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He’s not really sure how it happens.
They’re both nineteen when they battle the League of Assassins, outnumbered by thousands and too exhausted to care. At least, Jon doesn’t—he’s ticked off, half because they interrupted a really nice lunch and half because Damian shouldn’t have to fight his mother to the death on a Tuesday night in the rain.
It’s like a scene out of a movie. Damian draws his batarangs and widens his stance by an inch, his expression relaxing in a way that Jon knows all too well. The all-consuming confidence and calm that overtakes Damian when he kills terrifies Jon, but he trusts his best friend enough to know he won’t kill Talia Al Ghul.
Not tonight.
Maybe not ever.
Jon is momentarily distracted by a knife flying directly for his throat, dodging it with ease as he pursues his attacker with an amused grin. “Haven’t you heard?” He quips, grabbing the assassin’s arm before she can strike. “Those don’t hurt me.”
He knocks her out and kicks away his newest assailants with a grunt. He’s tired—they both are—and each of his punches get a little less effective as time goes on. And the assassins…they don’t stop. They multiply like parasites, emerging from the shadows, armed to the teeth, and Jon isn’t physically prepared to handle this much at once.
Especially when half of his attention is drawn to Damian’s battle with his mother and her most trusted warriors. It’s six on one, and though Damian can hold his own, he’s not Superman.
Jon swipes his hand under his nose, his bloody knuckles leaving a streak of red behind that he hopes makes him look badass. Like a movie character in those action films he’s been getting into recently, ones that he knows Damian only pretends to hate. Jon knows it’s all a ruse—after all, even if your heart is cold and lifeless, there’s something breathtakingly inspiring about a hero beaten to his breaking point, rising to a knee with a grin.
The indomitable human spirit, and all that.
And here’s the thing. He takes his attention away from Damian for two minutes, max. An assassin holding escrima sticks that glow a bright, terrifying green force him to jolt back to reality. For a moment, he thinks, kryptonite, but then sparks fly off the sticks and he barely misses getting electrocuted.
For a moment, he’s Superboy, sending a kick hard enough to split a brick in half towards his opponent. For a moment, he’s fighting with Damian Wayne, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat and letting it guide him like a metronome. For a moment, everything isn’t really fine, but they’re both breathing, so Jon is happy.
That’s the funny thing about moments, though. They pass.
They pass, and Damian Wayne is coughing, clutching his side as he whips around to stare at Jon with wide eyes. They pass, and Damian drops to his knees, his suit darkening as blood leaks from his open wound. The rain washes it away as soon as it hits the ground.
Talia sighs, her sword dripping crimson into a puddle. “Oh, Beloved.” Her assassins halt their attack to watch as she sheathes her sword and waves off the five women standing over Damian with their knives drawn. “Surely I trained you better than this?”
A spark lights in Jon’s chest. His eyes narrow as a furious mix of worry and anger stir in his stomach.
Damian grits his teeth and tries to stand, but he’s bleeding out—he’s bleeding out; Jon can’t breathe— and he’s lost his will to stand. “I am the son of Batman,” he rasps. “I am better than this.”
“No,” Talia says cooly. “You aren’t.”
How dare she. Jon inhales sharply, his next step so powerful it cracks the pavement, stalking towards Talia as that furious spark ignites and goes up in flames. He’s drowning in it—the anger, the fear—and he doesn’t care. “Stop it,” he demands. “He’s injured!”
Talia barely spares him a glance. “So what?”
Jon feels his irises heat up, shoving aside an assassin that tries to slow him down. He’s not thinking straight. I don’t care. “He’s your son!”
Talia’s lip curls in disgust as her stance shifts to accommodate the new threat. “He is not my son. He said it himself. He is Batman’s.” She places a wary hand on the hilt of her sword while the other gestures to Damian, kneeling in puddles of ashy, polluted rain.
Gotham doesn’t rain sapphires, Jon thinks distantly. It rains obsidian.
Talia continues with an air of nonchalance that makes Jon want to scream, “He’s failed another test. Until he passes, he is not mine.”
And Jon is.
He knows all too well what that’s like—what taking test after test, completing mission after mission, all for a smidgen of pride from your parents, is like. He knows how it feels when their frown speaks louder than words, when they sigh and roll their eyes.
He knows what it’s like to not be enough, because he was never enough for Superman. He was never fast enough, strong enough, smart enough. His father loves him, but Jon sensed his frustration in the set of his jaw and the furrow in his brow.
He was enough for his father, but he will never be enough for Superman.
So, yeah, he knows what that’s like.
Jon sees nothing but crimson, scarlet, red, the color of blood and anger. He sees red, everywhere, and it consumes him.
Before he can think, he reaches out and shoves, sending Talia flying before she can react. Jon thinks he hears Damian brokenly whisper a protest, but it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care, because Damian is dying and his mother is dissatisfied like he got a D on his math test. Not like he’s just been stabbed and—
Damian.
Oh, God, Damian.
The puddles of rain reflect the bright, vibrant red glowing in his eyes as the assassins take the attack as the signal to resume their previous attempts at killing both of them. The thing is—Jon is so done with assassins, but he still doesn’t have it in him to take someone’s life. Even if they stabbed his best friend.
And fuck , he’s built up so much frustration that his eyes burn and he’s not sure what to do and Damian is dying so he drives his fist into the ground with enough force to shake the earth beneath them, forcing the assassins to stumble and falter. It gives Jon an opening to scoop up Damian’s now-unconscious body and take to the skies, despising his cowardliness and how limp his best friend is and crap, is that his blood?
“Jonathan?” Damian mutters groggily.
“It’s me, D,” he says over the wind. “We’re almost home. Hang on just a bit longer, okay?”
Damian curls closer to Jon—probably in search of body heat, he lectures his racing heart—and murmurs, “Dunno…if I can.”
“You gotta,” Jon insists, not bothering to keep the pleading from his tone. He can see it—their apartment is three miles away—they’re so close. “I still…I still need you.”
“Tt. You’re…so whiny...Kent.”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.”
They fly in silence as the apartment building grows larger by the minute. Almost there.
Damian wheezes and hacks up blood, and Jon’s heart stops. Please. Please, God, no. He can’t—He won’t—
“Promise me,” Jon begs. “Promise me you’ll hold on.”
Please.
“I…” Damian rasps. “I…promise.”
—————————————
Jon reaches his and Damian’s apartment in under two minutes, bursting through the window with no care for the shattered glass or the sleeping neighbors. Gently, Jon sets the boy wonder down on his bed and rushes out to the bathroom, opening drawer after drawer searching for the med-kit. Where the heck is it?
He desperately digs under the sink until he finds it—a briefcase-sized first-aid kit that he hauls to the bedroom without a second thought.
When he kicks open the door, Damian slowly rolls his head to look at him, blinking once in surprise. “…You’re crying.”
“Am I?” Jonathan asks, flipping up the kit’s lid and digging around for medicine and stitches. He hadn’t noticed the tears rolling down his cheeks, but then again, he hadn’t noticed much else other than Damian for the entire night.
He locates the stitches and in one swift movement, rips open Damian’s suit to gain access to the wound in his side.
Damian makes a weird noise that Jon chooses to ignore, the needle between his teeth as he wipes down the cut as much as he can while blood continues to flow, cursing when it doesn’t stop. “This is going to be messy,” he warns.
“I can take it,” Damian mumbles, delirious.
Jon gets to work, methodically stitching up Damian’s wound as best he can, muttering a few curses along the way when Damian flinches away from the needle. Once he’s finished, he places a hand on Damian’s bicep and absentmindedly rubs his thumb across rough, scarred skin, reaching with his free hand for the gauze and bandages.
“I’m sorry,” Jon chokes out.
“For…what?”
“I…everything, I guess. That I wasn’t there,” he admits, placing the gauze on top of the wound before firmly wrapping it in bandages. “That I didn’t save you. That this hurts so much.”
“Tt. You’re an idiot,” Damian sniffs, eyes half-open. He watches Jon search for pain relievers and wrinkles his nose when Jon hands him three pills to swallow, but he does anyway.
Jon snorts. At least he didn’t hit his head too hard. “Yeah? Well, this idiot just dressed your wound. Darn tootin’ good at it, too.”
“Mm. I suppose…they’re…adequate.”
“Was that a compliment? Maybe we do need to get your head checked.”
Damian reaches up to grab Jon’s arm, closing his eyes as the exhaustion hits him all at once. He pulls Jon down next to him on the bed, curling himself into Jon’s side. “Shut up.”
And Jon is.
He’s.
His heart has never beat faster. It feels wrong to be here, in Damian’s bed, when his own is just down the hall. It feels wrong when he hasn’t even told Damian he likes him—is ‘likes’ even the right word, anymore? He’s not sure—and the boy is gripping onto him like he’s worth the world. Jon does the same, careful to mine Damian’s many, many wounds that weren’t properly attended to, raising his hand up to cup Damian’s cheek.
His best friend is already asleep, his breathing steady as his eyelids flutter with the beginnings of a dream and God, how is he still beautiful when he’s bleeding and bruised?
Jon smiles softly, letting his hand drop to the sheets between them as sleep looms over his shoulder. There’s words on his tongue and he wants to whisper them, here, under the moon and above the bed sheets, but something holds him back.
They’re dangerous words—dangerous thoughts, dangerous feelings.
He thinks, they’re a problem for morning Jonathan Kent, and finally, sleep claims him.
—————————————
He’s not really sure how it happens.
Jon wakes up to soft music and the smell of breakfast, followed quickly by the aches and pains of his injuries slowly healing. He heals fast, but not overnight, and his arm is throbbing like someone moved his heart there, and…
Wait.
In an instant, he’s in the kitchen—still wearing the pants from his costume and unsure exactly when he took his shirt off—staring into the eyes of a certain Damian Wayne.
What the hell.
Jon takes a moment to stare, jaw dropped, as he fights the urge to shake Damian until some sense is knocked into him.
Damian raises an eyebrow and returns to stirring what looks like pancake batter. Two of the fingers on his right hand are bandaged. “Do you have something to say, Kent?”
You’re an idiot.
I’m going to reopen your stab wound.
Why the heck are you out of bed?
He settles on, “You nearly died!”
“Observant, as always.”
Jon runs a hand through his hair, incredulous, and protests, “God, you—I could—Jesus Christ, Dami, you scared me!”
Damian turns around to face him, frowning. “I’ve nearly died many times before. How is this different?”
“Does it matter? Believe it or not, D, I don’t want you to die!” He yells. He places both hands on Damian’s shoulders and turns the boy to face him, eyes wide and worried. “Don’t you understand, Damian? I can’t lose you!”
Damian scowls, his voice low and defensive. “Why the hell not? There’s other bats.”
Jon stutters, “You— I—I can’t—Because—“
“Spit it out, Kent,” Damian leers, leaning in close enough that Jon feels his breath on his face, can see the ocean blue of his eyes and the freckles across the bridge of his nose. “Because what?”
“Because I love you!” Jon shouts, letting go of Damian’s shoulders to move his hands to the side of his face, tilting it upward. Damian was always the shorter one, and Jon hopes that will never change. There’s tears in his eyes as he whispers, “There. I said it. Hate me if you want, but I fucking love you and I can’t…I can’t lose you. You mean too much, Dami. You mean so much to me.”
Damian just…stares. His cheeks flush a brilliant, crimson red—not the angry kind—and one side of his mouth twitches as he takes it all in. As he lets the feelings sit in his heart and sink in, enveloping him in warmth.
Oh.
Oh.
Jon drops his hands and feels something start to gnaw at his insides, aching and moaning in pain as Damian does nothing but stand there, and for a horrifying moment, Jon thinks he’s misunderstood everything and Damian doesn’t feel the same.
That’s the thing about moment’s, though. They pass.
They pass, and Damian reaches up a hand to cup the back of Jon’s neck. They pass, and Damian pulls his lips down to meet his own, and it’s. They’re.
He’s infinite as Damian pulls him closer and Jon deepens the kiss, careful to mind Damian’s stitches. After a minute of reveling in that silence, those feelings, Jon murmurs into the space between their lips, “I’m so glad you didn’t die.”
Damian huffs. “You’re insufferable.”
Jon grins. “You’re impossible.”
“Tt.” Damian clicks his tongue. “I suppose we make quite the duo, then.”
“Hell yeah, we do!”
“…Kent.”
“Yeah, D?’
“Do you smell something burning?”
“Crap, your pancakes!”
Damian pokes Jon in the side, glaring up at him.“I’m telling the fire department it was your fault the building burned down.”
“Nah. You love me too much.”
“…I do.”
Jon smiles so hard his cheeks ache. “Don’t worry, I love you too.”
“How reassuring. Can we stop burning the pancakes now?”