the other boy, who retaliates with a playful elbow into his side.

“It'll look better when it's lit!” He promises.

(It does.)

–

With the smell of roasting seeds heavy in the kitchen, they bring the Jack-o-Lanterns out one by one into the sitting room. It's a tricky ordeal, Damian's is nearly as large as his torso and still slippery, but somehow they manage to do so without any causalities.

They arrange the gourds on the fireplace, beneath the mantle already decorated with ceramics and black felt, the figures of ghosts and witches, haunted houses and bats illuminated by strands of purple bulbs. Clustering their wares on either side of the hearth, they complete the picture, their pumpkins a homemade addition to the glamour.

–

Damian's pumpkin glows in warm deviltry, it's fierce expression turned mischievous when filled with flickering orange. A large and hollow thing, he puts two candles in to guarantee its brightness, and flanks a few of the smaller squashes beside it. 

In contrast, Alfred's Jack-o-Lanterns group together like a battalion, each solider perfectly coiffed and pressed. They fit in with the rest of the décor, their old fashioned charm warming the naked hollows of the fireplace.

When lit, they glimmer in tandem, uniform and magazine-worthy.

–

“Told you,” The redhead declares as a thick silence settles into the corners of the room.

Sagging awkwardly onto its flat spot, Colin's pumpkin screams without sound. It sits off to the side, with eyes that are too high up for the small candle inside of it to illuminate.

Damian frowns, staring down at the crude rendering of Jonathan Crane, and for once doesn't argue.

–

Colin wins.

–

They spend the rest of the night eating their roasted spoils and trying to see how many Titus can catch midair.

The afternoon is chill and crisp as they loiter outside, their hoodies zipped tight and their butts perched onto a concrete stoop. Along the sidewalk, the trees have already begun to shed, shaking out red-brown leaves, and in the shop windows pumpkins and witches are laid in display.

Halloween is a week away and Gotham Village is thrumming with anticipation. 

“Surely you're joking,” Damian drawls, his disdain hampered by the way he's trying to speak around a mouthful of ice cream. “It was my understanding that only children participated in such nonsense.”

The red head next to him rolls his eyes, pulling the popsicle out of his mouth with a wet smack and lofty sniff.

“I never joke about free candy, Damian. It's bad manners.” 

The elder shoots him a look, eyeing the desert he's nursing, and refrains from comment.

At the cafe across the street, a man turns the page of his newspaper, his cup rattling faintly in its saucer. He drums his fingers impatiently.

“Besides,” Colin continues, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “We are kids.” 

This time Damian can't resist – he looks over, staring in open disbelief at the boy sitting wind-ruffled beside him.

“Speak for yourself, Wilkes.” 

Colin mirrors his own incredulity, auburn brows climbing towards his hairline.

“You do remember we're the same age, right?” 

Damian scoffs, “We certainly are not.”

He crumples his wrapper, tossing it towards the garbage bin with practiced ease, and turns his attention back to the scene at the cafe.

“I'm your elder and you know it.”

Although he can't see it, he can almost feel the way the other gawks at him, his mouth dropped open, and Damian's own lips twitch in response, amusement bleeding through his earlier annoyance.

“Oh for cryin- by two months!”

Damian waves his protest off impatiently, “The amount is inconsequential.”

A woman has joined the man with the newspaper and coffee. She sits at the table next to him, her attention trained onto a small book, and sips at something topped with foam. 

“As it stands, that still makes you fourteen to my fifteen.”

The red head continues to boggle at him, jaw working in a way that means he's too frustrated to speak, and Damian delights in the victory, even as the smaller boy turns forward and chomps down peevishly into the remainder of his popsicle.

The man at the cafe gets up from his chair, dumping his used china into a bin that's been marked 'dishes'. He leaves his newspaper on the table.

“Either way,” The Wayne continues, rounding back to the question that began this whole thing, “We're certainly too old to go trick -or-treating. Honestly, what kind of-” 

His words die on his tongue as he looks to his friend, the scathing amusement fading from his smirk as Colin hunches protectively in on himself, his gaze glued onto the toe of his sneakers.

“If you don't wanna go, you can just say that.” Colin mumbles, his forehead creased. 

In his too big hoodie and jeans that are three sizes off, he looks small and young, and Damian remembers again that sometimes he is young, that unlike himself, being a kid isn't a hindrance or a problem for Colin; it's an escape.

Colin shifts beneath the weight of his stare, shrugging stiffly, “I can just go by myself.” 

Much to his own chagrin, guilt stabs at Damian from behind his sternum. Colin is awkward by nature and clumsy with people. Although he jokes about understanding cars better than he does humans, it's not far from the truth, and being a secret vigilante isn't particularly conducive to making friends.

Silence grows between them.

At the cafe, the woman finishes her own drink. She closes her book, tucking it back into the folds of her purse, and casually drops her mug into the same plastic bin the man had.

When she leaves, she takes the newspaper with her.

“I suppose,” Damian begins haltingly, after another long moment, “One more year would be fine.” 

As Colin glances over in question, he can feel his own ears grow hot, and his next words come out waspish, “There's no way anyone would believe I'm still of an appropriate age-”

(which is only partially a bluff)

“-but you could probably still pass for a young child.” 

The redhead glares at him, “Is there a point to this?”

“What I mean,” He grunts, and doesn't have to pretend it hurts when Colin socks him in the arm, “Is that even if I don't participate myself, I could still...accompany you.” 

Floundering beneath the dawning surprise on Colin's face, Damian stares resolutely ahead, unwilling to glance over as the other searches his profile.

Finally, the younger boy grins, a bright thing even in Damian's peripheral, but keeps his voice carefully nonchalant when he stands to toss his popsicle stick in the trash.

“Cool,” He says.

Damian follows, scowling as they start down the sidewalk in the same direction the woman with the newspaper had gone.

“I'm not dressing up.”

Colin laughs, pulling on his fedora as they dunk into an alley. “That's fine.”

Damian glares at the back of his head, hands already digging for his own domino.

“I'm not.”

–

(They catch up to the woman five streets over, where's she's trying to sell WayneTech security codes to a man in a suit. 

She doesn't succeed.)

–


“Is that a real sword?” Colin deadpans a week later, eyeing the rapier hanging against Damian's hip. 

The older boy merely sniffs, folding his arms over his chest. Even through the black mask covering half of his face, he manages to look imperious. 

“Of course.” 

Colin whistles, rocking back onto his heels. “Awesome.”

His shirt is splattered with red, his torn jeans for once appropriate, and the intestines glued to his front glisten in the lamplight. In the hand not clutching his pillowcase, a piece of cardboard is defaced with bold strokes of marker.

Will trade candy for brains.

Damian returns the grin despite himself, his own costume blending in with the dark as they stand in the street. He shifts, his cape rustling, and reaches up to fix the uneven tilt of his hat. It's a vexing costume, if only for its loose accessories, but the trouble had been worth it, he thinks, to see the smile his father had given him when he left.

“Ready?” Colin asks, heading towards the stream of trick-or-treaters.

“...I suppose.”

The Wayne follows at an even pace, watching smaller versions of the Arkham population run about their parent's legs, and glowering at the older teens who knock into him with their rough housing.

After a while, Colin glances over, his cheek rounded with a lollipop. His grin turns sly.

“Wanna see who can get more candy?”

Damian slows to a stop, his own gaze narrowing.

"Don't be ridicu-"

They're both already lunging towards the next house.

–

To his own dismay, Colin discovers that although Damian Wayne is too old for trick-or-treating, he's not too old to cheat.

He trips Colin a few blocks down, who eats the pavement with a yelp, and steals a third of the redhead's earnings.

An hour later, in an execution of justice not typically seen outside of a cowl, Colin returns the favor by shoving the Wayne heir off a porch. He goes head first into a bush, flinging candy like confetti, and Colin laughs so hard he nearly turns purple.

Unsurprisingly, Damian spends the rest of the night trying to introduce him to the business end of his sword.

–

They both get more candy than they know what to do with.

Damian's mood hangs palpably in the air, thickening the silence as he tries to glare a hole through the flat screen TV mounted on the game room wall. Before him, a low coffee table is covered in bright bowls of candy and a tray of caramel apples, the largest of which has a noticeable bite missing from its side.

He doesn't bother responding to the knock, or the figure leaning in shortly after.

“Still brooding?”

Over the back of couch, Damian makes a pointed hand gesture.

“Piss off, Wilkes.”

Scowl deepening when Colin merely takes this as an invitation to let himself in, the eighteen year old slouches further in his spot.

“How's your leg?”

Propped on the table, the limb in question is still three weeks away from being healed enough to use. Without thinking, Damian wiggles the toes that stick out from the top of his cast.

“It's fine.”

Colin settles next to him, the outside of his thigh warm and distracting, and brings with him the smoky notes of autumn that still cling to his clothes.

Lulled by it, and by the familiar company, Damian allows the tension to ease from his shoulders, his ire melting into something recognizably petulant. 

“I don't see what the fuss is – this is hardly the worst injury I've had. There's no reason I can't be down there doing something.”

Colin sighs, giving him a full body nudge, “It was a pretty bad break, Damian.”

“Tt.” 

“And Alfred says you've been pushing yourself.”

His scoff needs no elaboration and this time when Colin nudges him, it's with his elbow.

“I know you don't like to admit it,” The softness of his voice is what keeps Damian's tongue still, “but even you have limits.”

When he chances a look to the boy beside him, gaze cutting from the corner of his eye, he finds him unusually serious.

The expression makes Colin look his age, the smooth shape of his cheeks and strong line of his jaw hinting to the man he'll one day grow into. Not for the first time, the elder finds himself acutely aware of the changes the last few years have made in his friend - the sturdiness of his hands, the muscle in his forearms.

Damian swallows.

“Besides,” the moment is broken by a heavy slap to his stomach, and Damian grunts, hunching inward, as Colin uses the leverage to sit up, “It's your lucky night.” 

Reaching into one of the bowls, he sends over a grin, his brows bouncing mischievously, "I've been enlisted to keep you entertained.”

"Really," the wryness of his drawl is ruined by the curl he can't quite keep from his mouth, "And how are you going to do that?" 

Without looking, Colin begins digging through the backpack at his feet, his other hand still rustling in candy, and fishes out a group of DVDs. Catching them when the redhead tosses the set, Damian's bemusement quickly clears into delighted surprise.

“Romerothon.” 

Colin confirms, the word muffled by the taffy he's pulling with his teeth. Looking down at the zombie films, their edges worn from years of devoted use, the elder grins. It quickly turns into an eye roll and snort at the marker Colin produces.

“Give it up, Colin. There's no more room.”

Waving off his complaint, the redhead clicks open the felt tip with gleeful determination.

Damian's cast is a tangle of signatures and shapes, the nonsensical designs over lapping numerous scrawls.

Colin scopes it out, leaning forward to attack a small patch near his ankle. 

“It's been a while since we've done this,” He murmurs as he works. 

Distracted by the way his shirt rides up, it takes Damian a moment to decipher a response, “Hm?” 

There's a brief flash of skin, smooth and pale, above the navy band of underwear.

“Halloween,” He clarifies.

Damian's fingers twitch.

A few minutes later, torn between relief and disappointment, he jerks his gaze away as the other sits up, revealing a scribble-monster drawn in a style similar to a number of the others scattered about his leg.

“What do you want to watch first?”

Damian picks a movie without looking and only half way pretends to keep his attention off of Colin's ass when he loads it in the player.

–

Somewhere between the splatters and the screams, they end up shoulder to shoulder.

It's all downhill from there.

–

Surprisingly, Colin makes the first move.

His mouth is soft and hot, sweet from the candy, and Damian drags his teeth across his lip to taste. When the move earns him a groan, blunt nails pressing into the top of his shoulder, he repeats it. 

They stay that way, Damian twisting at his waist, his leg propped to table, and Colin leaning over, until their muscles begin to twinge.

Fed up with the angle, Damian fixes the situation himself, catching the redhead by his biceps to haul him over. 

He can't quite stop his grin when the other flounders, inhaling sharply as he's hoisted into a lap, his knees settling on either side of Damian's thighs.

Huff torn between amusement and indignation, Colin lets Damian pull him back to his mouth, his lips curving even as the other catches them, “What a brat.”

Damian kisses him silent and forgets to protest.

–

“Are you sure this is okay?” Colin murmurs some time later, even as Damian does his best to shut him up with opened mouth attention to the side of his neck. 

“Hm?”

He gives a firm squeeze to the ass he's reached down the back of Colin's pants to find, smirk faint when the action earns him a soft hiss, and uses the leverage to grind their hips together. Patience isn't particularly his virtue and he hopes the friction is enough to distract the other from whatever unneeded worry he's trying to lodge. 

(His leg is fine, the only pain he's experiencing is an ache nowhere near his shin, and there's still hours before patrol is done, which means they have plenty of time before anyone joins them topside.) 

He's just began to suck a bruise into the hollow of Colin's throat, groaning as fingers tug his hair, when the tendon beneath his lips vibrates.

“I mean, technically this is illegal.” 

As worked up as he is, it takes a second for the words to cut through his haze. Thunderstruck, Damian pulls back to stare at the teen straddled over him.

“What?”

Colin arches a brow, the expression impressively haughty for someone with hands down the back of his pants.

“Our age difference.”

Balking, Damian sputters, stuck between disbelief and outrage.

“Age diff- you're two months younger than me!”

“The amount is inconsequential," His tone is obnoxiously familiar, and somewhere in the back of Damian's mind, it occurs to him that hindsight is a terrible thing, “You're still technically eighteen to my seventeen.”

“I'd hardly call that an age difference-”

“Oh now we're rounding up.”

“Colin.”

–

Eventually, their mouths go numb.

With wandering hands, they ebb, coming down from their climb, until finally, languid and satisfied, they slip apart to sit side by side.

For long moments, they laze in the glow of the television, watching the start menu.

Colin breaks the stillness with a sigh. 

His mouth is raw and red, his neck bruised from teeth, and his pants hang loose on his hips as he sinks into a sprawl.

“I can't believe I just broke the law,” He murmurs, the scandal in his tone escalating as he shoots a glance to the male next to him, “With a Robin. On the batcouch.” 

“You're ridiculous.” Damian snorts, reaching over to flick his forehead. 

Swatting him off, the redhead dunks away and uses the burst of energy to snatch a stick of licorice from the table. 

“Maybe,” He concedes, chewing on an end of the candy, “But you kinda like it.”

Damian doesn't dignify him with an answer, but when he settles back down, the hand that creeps into his own is loud enough.